Gen7Accord Club Blog

Semi-Dedicated Hosting + Access problems

2007-10-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

We have officially switched to semi-dedicated hosting! Adsense seems to be bringing in enough for us to upgrade. Hopefully this continues in the future. Thanks for all your support and for visiting our sponsors.

There has been some problems with the server's DNS. Apparently after the move, many of us can rarely ever access gen7accord.net. This has been fixed and I believe we can all access it normally now.

Thanks for your patience and understanding! Post away!

(semi) Stability at last

2007-10-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone! The site has been going up and down for the last couple of days, sorry for all the craziness. I've been working hard at figuring out the problems with our bulletin board scripts destroying our host's servers. But I was unable to get down to the bottom of it. Finally I decided to bite the bullet and upgraded to a semi-dedicated server. This means we are sharing our server with one other person, such that we'll have plenty of space, bandwidth, cpu usage, and memory! So prepare for uptime just like before.

Our new host plan costs 5 times more. Please help support the club by visiting the advertisers that are interesting to you! It's really the best way to help support, by not ignoring the ads and taking a look =).

Cheers to a new age of Gen7Accord!

Update on AdSense and Donations

2007-10-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I'd like to thank the awesome community here at Gen7Accord for all the support and patience while our forum goes through a few changes.

AdSense

As you know we've recently implemented some revenue generating advertisements, namely Google's AdSense advertisements. This is not to make money, but to support the costs of the forum.

As we grow bigger, the hosting plans we use for our website need to be upgraded. Once we get stable support, we will be upgrading to a dedicated server.

For now, be easy on View New Posts and Searching, and visit our advertisers that look interesting to you. The more visits through our banner to our advertisers, the more effective the advertisements will be for supporting the forum.

Donations

Thanks to everyone for the donations. It has really helped me personally in keeping up with the cost of the club. As you know, I pay for all our fees personally, and these donations really help me out. Please don't be pressured to donate, but I just wanted to send a thank you out to all those who have. If you can't donate, help support us by visiting our advertisements if they seem interesting to you =)

Ups and Downs

While we're going through this adsense + higher server loads, you may see our host take down the site often. Please just check back, no need to IM timot one etc to see what's going on ;) I'm also moving this blog over to blogger.com so that it's always going to be available even if gen7accord.net goes down.

Thanks again!

Downtime Again

2007-10-02T10:16:00.001-07:00

Well we've experienced yet another down day. This really sucks as the start of a new month. I talked to the host, and they said we had too many simultaneous database queries. It's always something new, they're always finding ways to try to get us to pay more.

I will limit our database queries for awhile, so you may see a message that says: "MySQL Error: Too many simultaneous queries". If that's the case, just relax and try again a minute or two later. This will keep us from completely shutting down.

Given people don't completely ignore the advertisements and click on interesting ones, we'll be generating enough money to upgrade our servers soon.

Thanks again!

AdSense News

2007-09-26T01:57:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to let you guys know how AdSense (the banner advertisements) are going. Currently we're starting to make a bit to hopefully move us to a dedicated server one day. When we first started, we got a lot of clicks on the ads, earning us a good amount per day. But recently we've only had a few clicks, and are averaging a few cents every day. Our best day was 10 clicks, which we got $12. But our worst day,w as $0.10 when we clicked 9 times. So 3 clicks makes a HUGE difference.

But the money is coming in cents, not sure if we can support the site on a dedicated server for this much. I'll keep it running to see if anything improves in the near future.

In the meantime, keep clicking on interesting ads! They actually goto some really quality sites sometimes =)

Thread Issues and Ads

2007-09-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

Thread Issues
It has been brought to my attention that a few threads have missing pages. Tim notified me that there seems to be a strong correlation between deleting posts from threads, and this missing page issue.

This is what happens: The forum lists pages that you can click on, but sometimes after you click on it, it shows that there are no posts.

The effects are really bad after we've deleted MANY posts.

I'm going to look into the SQL calls and see what is going on =/ I believe there's a running counter somewhere that's not being decremented per post deletion.

Ads
I have had two ads show up on our site, one up top, one on the bottom. The top one was a referral ad, and it made us $0. The one on the bottom, however, makes about $30 cents per 7,500 page visits, and a lot more if you click. So I put it up at the top of the page. It also has better ads in terms of content. I've also styled it a little so that it looks like it's part of the page more.

Thanks for your support! If you see an advertisement you're interested in, please don't hesitate to visit them. Google only allows safe content and quality companies to advertise, so you won't get to some sleezy creepy and shadey page.

Thanks

Security Settings

2007-09-11T02:24:00.000-07:00

I've added a few new security measures!

Spam Guest Posts
Spam bots will no longer be able to post anonymously in our Guest forum because we have a new spambot verification field. This will get rid of the countless crazy spam we get in that special forum.

Spambot Registration
I've added an extra confirmation question to the registration, now spambots won't be able to register! Now we won't have excess registration loads.

I'm done for today, it's 2:30am, I've been working on this since 5pm!

Help support the club, visit our advertised sponsors!

Back Up and Changes

2007-09-11T00:53:00.000-07:00

Great news, Gen7Accord Club's forum is now back online! It took a grueling 5 hours, but it was worth it. There has been a few major changes:

1. Advertisements - Yes, we now have advertisements! But don't worry, I won't be putting anymore, this is the extent of it. Why? As I've mentioned in my previous posts, simply because we are growing so quickly, that I can no longer privately fund the site in it's current state. These advertisements are in no way making any profit or income, but is a mere fund raising tool to help get us some money to upgrade the server to a dedicated host, thus providing faster service and much less downtime. The plan we're currently using is one of the lowest end plans, and server load really hurts us. Instead of closing down the site, we will need to build some steady funds in order to upgrade to a better host. This will make our awesome community faster and more powerful. We make the most money from clicks on the advertisements, so if you see something you are interested in, please help support the club by visiting the sponsor's site. Google's AdSense is what we use, and they provide very high quality links! So don't be afraid =)

2. Navigation menu changes - The navigation menu is now slightly reorganized. I've added a link to the Blog, and put the link to your Private Messages in the navigation menu at the top as well.

3. Forum Pruning - You will see some really old inactive posts dissapear from the Classifieds now. Classifieds posts will only remain for 60 days without any activity before being removed.

Some new changes to come:

We will be changing the look of the forum very slightly, and doing some house cleaning on the members. We have a lot of spammers who are trying to register, so we will be deleteing all members that have been inactive for a year, and have less than 10 posts. Of course if you would like to keep your account active, and fall into the criteria above, please let me know ASAP so we don't kick you off =)

Thanks for all your support and patience!

The Downtime Issue

2007-09-10T22:29:00.001-07:00

First of all, I must thank all the members and moderators for all the support you've given me so far.

The problems we are trying to solve is either
1. Reduce our CPU / Memory Usage to some arbitrary levels
2. Upgrade our plan by dishing out more money which still does not promise better performance or uptime.

I will try to be unbiased in the story you are about to hear, but that would be impossible =)

The Story
Gen7Accord.net's host is: http://www.advancednetworkhosts.com, and they seem to be a reseller for some other obscure web host. All a little sketchy, but I guess it works. We are using the Mega Plan, which is the cheapest plan they have, which allows plenty of bandwidth and disk usage for what we need. Now, checkout the plan in detail if you're interested, but here are the main items of concern:

Disk Storage: 30,000 MB
Bandwidth Allowed Per Month: 300 GB
99.9% uptime guaranteed
Message Board (Available script they offer)

We are well below the disk storage usage, using much less than half. Our bandwidth even with our post whores don't even reach 20% capacity (please don't go and postwhore now please). So why isn't the site up 99.9% of the time?

The only way to break the uptime, is to violate the Terms of Use. Now the section they said we violated was specifically:

Server Resources*

Any web site that uses a high amount of server resources (such as, but not limited to, CPU time, memory usage, and network resources) will be given the option to either pay additional fees (which will depend on the resources required), reduce the resources used to an acceptable level, or upgrade its service to a Dedicated Server plan. Advanced Network Hosts shall be the sole arbiter of what is considered to be a high server usage level.

Any web hosting account deemed to be adversely affecting server performance or network integrity will be shut down without prior notice. This includes accounting running services on ports higher than 80.

So apparently we've used an arbitrary amount of CPU time and memory usage with the script they offer (phpbb2), on the machines they've hosted the website on, even though we are within bandwidth ranges and disk usage. It's amazing what they hide in the fine print huh?

Better yet, this is up in the air as an arbitrary number that some obscure person thinks is too high. The host obscure person is the "sole arbitrator" of what is acceptable.

If that's the case, how can I take the option of reducing the usage? They are giving us two options: reduce usage or pay more money for more arbitrary usage. Now, I can't reduce usage if I don't know what the threshold is. I could totally cut out all the forums, and only load one image, and hell, for all we know they could "arbitrate" that we're using too much CPU or network resources. It's completely bogus, and a huge loophole that they can use however they want.

They're also pushing me to purchase a better plan, with no promises again, since it's still held within the same Terms of Use. For all we know, we'll be paying more, but still breaking the CPU time and memory usage that some obscure person is deciding. He could be drunk or in a bad mood and just shut down our website.

I'm currently fighting with them to get some kind of numbers so that we can see if it's feasible to reduce our usage, but since no numbers can be provided (I've asked about 12 times now in the past few days for anything) I can't really decide and judge what to reduce.

And I can't pay more money for a better server because:
1. I'm not in a position, funding wise, to put more money into this club
2. We have no promises on better performance

There are a few things we can do:
1. Limit searching to only once per 30 seconds, and posting to once every 30 seconds. A little annoying but much better than putting thousands of ads on the website to get more money for a better host. Hope that this will fix our problem for now.
2. Move to a different host and hope for the best, and maybe go through the same crap
3. Put more money into getting a new host or upgrade to a dedicated server
4. Find a server farm to host our site on for little cost =/ and be very lucky and happy.

The Next Step
So what's next? I've finally promised to try to reduce the usage, and the host has been kind enough to unsuspend our site. Of course I have no numbers to go off of, so there's only a few things I can do. Basically change search and post frequencies and hope for the best. Again, we may be hit with some more downtime, but that's the cheapest route to go at the moment. The more users we have, the worse this will get. This will only be a temporary solution.

The next step would be to find a better host that will be able to host us on a server which can keep up with our needs. Instead of these old crappy servers, we may need to dish out more money for better servers. This means advertisements as a form of making money. We all don't have enough time to keep selling decals and tshirts, and one can only buy so many decals and tshirts =P Plus, I haven't gotten ANY money from these items yet... so those who've actually been organizing this, can you please let me know how much funding we've come up with and paypal me? That would be helpful.

But we'll basically have to resort to something like google's AdSense. It will be one ad and hopefully it won't be annoying or obtrusive. But that's what it's going to have to come down to. The ads will be purely for keeping our site running, and not to make any money at all. Given it pays enough, the more members we have, the more money it will generate, and the bigger servers can be bought.

Once we've started making a steady stream of money to move to a better host, we'll look for a potentially better host.

What You Can do to help
There's a few things you can do to help:
1. Continue to try not to post whore
2. Do not search and post like you're on speed
3. Help find good web hosts that can match our current disk usage and bandwidth, which may also be able to keep up with our CPU and Memory usage. I need all that information, and it may be buried in the fine print. But if you guys can help me dig these things up, that would be a huge help.
4. Come up with other fundraising ideas, send me the money that we've made so far (for those who are holding it for me), such that we can get stuff moving faster.
5. If we can come up with a bigger donation that can sustain us for awhile on a bigger server, that would be great. We could move to a dedicated server and put the ads on immediately, hopefully generating enough money to sustain in the long run.

In Closing
Thanks for all of your support and patience. This club is really one of a kind, and all the members are amazing. Please keep up the great work, and we'll get all this taken care of soon enough.

Downtime

2007-09-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I'm sure you're all wondering what the hell happened to Gen7Accord over the weekend. According to our host, we were using too much CPU and Memory running the php bulletin board scripts that they provide.

In a nutshell, they want us to upgrade the plan to something like $40 / month, which I honestly don't have to spend. Currently and ultimately, Gen7Accord.net is not a business, does not sell anything, does not make any money, and is purely here for the sake of hobbyists and community. I plan to keep it this way, but because I'm paying out of my own pocket, with the occasional donation and decal sale, there is no way I can pay for a more reliable host at this time.

The host we are using does a pretty good job. They have quick response in terms of customer support, but the way they run things is a bit lacking for my tastes. Can't do anything about it given the price plan we currently use.

I'm also obviously not rich, so maintaining this site and the domain name is costly, and I can't afford to put anymore money into this community, even though I would love to. We will, therefore, have to expect and endure the downtime that comes with a not-so-great host plan. I'm glad everyone on Gen7Accord is so understanding, which is why the club is so strong.

So please keep checking back, hopefully we can work things out and have everything back up and running.

Thanks a ton

Welcome to the Gen7Accord Club Blog

2007-09-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Gen7Accord Club Blog! This has replaced the about page for now, which we will update and put back up soon.

On this blog we will update you on the latest club news, so be sure to check this page out often!

http://b.gen7accord.net