[ CTW Site News ] - New Server - Members views on Advertising?

[James]

You may have noticed the site running slow/hanging or even not reachable at times, basically there is a problem which we cant figure out and our providers think it may even be a hardware fault on our box - so we are having it replaced with a brand new one on Friday - hopefully this issue will then go away because we're all 'stumbled' !

Edited November 25, 2002 by James

[James]

Hi guys,

 

Hopefully getting this new box tomorrow and also looking into upgrading it to have more memory which will help us locate the hanging problems. We do think though that we are perhaps maxing the box out as it is (there are 2 sites running on the box) and so our only hope is to keep upgrading the box or to get another box purely for us - unfortunately this costs money and if we end up with 2000 members + we may have to seek advertising/sponsorship to pay for the hosting which as most of you know I really dont want to go down that path but it could prove necessary - as it is it costs a fair whack to host the site as it is. Hopefully it wont come to this and I'll figure out how to speed the box up by tweaking software rather than hardware! We will need our own box(es) one day though!

[sugaratias]

What's serving the pages.. Apache?

 

[ComfortablyNumb]

alright James

 

what sort of server do you use?

 

hope you manage to sort it out alright

[James]

yeah, Apache

 

fooook me - just checked the stats and they have shot through the roof - i will be posting a summarised version of the stats when i get round to it - the forums have a ridiculous amount of page views/data transfer! All good as we're popular but not good in a way as the people just 'viewing' and not posting are slowing us down! hehe

 

Already just figured out that if we keep growing as we are we either need to drasticly upgrade the box and/or get our own box!

 

Should be able to blag a few advertisers though to pay for the monthly hosting costs at some stage as the figures are pretty good. Just really posting all this because i really dont want people thinking i'm making anything out of this site as its not what i'm about - obviously things like our own nights will also help and perhaps merchandise but its ALL about growing the site and making it bigger and better, re-investing any money made. Right now though there is no sign of any profits - just losses! lmao Its all good fun though !

[James]

just a quick update....

 

it now looks as though its the number of people viewing the photos in the gallery at once which is slowing the box down to a halt - basically too much for the box to handle. When we have our own box it will be a bit better but still need a far more powerful box for the future.

 

Sarah and I are looking into ways of paying for a more powerful box.

[big_ee69]

James..

 

Ref site running costs... Deffo advertising. + lots of companies will give you additional perecentage of income from hits relating to clicks off the ad's on site.

 

Organsiations keen to hit 'yoof' market with low ad budgets love this sort of site. You will prolly need to give them demographics regarding age, and geographic profile, so u might want to add a birthdate to user profile page, and make location drop down and mandatory.

 

+ think outside the box when it comes to prospects for potential ads...i bet music/clubbing organisation ect get loads of requests but if you approach national express coaches (as a stupid example) or something they will have had less approaches from clubbing websites, and so might be more receptive.

 

ian

 

 

 

[James]

Big E - cheers for the info dude - it looks like I may have found a really good agency (yeah I know, I dont usually like agencies / agree with them) who can get all the advertising I require. Gonna chase them up, my mate Paul is looking into the same thing on his site.

[big_ee69]

Wicked..mate...i think you still might get better deals with age/ location demographic data cos they can better target the ads then!!

[James]

yep - agreed mate

[MissyZ]

perhaps make it a members only site so only members can view?

[Claire DC]

How would people decide they wanted to be members then??

[SarahPVC]

it looks more & more likely that we are going to have to go down the road of advertising just to cover our costs & to keep the site up & running.

Our main concern is that we upset our members by doing this which we do not want to do as each & every one of you are the most important things on this site.

Does anyone have any comments / worries / suggestions regarding this?

[James]

going to have to go down the road of advertising just to cover our costs & to keep the site up & running.

 

Just to elaborate on this a little - it is also required that we get some extra fundage (is that a word!!? lol) so we can invest it into getting a new, more powerful and less restricted server as we are already maxing out the current box and already blowing our data transfer thresholds. It is my intention to constantly re-invest any money made back into the site so we can bolt-on more and more features. There are many ideas which we have all come up with and some take an enormous amount of processing power such as Live Radio Web Casts, "Shouts" & DJ Mixes (MP3s), Video footage from meet-ups / clubs (MPEGs) etc... Who knows if we can do it all - we'll have a damn good try at it though !!

 

[Shenlong]

i think that i would speak for the majority of people that we could put up with smoe advertising if it meant the site was able to kep up and running, rather than closing down.

 

So good luck with trying to find the extar fundage and stuff james! and cheers for puting this site up in the first place.