Well it was a good break over Christmas and new year I got to properly relax and for the first year ever without any sort of incident, it is the time of year I look forward too not because I am an elf or anything but because it is the only time of the year I get to semi switch off, being a small company owner and operator you never really switch off it occupies your mind during every waking hour so to be able to just go to critical support only is a real chance to relax, there are no 20 days annual leave or term holidays like the day jobbers and students get
I deliberately did not keep much of an eye on this post after posting it/after Christmas day so I will go through now and read responses and answer any questions and or respond to any posts.
@benj0x said: But I wouldn't support your point, which states that you need to "retire" your position as administrator, to avoid this place to develop to a new LET - however I'm open for new things.
Yes perhaps a better way to put it would be that I don't feel I am the best person to lead or direct the community, sounds a bit authoritarian but not intended too, I will likely keep a hand in administering things from the back as a fail-safe.
@terrorgen said:
May I suggest incorporating LES into a non-profit organization (the UK equivalent of the US 501(c)3) so that taxes are not deducted for the operation of the forum?
May be possible, I did discuss it with my accountant and due costs involved in doing that and the accounting fees at the current level that actually makes things worse but at some point, if it is necessary it will be done (whatever official organisation fits best e.g. CIC/None profit etc etc yes.
@Mason said: I'd ask you to reconsider the possibility of bringing on some volunteer mods. Low end world is purely a hobby to a lot of us (myself included) and many people would be stoked to aide the community in whatever capacity their time/expertise/sanity allows. Just look at FAT32 -- dude has a heart of gold and is literally the only thing keeping LET from collapsing in on itself because he enjoys doing it.
Well, I might consider it but it under the right circumstances, I have to be honest, it really does not sit well with me, it makes me feel I am taking advantage of people and I really hate feeling like that, maybe it is just something I need to get over when @FAT32 indeed has a heart of gold, he has helped me with some other bits and pieces none forum-related maybe when he realises Jon is laughing his way to the bank at his expense I will reconsider my own position here
Might start a separate topic about mods etc as it could be a lengthy discussion potentially.
@seriesn said: About that LEB post, man, when LEA or even Joel ran LEB, the traffic you would get by getting featured was unbelievable. Not to mention, getting DDOS every time someone used to get posted on LEB. Getting featured was LEB as a host meant, you are on your way to become "someone". Gone are the days.
Yep, I don't think those days can ever come back, to be honest, I think those days could have been kept forever but CC (Jon) destroyed them and now it's $1 / year and must be in LA or gtfo
@FAT32 said: But I am also kinda tired with some of the shit, I might possibly quit the hosting community in general but haven't decided yet.
You might be surprised (really) how much you feel better about things when you simply stop visiting LET/B, I mean if you stand it shit every day without fail, sooner or later you are going to associate walking with a bad time, sometimes you just need to take a different path and stop walking in the shit.
As one of my favourite comedians said (paraphrasing):
It haunts me how much of a dick I was about it simply because I did not know what I did not know, good lesson though.
@lentro said: Did this seriously happen? This shit is fucked up, jbiloh should be in jail. Sketchy asshole.
110% it happened which is why I and others that know about it don't buy the "uncle Jon" persona going on atm.
@Radi said: I had a read at the entire OP, but as others have said - I really do not support your decision of leaving/retiring. After all, in my opinion a community just looses its "vibe" when the guy who literally started it leaves. It would be a sad day for LES.
I did not mean to make it sound as if I was just going to vanish, I just honestly feel other people would genuinely be better at taking it to the next level, think of it like a bar tender that would rather drink with the customers so puts someone else behind the bar because he was always slow as shit at making drinks anyway
@souen said: EDIS had a number of relatively less common locations to try out.
I reached out to EDIS a while ago to see if they were interested in having representation here, they did not even respond haha, I guess the LE* world is not one they want to be involved in any more.
@souen said: The current "way too green" light theme looks good and I would like to see it remain an option, although I understand if it won't be available given the extra work to maintain another theme as new forum features are rolled out.
vanilla does not change THAT significantly THAT often so maintaining a few would not be a big problem as well as maintaining the current one.
@souen said: Is there any interest in n-year terms for admins elected by community members, with a number of people taking turns to run the ship?
Yes absolutely, I think it is important just as it is with politics.
Now, I think it is time to whip out MS Project and start building a plan.
@AnthonySmith said: I reached out to EDIS a while ago to see if they were interested in having representation here, they did not even respond haha, I guess the LE* world is not one they want to be involved in any more.
Yeah, my impression was there had been a major change in leadership direction around the time william left. Raspberry Pi colo got the axe sometime after.
@AnthonySmith said: vanilla does not change THAT significantly THAT often so maintaining a few would not be a big problem as well as maintaining the current one.
@AnthonySmith said: I found that coloncrossing under the leadership of Jon had been dishing out old abandoned accounts with post history with updated usernames and email addresses to hosts that had servers with coloncrossing to make them look more legitimate to potential buyers.
Wtf this is fucked up. damn did they still do this until now?
And also does anyone use Grammarly?
Grammarly seems to broke the text form in dark mode ( normal/light mode is fine), any ideas to fix it? I don't want to disabled Grammarly
Thanks for this informative post and thread, Ant and everyone. Can I ask why this site's hosting costs $70/month? It's a small to medium web forum, right? I would have hoped it would fit in the low end vision, if not in one of the old tiny NAT vps, then in the proverbial $7/month. Is it the software being slow? DDOS protection? CDN being really important for an international site? Wonder whether a few small VPS replicating the board could do it. This is also something I've thought of using Cloudflare Workers for.
I've been looking at the codebase for Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com). It's tiny compared with something like Vanilla, yet it handles a heck of a lot of traffic, way more than a board like this does. I don't know what kind of hw they host it on though. I'm sure it is expensive since the YC world likes to use AWS for everything, but we here know better .
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural. It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
You can host such forum on a 1-2GB KVM for 15€/y + get a backup server for like 10€/y profit.
For the Billing just get a VPS with license included likely cheaper.
@Neoon said:
You can host such forum on a 1-2GB KVM for 15€/y + get a backup server for like 10€/y profit.
For the Billing just get a VPS with license included likely cheaper.
So you end up with 10€ per month.
questions/observations:
Show me a good quality 2GB VPS for €15/ year
Show me a backup server that is €10 /year that also includes hourly snapshots and individual file management/restores as well as full webstack+site migration/restore.
Show me a VPS that comes with a FREE WHMCS license.
You forget the staging server
I know how you feel about cloudflare, it is what it is I do plan to remove that cost though.
I know you 'can' do it the way you are saying but you get significantly less resilience and quality while significantly increasing the potential for data loss and increasing management time.
You can get to work on a push bike, even if it is 20 miles away, just because it is cheaper does not make it a better solution, I dont want to spend just as much time getting to and from work as I do at work, especially when it is not even my real job
@Neoon said:
You can host such forum on a 1-2GB KVM for 15€/y + get a backup server for like 10€/y profit.
For the Billing just get a VPS with license included likely cheaper.
So you end up with 10€ per month.
questions/observations:
Show me a good quality 2GB VPS for €15/ year
BF has delivered 9€/y 1GB KVM's which can easy run a LEMP stack.
2GB ones dropped from around 15€/y.
Show me a backup server that is €10 /year that also includes hourly snapshots and individual file management/restores as well as full webstack+site migration/restore.
You throw money at your laziness, a backup vps for that price with rsync does that job.
Can easily do hourly database snapshots, incremental backups etc.
Just pull the backups, instead of pushing them, afterwards you can still push the files to another storage for archive or whatsoever. Maybe a version control system would be interesting for you?
Show me a VPS that comes with a FREE WHMCS license.
I said billing not WHCMS, Blesta is included on a BuyVM VPS.
Do you really need WHCMS for that?
You forget the staging server
Local? I do lots of testing Local, before I update my stuff, its just a ADDON but not lowend.
I know how you feel about cloudflare, it is what it is I do plan to remove that cost though.
I know you 'can' do it the way you are saying but you get significantly less resilience and quality while significantly increasing the potential for data loss and increasing management time.
You can get to work on a push bike, even if it is 20 miles away, just because it is cheaper does not make it a better solution, I dont want to spend just as much time getting to and from work as I do at work, especially when it is not even my real job
Another money drain, not really needed, LES is not that popular yet.
@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.
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
@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).
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Well it was a good break over Christmas and new year I got to properly relax and for the first year ever without any sort of incident, it is the time of year I look forward too not because I am an elf or anything but because it is the only time of the year I get to semi switch off, being a small company owner and operator you never really switch off it occupies your mind during every waking hour so to be able to just go to critical support only is a real chance to relax, there are no 20 days annual leave or term holidays like the day jobbers and students get
I deliberately did not keep much of an eye on this post after posting it/after Christmas day so I will go through now and read responses and answer any questions and or respond to any posts.
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Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Yes perhaps a better way to put it would be that I don't feel I am the best person to lead or direct the community, sounds a bit authoritarian but not intended too, I will likely keep a hand in administering things from the back as a fail-safe.
Sure I can do that.
May be possible, I did discuss it with my accountant and due costs involved in doing that and the accounting fees at the current level that actually makes things worse
but at some point, if it is necessary it will be done (whatever official organisation fits best e.g. CIC/None profit etc etc yes.
Well, I might consider it but it under the right circumstances, I have to be honest, it really does not sit well with me, it makes me feel I am taking advantage of people and I really hate feeling like that, maybe it is just something I need to get over when @FAT32 indeed has a heart of gold, he has helped me with some other bits and pieces none forum-related maybe when he realises Jon is laughing his way to the bank at his expense I will reconsider my own position here
Might start a separate topic about mods etc as it could be a lengthy discussion potentially.
Yep, I don't think those days can ever come back, to be honest, I think those days could have been kept forever but CC (Jon) destroyed them and now it's $1 / year and must be in LA or gtfo
You might be surprised (really) how much you feel better about things when you simply stop visiting LET/B, I mean if you stand it shit every day without fail, sooner or later you are going to associate walking with a bad time, sometimes you just need to take a different path and stop walking in the shit.
As one of my favourite comedians said (paraphrasing):
It haunts me how much of a dick I was about it simply because I did not know what I did not know, good lesson though.
110% it happened which is why I and others that know about it don't buy the "uncle Jon" persona going on atm.
I did not mean to make it sound as if I was just going to vanish, I just honestly feel other people would genuinely be better at taking it to the next level, think of it like a bar tender that would rather drink with the customers so puts someone else behind the bar because he was always slow as shit at making drinks anyway
Starting my reading on this today.
I reached out to EDIS a while ago to see if they were interested in having representation here, they did not even respond haha, I guess the LE* world is not one they want to be involved in any more.
vanilla does not change THAT significantly THAT often so maintaining a few would not be a big problem as well as maintaining the current one.
Yes absolutely, I think it is important just as it is with politics.
Now, I think it is time to whip out MS Project and start building a plan.
Happy New Year everyone!
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Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
Yeah, my impression was there had been a major change in leadership direction around the time william left. Raspberry Pi colo got the axe sometime after.
Great, thanks.
Wtf this is fucked up. damn did they still do this until now?
And also does anyone use Grammarly?
Grammarly seems to broke the text form in dark mode ( normal/light mode is fine), any ideas to fix it? I don't want to disabled Grammarly
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Thanks for this informative post and thread, Ant and everyone. Can I ask why this site's hosting costs $70/month? It's a small to medium web forum, right? I would have hoped it would fit in the low end vision, if not in one of the old tiny NAT vps, then in the proverbial $7/month. Is it the software being slow? DDOS protection? CDN being really important for an international site? Wonder whether a few small VPS replicating the board could do it. This is also something I've thought of using Cloudflare Workers for.
I've been looking at the codebase for Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com). It's tiny compared with something like Vanilla, yet it handles a heck of a lot of traffic, way more than a board like this does. I don't know what kind of hw they host it on though. I'm sure it is expensive since the YC world likes to use AWS for everything, but we here know better
.
You can ask
Runcloud Pro
Runcloud backups Paid
Cloudflare (paid)
Proportional VPS cost
WHMCS license for the advertising system.
Staging VPS with another host
Might actually be closer to $80
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
^ Yikes! Not lowend then.
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
You can host such forum on a 1-2GB KVM for 15€/y + get a backup server for like 10€/y profit.
For the Billing just get a VPS with license included likely cheaper.
So you end up with 10€ per month.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
questions/observations:
I know you 'can' do it the way you are saying but you get significantly less resilience and quality while significantly increasing the potential for data loss and increasing management time.
You can get to work on a push bike, even if it is 20 miles away, just because it is cheaper does not make it a better solution, I dont want to spend just as much time getting to and from work as I do at work, especially when it is not even my real job
https://inceptionhosting.com
Please do not use the PM system here for Inception Hosting support issues.
BF has delivered 9€/y 1GB KVM's which can easy run a LEMP stack.
2GB ones dropped from around 15€/y.
You throw money at your laziness, a backup vps for that price with rsync does that job.
Can easily do hourly database snapshots, incremental backups etc.
Just pull the backups, instead of pushing them, afterwards you can still push the files to another storage for archive or whatsoever. Maybe a version control system would be interesting for you?
I said billing not WHCMS, Blesta is included on a BuyVM VPS.
Do you really need WHCMS for that?
Local? I do lots of testing Local, before I update my stuff, its just a ADDON but not lowend.
Another money drain, not really needed, LES is not that popular yet.
Free NAT KVM | Free NAT LXC
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.
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@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
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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
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@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.
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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.
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Nice.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?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.
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@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.
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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).
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