Donations

As of yesterday I implemented a CDN (content distribution network).

That's explained here: http://www.londonfgss.com/thread4490-11.html#post578977

Basically the site has got insanely busy, and now the fair weather is here it can only get busier.

For part of the day (from around 10am through to midnight) we're facing a need to get a second server to offload the database stuff onto, or to load balance this one... either option isn't cheap, both require a second server.

So instead of that I'm attempting to reduce the load on the one server we have by offloading all of the static files to a third party. I'd rather have this one server concentrate on making the pages and making things zippy for you guys.

However, this all costs.

The cost of the CDN is either:

Option 1

$4.99 per GB per month storage
$0.089 per GB per month transferred
$0.01 per 10,000 requests

Option 2

$249 per GB storage, forever
$0.039 per GB per month transferred

The first option looks better from the perspective of low cost start... but the numbers come out like this:

Storage: 968MB
Transferred (last 24 hours): 8GB
Requests per hour: 50,000 (1.2m per day)

So each month each option costs this:

Option 1

Storage: $4.99
Transfer: (8 * 30.41) * $0.089 = $21.65
Requests: ((5 * $0.01) * 24) * 30.41 = $36.49

Total = $63.13 per month

Option 2

Storage one-off: $249
Transfer: (8 * 30.41) * $0.039 = $9.49
Requests: FREE!

Total = $9.49 per month

You can see which one I want to be using. Less than $10 a month to offload a significant chunk of the traffic to the server is just a no-brainer.

The only problem with this is that there is a one-off fee of $249 per GB of storage.

The $249 would have paid for itself within 5 months, being cheaper than Option 1 and much cheaper than the continuing cost of a second server (the lowest realistic option there is around £80 per month).

Why this is a problem when it's obviously the right thing to do, is that I don't happen to have $249 lying around.

It's basically £180 at the current exchange rate, and whilst there is some money left in PayPal if I use that then I only have enough money left in PayPal for next month's server fees.

So yeah... we're broke. Isn't everyone and everything? Well, yes.

So what I'm asking is that IF you can help to the tune of £5 or £10 that you do. And if you can only help to the tune of £2, that you do. And if you're loaded and think nothing of dropping a £1k, then we don't need that much so just £180 would be lovely thank you.

The donate button is in the top right hand corner :)

Oh, and it's our 2nd birthday next week. And honestly, I can't think of a better dilemma to have than to be worrying about how to handle the growth of the site. Happy Birthday to us.