Tell the Time of Traffic
June 1, 2007
I just took a quick glance at the final statistics for the PNW Riders community for last month and once again we are breaking new records in monthly traffic. Not too long ago, one of my previous blog entries touched on the traffic growth that has been happening on the site, and now I can report the next three months in the same manner.
Looking at the recent three months:
- March 2007 – 20.3 Million hits
- April 2007 – 23.9 Million hits
- May 2007 – 24.8 Million hits
This is the first time the PNW Riders community has exceeded the 20 Million hit mark, showing an amazing amount of traffic and site usage.
The other thing that has been happening over the last three months has been server outages, which have been occurring more frequently. In the early days of the forum, when traffic patterns were low, I never dealt much in the server backend. Lately, I have been spending a lot of time there trying to optimize and make changes to the server to accommodate the site and traffic.
Progress is being made, and a few volunteers from the forum have stepped up and helped out with some of the networking optimization matters, making the think tank better in order to find resolve. The last few days have been the worst in terms of server response and up time, yet I think we have a better understanding as the recent changes seem to be working.
I guess time will tell.
The Online Signature of a Hypocrite
May 28, 2007
A signature is something that you leave at the end of something you do, in order to mark it in a unique way. It is a common practice to have a signature on today’s online communities, allowing you to leave that signature with every post you make.
With each online community different in its own unique way, every signature can be different, even if you are using the same name on every forum. There are some voices that feel I am a hypocrite because I do not allow certain organizations in one’s signature, because I have links in my signature on other forums.
Every forum has their own set of rules and policies that they see fit. The difference is what some forums are willing to allow and what others are not.
As an example, I have PNW Riders in my signature on CycleForums. The responsibility falls on the administrators and moderators of that forum to determine if I am doing something that they do not agree with and if that is the case, they would have no problem telling me to remove it. I think this is allowed because PNW Riders is a regional forum and CycleForums is a global forum so the two communities do not interfere with one another.
By that same token, I have been on certain Kawasaki Forums, and they have asked me to remove any mention of other Kawasaki Forums out of my signature. They never mention the PNW Riders in my signature, just the other communities that interfere with the exact same topic of discussion that there community was designed for.
I am on many forums, and my signature varies on every forum. It varies because I respect the similarities of interfering links and because those forum’s moderators have no problem telling me to remove them.
The Next Path
March 11, 2007
Unprecedented traffic on one of my servers is forcing me to rethink my finances, if I expect to maintain a future for a popular motorcycle community.
I have to admit that I have anxiety about the future because of something that I am emotionally attached to. In the late summer of 2004, I created an online community for motorcycle riders in the Pacific Northwest called PNW Riders. My friends from college helped me get things going in the early days, and we were all onboard for why it was started, and we all can honestly say we never had any clue that it would grow this fast.
Of course, there was expected growth, and it did happen continuously in a manner that surprised us. The problem of growth has continued, forcing the community to grow exponentially, and build upon something that has never happened this fast.
Without the obvious foreshadowing, I will talk more about the growth of this community at a later date. There is another problem that keeps rearing its head that I am soon going to have to deal with, and I am unsure of the best approach.
The community has been migrated over the last few years from one server to another, constantly being upgraded. I went to a dedicated server solution last summer, under the full impression that it would hold growth for a minimum of two years. Fast forward less than a year, and you are brought to present time, and it is already time for a new server.
Along with the growth of the community comes some astonishing traffic, which is just amazing by all accounts. Too many concurrent connections are overloading the servers create some interesting logs. As I peruse the log files, sessions are maxing out because of the number of users whom are on the site at one time. Within any given 24 hour time period, the server is averaging over 600 unique registered users (users who have logged on) and over 1500 unique lurkers (visitors who are not logged on). Combining those totals means over 2100 unique people are accessing PNW Riders within 24 hours, with unique counting each person as one time no matter how many visits they had.
Leveraging out those statistics to some overall total bandwidth, PNW Riders has been growing in total monthly traffic for the site every month. A quick look at the current statistics shows the following reported traffic for the last three months:
- December 2006 14.10 Million hits
- January 2007 14.94 Million hits
- February 2007 15.85 Million hits
This morning was spent optimizing the server to accommodate the traffic that is happening at all times during the day. This growth is pushing the boundaries of the server, forcing an upgrade of the server sooner than expected.
The cost of the new server will come out of my own pocket. While I figure out ways to lean on advertising and raise money to help alleviate my cost, I must bring this model to some full circle as it gets frustrating having to continue subsidizing the site.
This is the largest website, in terms of monthly traffic, that I have ever owned and operated. With it comes new involvement as I outpour my time and money into it as a project and a passion. With this growth, I can only look forward to the next server as having it come sooner than expected is both a good and a bad thing.
Two Icebergs
December 21, 2006
Websites cost money. There is no simple way around it. Right now, in my life, I have much more time than money. I don’t think it is a waste of my time to build these forum communities on the Internet. If the communities fail, then perhaps my time was wasted, but the risk of that is fine at my age. I am willing to take more risk right now, only because I have more time than money.
I run a website design and development business. My professional experience in website design gives me an advantage of not having to outsource the work that I do. When I build a website and a forum, I am using my time to build it, to improve it, and to administer it. I am thankful for the volunteers who help me moderate it. I am gracious of the support that we receive from the members of the community.
Even with all this support, some people have called website forums “sinkholes” because of the constant drain of funds. Let’s not mention the amount of wages that are lost when my time is spent working on the forum versus working for a paying client. Let’s not mention the decline in my social life because I have to deal with forum issues, from site drama to site maintenance. You want to make a great site, and you become emotionally attached to it as you invest your time and life into it. We are not even talking about the actual dollars spent out of the pocket. The actual dollars spent out of the pocket are considerable, dependent on your perspective.
The obvious is the purchase of the domain names from the registrar, but don’t forget you have to get other associated domain names to prevent future competition, so a collection of domain names can add up as they are paid on an annual basis.
Obviously you need a computer to store the site, so a huge financial hit comes with the purchase of a server. Expect the server to only be good for two to three years, dependent on how the hardware can handle the increasing capacity and growth of the forum. As the forum grows in these time spans, another server must be purchased or the forum is likely to suffer.
Once you have a server, the operating system is usually free but the backend software is not. Licensing fees are associated with that. You can either lease the backend license on a monthly basis or pay a much bigger lifetime licensing fee. The backend is very important as it allows you to manage a server without having to login as the root user and performing everything via command line syntax.
Then you need to pick a datacenter, one that you can trust and is reliable. The datacenter is where your server sits and is connected to the Internet, bringing with it three cost factors that are paid for on a monthly basis. Your server takes space within the server room, so you are paying for the amount of rack space your server is using, essentially you’re renting the storage space. In that storage space, your server is connected to the backbone of the Internet, so you’re paying for your bandwidth to allow the incoming and outgoing connections to and from the server. For protection of the server, the cost of a server appliance to handle the server’s security also comes with a dedicated server. Security appliances are extremely expensive and is one thing I recommend be leased over time. So once the hardware is setup, there is an initial setup fee to get everything going, and then monthly fees from there on out.
Throwing in a forum community brings with it more costs. Forum software is leased on an annual basis. The high cost comes with the first year, and a moderately low cost continues on at an annual basis. The forum software is used to run the forum. The way they give it to you is primitive looking at best. I will not even get into the cost of giving a forum a unique look and feel, from having graphics work done to coding to programming to specific site wide features and doing everything that needs to be done to make a forum user friendly and high quality.
In addition to all that money spent, you have hidden costs. I had one issue where I was held liable and I had to pay exuberant legal fees to handle the situation. It comes down to paying a lawyer to take care of it or the forum is left closed. You don’t have too much of a decision at that point.
You have the time spent doing everything I just mentioned up above. Time setting up the server, software, updates, administering, handling constant security issues, resolving bugs, customizing, and oooooh the programming. If you are doing the administering, you will feel you have a doctorate degree in PHP and MySQL.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the time and costs involved in a forum. If there were two icebergs, the second iceberg would be the actual running of the site from the front end, from handling forum politics, site issues, disgruntled forum members, catering to the community. You start these things with a focus and you ensure that focus remains, but don’t forget administering can take away from your involvement in a community where you would rather just be a member and not spending so much time in the backend side of things.
I am not complaining. I love what I do. I enjoy it. The reminder of that is when I see others contributing to the forum because a value has been created. The value is within the community. If the focus is kept, a community can be a good thing, but what you give to it and take away from it can be even better.
I think it is safe to say, that I am emotionally attached.
Internet communities
December 12, 2006
Over the last couple years, I’ve started a few online communities aka forums of people who congregate online to communicate and vegetate. They are brought to these places with common threads of interests. A lot of people ask me why do I continue to build more forums, more communities, more places to go on the web.
Brian calls me a “savage” when he hears such stories. I think the term “savage” can only be used to characterize a trait in the third person perspective. From a first person quality point of view, I dont think I am anywhere close to being a “savage.”
However, like a lot of things done in this world, I create these communities somewhat by accident. The bottom line is every thing I have started is simply because I dont like what is being done on the Internet. I identify things that I dont like, and I tell myself why complain when the opportunity falls upon me to do it my way, to do it better than the next guy. I take what I dont like about other places, and I try to make things better. I try to offer up and provide a better quality product, which in this case is a forum. I want a better community centered around that interest. I just want it done better. Who am I to complain, but I am willing to take that next step and start up something of my own.
Fewer the instances are the fact that sometimes I cannot find any said community about a common interest. Niche markets, specific interests, subject focus all lead to starting up a community. If I cant find it, then there must be others out there wanting to know more about what I am searching for.
So between doing things better or just doing them in the first place, is why I start these communities up. Next time, I’ll talk about what one can interpret success from an online community.
