@Neoon said: Local? I do lots of testing Local, before I update my stuff, its just a ADDON but not lowend.
Great, I am not doing the work on the staging server though It is someone else not local.
@Neoon said: Another money drain, not really needed, LES is not that popular yet.
Needed, no, convenient? yes.
I don't want the bottom of the bottom barrel servers, they almost always come with issues that result in time being sucked away. You seem to have all the time in the world to work on things, I really don't, this is not even 10% of my day, I pay extra because I just need something I can do what I do on without having to worry about managing the 101 things that go with it.
Yes, I accept it absolutely could be done cheaper, yes I accept that the same things could be achieved if more effort was put in, the lack of effort is due to a lack of time so the additional money is the consequence, it is not laziness it is knowing how to best spend my time for optimal results across the board for everything I do.
@Radi said:
If it works, pays for itself and you are happy with it - keep it as is.
If it works for him and it pays itself, then keep it.
My point was just its possible to do it cheaper.
rsync is configured within minutes and no these are not servers where you end up with issues.
Yes if you buy 10-15 on BF you have 1-2 that are shit, but the other ones make up for it the hole year.
Just don't buy shit on BF, simple inform you about the provder, read reviews etc.
@seriesn said:
You guys forget the fact, sometimes spending a bit in exchange for not dealing with the headache is what makes it all worth the effort.
IDK about ant but I would rather spend $5/month instead of working 1 hour everyday to save that $5
If a DEAL not a "DEAL" is really limited and not "LIMITED with 3 million in stock" and from a solid host, that has been around for years.
The PRICE does not matter, trust me, because its limited.
Its all valid feedback though, the last thing I wanted to do was to end up hosting LES on an expensive infrastructure because.. well that defeats the point of the place to some degree.
I have thrown this place up in quick time with not honestly not much consideration, its only on a 2GB VPS at the end of the day which is more than it needs but even if the place gets 10x the traffic, it will still cope fine.
I do plan to drop it off runcloud, cloudflare, sort out my own backups, and have it on a VPS that costs < $5 /month or equivalent which will also leave financial room for a CDN.
The truth is I just have not had the time to dedicate to that, hopefully, that will change this year.
This place deserves to run on a <$7 p/month server, technically it does but the irony of the rest then pushing that up 10x is not lost on me.
@saibal said: @Ant You must have mentioned this before, but I can't seem to recollect now - why did LES need to be on the paid CF plan?
It just sped things up and seemed to optimise routing for people generally, there was a thread whereby I gave notice then turned it on, people certainly felt the difference, except for Neoon, cloudflare deliberately slow things down for him
Runcloud Pro
Runcloud backups Paid
Cloudflare (paid)
Proportional VPS cost
WHMCS license for the advertising system.
Staging VPS with another host
Thanks! Can you tell me the approximate breakdown of this? Particularly Cloudflare. I wouldn't want to pay anything for software (but that's just me) and staging can be done on a fairly crappy VPS unless you want to do load testing, in which case spin up an hourly server for just long enough. I agree that backups can be done with rsync on a cron script, plus you probably should use replicated mysql and save the binlogs. Blesta seems like an ok alternative to WHMCS(?) and I've worked on many sites that worked ok with roll-their-own billing (or use some drupal module or whatever). What is runcloud, if you don't mind my asking?
@seriesn said: You guys forget the fact, sometimes spending a bit in exchange for not dealing with the headache is what makes it all worth the effort.
Sure, but I thought the low end spirit was "doing more with less", i.e. making that tradeoff in the other direction, putting in some effort to avoid the spend. The payoff is of course much bigger at larger scale. On the other hand, of course I realize LES is a more serious service now, less of a hobby project and ok to throw $$ if that makes it easier to keep running. I don't think I'd make any attempt to run something like LES on $20 a year, but $84/year ($7/m) seemed like a reasonable and attainable goal. Or let's say, $7/m for the public-facing server and another $7/m for additional stuff like backups. What I always used to tell myself was "omg, you can run a slashdot-sized site" (around 250k view/day at the time, I think) on a $7/m server". But I don't know if that is really true.
Added: two reasons I'm asking about this: 1) get a sense of what it takes to run a real-world low-endish but not truly low end site (truly low end = $3/year NAT or shared plan); 2) get a sense of whether Vanilla is a resource hog, since I've been interested for a while in how forum systems work.
I finally found the time to read the OP. What a journey!
@AnthonySmith said: I did read a comment by someone on that final rant post of mine that lead to me finally walking away from LET which said something along the lines of "You know, the reason we don't have a separate community is not due to a technical limitation" that hit me like a ton of bricks, they were absolutely right! ... queue the game of thrones intro music.
@imok said:
I finally found the time to read the OP. What a journey!
@AnthonySmith said: I did read a comment by someone on that final rant post of mine that lead to me finally walking away from LET which said something along the lines of "You know, the reason we don't have a separate community is not due to a technical limitation" that hit me like a ton of bricks, they were absolutely right! ... queue the game of thrones intro music.
@AnthonySmith i got some question, but its not related to this topic i think.
What platform did you use to track your advertisement impression & click?
And also how do you manage to make the ads not getting blocked by ublock origin?
@willie said: Thanks! Can you tell me the approximate breakdown of this?
Yep, will do that after breakfast, I have been up 2 hours already and not managed to eat yet
@DianTama said: What platform did you use to track your advertisement impression & click?
And also how do you manage to make the ads not getting blocked by ublock origin?
Trade secrets I am afraid but seriously, its not a platform, it is something I came up with myself then had it improved upon by a hired dev and it is VERY basic but a work in progress.
adblock/ublock etc will not block images from your own domain, simply not using a 3rd party platform and having the images on the same domain prevents blocking.
@willie said: Thanks! Can you tell me the approximate breakdown of this?
December:
Cloudflare: $41.20
WHMCS: $19.14
Runcloud: $15
Runcloud Backups: $10 (approx as a variable)
Staging server: $2.50
VPS: I host it but it would be €5
So technically, LES is hosted on a <$7 server it is everything surrounding it that costs the extra and truthfully, they are not all necessary, just convenient and I will drop them off over time, what it did allow was a fairly rapid launch with safety nets and good performance within a day.
I chose WHMCS after testing a number of options, I had a thread about it and tested all suggestions, ultimately I know WHMCS and it also allows me to integrate future plans which will be a free hosting platform for LES users.
Thanks! $41.20 of cloudflare = somewhere in the area of 2TB a month? Between 1 and 4 anyway. That's a considerable amount of traffic I guess. BunnyCDN will be mostly .01/GB but some regions will cost more. BuyVM anycast might have been an interesting alternative though who knows what it would take to get that working with Vanilla. I'll keep thinking about the hacker news code.
This post feels like vindication. Several years ago, I called out this same questionable behaviour and I was met with a former admin, mpkossen, telling me off.
@Emmet said: This post feels like vindication. Several years ago, I called out this same questionable behaviour and I was met with a former admin, mpkossen, telling me off.
Maarten was actually a good guy, he was dealing with LES and LEB at its peak though and put is heart and soul into the place so may have got a bit touchy at times when ultimately the shit was not caused by him but he took the shit for it.
@Emmet said: This post feels like vindication. Several years ago, I called out this same questionable behaviour and I was met with a former admin, mpkossen, telling me off.
Maarten was actually a good guy, he was dealing with LES and LEB at its peak though and put is heart and soul into the place so may have got a bit touchy at times when ultimately the shit was not caused by him but he took the shit for it.
@mpkossen is a loyal person, meaning he was loyal to the hand that fed him.
Not saying he liked or approved with what he had to deal with from the ”top guy”.
He did a great job keeping that place rather sane.
@Emmet said: This post feels like vindication. Several years ago, I called out this same questionable behaviour and I was met with a former admin, mpkossen, telling me off.
Maarten was actually a good guy, he was dealing with LES and LEB at its peak though and put is heart and soul into the place so may have got a bit touchy at times when ultimately the shit was not caused by him but he took the shit for it.
@mpkossen is a loyal person, meaning he was loyal to the hand that fed him.
Not saying he liked or approved with what he had to deal with from the ”top guy”.
He did a great job keeping that place rather sane.
I certainly don't resent him for it, especially years down the road, but at the end of the day, I'm glad alternatives to the CC-dominant LET popped up.
@AnthonySmith said:
I chose WHMCS after testing a number of options, I had a thread about it and tested all suggestions, ultimately I know WHMCS and it also allows me to integrate future plans which will be a free hosting platform for LES users.
Well, you could provide a big KVM for microLXC, I would make this location LES exclusive.
Plus add a LES quota, on top of the existing quota, so people can deploy additional containers with the spec's they want depending on what you hand out.
@AnthonySmith said:
I chose WHMCS after testing a number of options, I had a thread about it and tested all suggestions, ultimately I know WHMCS and it also allows me to integrate future plans which will be a free hosting platform for LES users.
Well, you could provide a big KVM for microLXC, I would make this location LES exclusive.
Plus add a LES quota, on top of the existing quota, so people can deploy additional containers with the spec's they want depending on what you hand out.
Yes, that’s an option thanks, does negate needing a billing and automation solution for LES though.
Catching up here; it seems to me that all these wonderful ideas to lower operating costs of LES would be great topics for a paid admin or paid dev (i.e., someone with more availability than Ant) to investigate. Any takers?
@AnthonySmith I know I'm late to the party, but this post was still on my to-do list and I'm glad I did. Great write-up, Mr. SmitHost
A nice trip down memory lane, from 'post to keep your hosting' offers to the whole ColonCleansing debacle. I still remember most of it. And yes, please swap out Google Analytics for Matomo (a.k.a. Piwik).
Comments
2GB ones dropped from around 15€/y.
Its January.
Brilliant.
Yes.
Great, I am not doing the work on the staging server though It is someone else not local.
Needed, no, convenient? yes.
I don't want the bottom of the bottom barrel servers, they almost always come with issues that result in time being sucked away. You seem to have all the time in the world to work on things, I really don't, this is not even 10% of my day, I pay extra because I just need something I can do what I do on without having to worry about managing the 101 things that go with it.
Yes, I accept it absolutely could be done cheaper, yes I accept that the same things could be achieved if more effort was put in, the lack of effort is due to a lack of time so the additional money is the consequence, it is not laziness it is knowing how to best spend my time for optimal results across the board for everything I do.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
If it works, pays for itself and you are happy with it - keep it as is.
Get some hosting at https://drserver.net .
If it works for him and it pays itself, then keep it.
My point was just its possible to do it cheaper.
rsync is configured within minutes and no these are not servers where you end up with issues.
Yes if you buy 10-15 on BF you have 1-2 that are shit, but the other ones make up for it the hole year.
Just don't buy shit on BF, simple inform you about the provder, read reviews etc.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
You guys forget the fact, sometimes spending a bit in exchange for not dealing with the headache is what makes it all worth the effort.
IDK about ant but I would rather spend $5/month instead of working 1 hour everyday to save that $5
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If a DEAL not a "DEAL" is really limited and not "LIMITED with 3 million in stock" and from a solid host, that has been around for years.
The PRICE does not matter, trust me, because its limited.
If you buy a Racknerd, that's on you.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
Its all valid feedback though, the last thing I wanted to do was to end up hosting LES on an expensive infrastructure because.. well that defeats the point of the place to some degree.
I have thrown this place up in quick time with not honestly not much consideration, its only on a 2GB VPS at the end of the day which is more than it needs but even if the place gets 10x the traffic, it will still cope fine.
I do plan to drop it off runcloud, cloudflare, sort out my own backups, and have it on a VPS that costs < $5 /month or equivalent which will also leave financial room for a CDN.
The truth is I just have not had the time to dedicate to that, hopefully, that will change this year.
This place deserves to run on a <$7 p/month server, technically it does but the irony of the rest then pushing that up 10x is not lost on me.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
@AnthonySmith You should also start offering content service
PS: You bring some very old memories
@Ant You must have mentioned this before, but I can't seem to recollect now - why did LES need to be on the paid CF plan?
It just sped things up and seemed to optimise routing for people generally, there was a thread whereby I gave notice then turned it on, people certainly felt the difference, except for Neoon, cloudflare deliberately slow things down for him
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Thanks! Can you tell me the approximate breakdown of this? Particularly Cloudflare. I wouldn't want to pay anything for software (but that's just me) and staging can be done on a fairly crappy VPS unless you want to do load testing, in which case spin up an hourly server for just long enough. I agree that backups can be done with rsync on a cron script, plus you probably should use replicated mysql and save the binlogs. Blesta seems like an ok alternative to WHMCS(?) and I've worked on many sites that worked ok with roll-their-own billing (or use some drupal module or whatever). What is runcloud, if you don't mind my asking?
Sure, but I thought the low end spirit was "doing more with less", i.e. making that tradeoff in the other direction, putting in some effort to avoid the spend. The payoff is of course much bigger at larger scale. On the other hand, of course I realize LES is a more serious service now, less of a hobby project and ok to throw $$ if that makes it easier to keep running. I don't think I'd make any attempt to run something like LES on $20 a year, but $84/year ($7/m) seemed like a reasonable and attainable goal. Or let's say, $7/m for the public-facing server and another $7/m for additional stuff like backups. What I always used to tell myself was "omg, you can run a slashdot-sized site" (around 250k view/day at the time, I think) on a $7/m server". But I don't know if that is really true.
Added: two reasons I'm asking about this: 1) get a sense of what it takes to run a real-world low-endish but not truly low end site (truly low end = $3/year NAT or shared plan); 2) get a sense of whether Vanilla is a resource hog, since I've been interested for a while in how forum systems work.
I finally found the time to read the OP. What a journey!
Was that me?
Anyway, I'm glad to be part of the lowendstory!
I honestly don’t remember who, I won’t click on LET links if possible so if it was, yes and thanks for the mental push
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
@AnthonySmith i got some question, but its not related to this topic i think.
What platform did you use to track your advertisement impression & click?
And also how do you manage to make the ads not getting blocked by ublock origin?
Freelance Web Developer & Web Designer - Available for hire!
Yep, will do that after breakfast, I have been up 2 hours already and not managed to eat yet
Trade secrets I am afraid
but seriously, its not a platform, it is something I came up with myself then had it improved upon by a hired dev and it is VERY basic but a work in progress.
adblock/ublock etc will not block images from your own domain, simply not using a 3rd party platform and having the images on the same domain prevents blocking.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
December:
Cloudflare: $41.20
WHMCS: $19.14
Runcloud: $15
Runcloud Backups: $10 (approx as a variable)
Staging server: $2.50
VPS: I host it but it would be €5
So technically, LES is hosted on a <$7 server it is everything surrounding it that costs the extra and truthfully, they are not all necessary, just convenient and I will drop them off over time, what it did allow was a fairly rapid launch with safety nets and good performance within a day.
What is runcloud: https://lowendspirit.com/the-nuts-and-bolts
I chose WHMCS after testing a number of options, I had a thread about it and tested all suggestions, ultimately I know WHMCS and it also allows me to integrate future plans which will be a free hosting platform for LES users.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Nice.
Thanks! $41.20 of cloudflare = somewhere in the area of 2TB a month? Between 1 and 4 anyway. That's a considerable amount of traffic I guess. BunnyCDN will be mostly .01/GB but some regions will cost more. BuyVM anycast might have been an interesting alternative though who knows what it would take to get that working with Vanilla. I'll keep thinking about the hacker news code.
This post feels like vindication. Several years ago, I called out this same questionable behaviour and I was met with a former admin, mpkossen, telling me off.
Maarten was actually a good guy, he was dealing with LES and LEB at its peak though and put is heart and soul into the place so may have got a bit touchy at times when ultimately the shit was not caused by him but he took the shit for it.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
@mpkossen is a loyal person, meaning he was loyal to the hand that fed him.
Not saying he liked or approved with what he had to deal with from the ”top guy”.
He did a great job keeping that place rather sane.
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
I certainly don't resent him for it, especially years down the road, but at the end of the day, I'm glad alternatives to the CC-dominant LET popped up.
Well, you could provide a big KVM for microLXC, I would make this location LES exclusive.
Plus add a LES quota, on top of the existing quota, so people can deploy additional containers with the spec's they want depending on what you hand out.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
Yes, that’s an option thanks, does negate needing a billing and automation solution for LES though.
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Catching up here; it seems to me that all these wonderful ideas to lower operating costs of LES would be great topics for a paid admin or paid dev (i.e., someone with more availability than Ant) to investigate. Any takers?
@AnthonySmith I know I'm late to the party, but this post was still on my to-do list and I'm glad I did. Great write-up, Mr. SmitHost
A nice trip down memory lane, from 'post to keep your hosting' offers to the whole ColonCleansing debacle. I still remember most of it. And yes, please swap out Google Analytics for Matomo (a.k.a. Piwik).