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.
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Impressive numbers Daniel, I had no idea PNWR was seeing that kind of traffic. Keep in mind that many of your friends and dedicated users on PNWR would be willing to help you in any way they can. Myself included. WLQ
Next payday you have a donation coming… Thanks for keeping pnw up buddy