Sensational-Adelaide.com

Dear friends,

Our apologies for all the downtime we've been having recently. You may have noticed various errors on the forums and on the site (e.g. This site is currently unavailable, or we have exceeded our monthly bandwidth, or you have exceeded the maximum number of database connections). Well it's because we've been stuck on a Budget webserver. And when we have a big news day (like this week's announcement of Start of Rundle Lantern, Masonic Lodge approval, CCT8 approval) our server says "that's it i've had it with you, all your visitors" and then crashes. The phenomenal growth of this site has brought it's share of problems... thankfully this can be solved.

Why is a site like Sensational-Adelaide even using a budget webserver you may ask? Well since the site was born, webhosting costs was provided by the webmaster (me). While it was dirt cheap - it's not reliable, and it's hardly quick - because it's basically one server that's farmed out to approximately 700 other websites so we all share the same resource.

So what's the solution? We move to a VPS. Virtual Private Server. This gives us all the flexibility and guaranteed share of resources on the server, but without the cost of actually owning/buying an entire server and maintaining it ourselves. The specs on the server aren't too shabby either (Quad-Core Dual Xeon CPU's,16 GB ECC FB Memory/Ram,SA-SCSI (SAS) HD's in Raid 10, Dual Redundant Power Supplies, Hot-Swap Drives, Fans, and PSU). But all this comes at a cost. And that cost is $580 for a year, or $1160 for two years.

That's where you can help us. We need your help. The expense of this site is too much for one person (myself) to bear alone, and we need anyone who is in a position to help us to do so.

We've reached the $580 milestone, but we're hoping to secure two years of hosting $1160 so we don't have to do this all over again next year. As soon as we can get to the first milestone, we can start notifying our hosting provider of our intention to move and then we can get the ball rolling.

I'll maintain a tally of where we're at here :

Tally!
$1,221.74 Donated as at 23/12/2008 12:14PM

1 Year's hosting is secured as at 07/08/2008 9:52am, we're still aiming to secure two years hosting

If you would like to help us make a donation please either :
- Follow the donation link on the front page of S-A.
- or PM me.

Once you've made a donation could you also pm me to confirm your username so i can put one of these icons under your forum name.

No matter how big or small your donation... anything helps! Please keep this free-site alive.

Many thanks in advance,

Howie

Hiya howie, i tried sending a few dollars, but it wanted me to pay the full $1180 myself so much for eating this month...

I am willing to make a donation, but as a student am not able to give much

What kind of traffic are we talking about per month?

Wayno wrote:Hiya howie, i tried sending a few dollars, but it wanted me to pay the full $1180 myself so much for eating this month...

Sorry about that.. if you try again you'll be able to alter the amount. My bad, i've never done a donation drive through Paypal before.

Anything helps.. whether it's a two bucks or it's two hundred bucks.

Much appreciated everyone!

Norman wrote:I am willing to make a donation, but as a student am not able to give much

What kind of traffic are we talking about per month?

Here's the technical specs.

# 20 GB Raid Disk Space
# 300 GB Monthly Data Transfer
# 512 MB Guaranteed Ram

But what we're guaranteed is some more server time.. as our site keeps crashing it due to the load on the sql side of things. Right now we're limited to 16 simultaneous SQL connections before it drops out... under the new VPS regime we're allowed unlimited number of sql connections. Meaning more people can get on at one time.

I had the lump sum issue as well. I'll get to donating something!

Thanks Shuz! Just letting you know i've just received your donation.


Btw, if anyone from the forums donates, could you please send me a pm to confirm your username? That way when I get make the 'Donating Member' icon on the forum i'll know who's username to put it next to.

Sorry, my friend i could only afford a small contribution.

Got it just a minute ago, thanks joshzxzx! Much appreciated mate.

I feel quite good now that I donated. All to a good cause in keeping this site alive and at the forefront of Adelaide's pro-development agenda!

Are we aiming for the $1160 target Howie?

$580 secures us for 1 year's hosting... $1160 gets us comfortably into 2 years hosting. As soon as we get past the $580 mark we can begin notifying our data centre of our intention to move.

What are the current specs?

I would like to donate by I only have an AMEX card? Howie, what can I do?

sending pm mate

This is a great site, and well worth supporting.