XWeb just turned 16 years old! :clap: Mac made the first post on XWeb on April 20, 1999.
It's time for a review of where things stand.
We have over 2700 users, of which about 400 have been active in the last 30 days. There are also many more unregistered visitors who read but don't post. We average about 70 posts per day.
Hosting
There have been some complaints more recently about outages. Our hosting provider is RealWebHost, based in Illinois, but with their servers resident at a major data center in Dallas, TX. A big reason for choosing this company was their history - they have been in business since 1997. The hosting space has low barriers to entry and is filled with companies that can appear and vanish just as easily. RealWebHost has generally been very responsive to issues and we have not experienced any painful incidents such as needing to restore data or being forced to reconfigure. Moving to a new provider is always an option but not a trivial task and carries risk.
The server logs show that the forum has actually been available, uninterrupted for over a year. However there have been some sporadic name resolution issues recently which have affected some or all users. These are not easily logged and diagnosis is best done while they are actually happening. Sometimes these are not directly related to the provider themselves.
On a typical month we use just over half of our 50GB of allotted bandwidth. Disk storage is not an issue and is largely consumed by database backups. Allowing unlimited hosting of photos/video would drastically change that picture, which is why external hosting is enforced. With these figures, we remain quite small as forums go, and many major hosting providers do not offer service at this tier with the flexibility we enjoy to configure XWeb as it is now. In short, we receive very good value for our money.
No service is perfect. We'll continue to monitor issues as they come up and drive for resolution.
Finances
Here's what it currently costs on an annual basis.
XWeb 2.0 (this site) $215
Domain registrations $53
XWeb 1.0 (N54 archives) $70
Total: $338
These costs have remained quite stable over the years and no major increases are expected unless we make a significant change. Our vBulletin forum software was purchased up-front so there are no recurring costs. We are on an old version of vBulletin, still widely used but no longer actively supported.
As of now we have $120 dollars in the account to cover expenses, so further fund-raising will be needed over the next 6 months. Donation info is listed in the announcement at the top of the forum.
XWeb has always been non-commercial. I've received a number of requests to have the forum participate in various marketing and advertising schemes, but I have held firm to our original charter to remain free of extraneous content and be supported entirely by the generosity of those who use the site.
Moderators
A heartfelt thank you to those who serve as moderators - keeping things in order and adding value for all.
Future
Where are we headed? There's no urgent reason to change what we have at this point, but that doesn't prevent discussion about things that could change. Migrating off our current forum software platform isn't required right now but will likely become desirable at some point. Whichever direction we take, it will not be a simple task. A great deal of effort was put into XWeb 2 primarily by Mac to customize the appearance and behavior to match the predecessor. A new platform may mean a different look and feel, along with the new features. We continue to maintain the old XWeb 1.0 for the wealth of information still contained there.
Please feel free to respond to this thread with your thoughts, ideas, questions.
Thanks!
It's time for a review of where things stand.
We have over 2700 users, of which about 400 have been active in the last 30 days. There are also many more unregistered visitors who read but don't post. We average about 70 posts per day.
Hosting
There have been some complaints more recently about outages. Our hosting provider is RealWebHost, based in Illinois, but with their servers resident at a major data center in Dallas, TX. A big reason for choosing this company was their history - they have been in business since 1997. The hosting space has low barriers to entry and is filled with companies that can appear and vanish just as easily. RealWebHost has generally been very responsive to issues and we have not experienced any painful incidents such as needing to restore data or being forced to reconfigure. Moving to a new provider is always an option but not a trivial task and carries risk.
The server logs show that the forum has actually been available, uninterrupted for over a year. However there have been some sporadic name resolution issues recently which have affected some or all users. These are not easily logged and diagnosis is best done while they are actually happening. Sometimes these are not directly related to the provider themselves.
On a typical month we use just over half of our 50GB of allotted bandwidth. Disk storage is not an issue and is largely consumed by database backups. Allowing unlimited hosting of photos/video would drastically change that picture, which is why external hosting is enforced. With these figures, we remain quite small as forums go, and many major hosting providers do not offer service at this tier with the flexibility we enjoy to configure XWeb as it is now. In short, we receive very good value for our money.
No service is perfect. We'll continue to monitor issues as they come up and drive for resolution.
Finances
Here's what it currently costs on an annual basis.
XWeb 2.0 (this site) $215
Domain registrations $53
XWeb 1.0 (N54 archives) $70
Total: $338
These costs have remained quite stable over the years and no major increases are expected unless we make a significant change. Our vBulletin forum software was purchased up-front so there are no recurring costs. We are on an old version of vBulletin, still widely used but no longer actively supported.
As of now we have $120 dollars in the account to cover expenses, so further fund-raising will be needed over the next 6 months. Donation info is listed in the announcement at the top of the forum.
XWeb has always been non-commercial. I've received a number of requests to have the forum participate in various marketing and advertising schemes, but I have held firm to our original charter to remain free of extraneous content and be supported entirely by the generosity of those who use the site.
Moderators
A heartfelt thank you to those who serve as moderators - keeping things in order and adding value for all.
Future
Where are we headed? There's no urgent reason to change what we have at this point, but that doesn't prevent discussion about things that could change. Migrating off our current forum software platform isn't required right now but will likely become desirable at some point. Whichever direction we take, it will not be a simple task. A great deal of effort was put into XWeb 2 primarily by Mac to customize the appearance and behavior to match the predecessor. A new platform may mean a different look and feel, along with the new features. We continue to maintain the old XWeb 1.0 for the wealth of information still contained there.
Please feel free to respond to this thread with your thoughts, ideas, questions.
Thanks!
