Originally posted by isnet396
I remember when WDWMAGIC! was "The Walt Disney World Site and Sound Page" (or something very similar). It had THE BEST content of any WDW site, and I bookmarked it as fast as I could. That was about 6 years ago, at least. Now, in 2002, our site is bombarded with all of these ads, all over the place! I remember the "New Forum Topics" table used to be near the newest news. Now I have to scroll down to check it out, and my resolution is pretty high, too. Steve, if you need help hosting, I'm sure there are lots of people who could help out! H3ll, I'd host your site from my spare comp. FOR FREE. Think about it.
Ian
HI there,
"The Walt Disney World Site and Sound Page" received about 600 page views per month, with data transfer of about 300MB per month, and cost me $15 per month to host.
WDWMAGIC.COM (the main site, reviews and this forum) receives over 1 million page views per month, with data transfer of around 200,000MB per month, and currently costs in the region of $400 per month to host (bandwidth only). The dedicated server that the forum runs on cost $2000, Windows 2000 Server cost $1000, and the forum/review software runs at $400 per year.
Since this is a hobby for me, and NOT a commercial operation, I have to fund the site from my own pocket.
The Contributors here to the forum donate around $150 per month, the ads bring in around $50 - $200 depending on the particular month , and I put in the remainder.
Without the support of the Premium Contributors, Sponsors and the ads, the site would close immediately, as I could not afford to run it.
Thanks for your offer of hosting, but I think you have to realise the size of the traffic generated here. The site is using around 200 gig of transfer per month, and 4 GB of storage. It is well beyond the scope of most hosting companies (I have been kicked out of at least 5 hosting companies due to the amount of traffic received), and requires a dedicted server on the backbone.
The amount of traffic is increasingly constantly, and the current amount of ads/premium members will not support the site long term. There will be a point where something will have to happen.
I think you have to realise that large websites, that recieve a lot of traffic will not be able to porivde everything for free like they have in the past. At the end of the day, somebody is having to pay for that site and all of the resources that it uses. If it is large organisation, they can obviously afford it. But when it is an individual, like this site is, problems will set in with funding.
I hope that helps explain things. If you have any more questions please ask.
