Range Rovers net

Bugger..and more words I can't post...
I was recently involved as a moderator in a forum that was, not sold as such, but taken over by "others".
It was an excellent forum, very helpful for people with technical issues regarding their tv viewing pleasures etc.
It totally ****es me off how these types of forums get 'sold out'. (Or overruled in my case)
It completely diminished the whole point of the forum.
People develop a relationship with forums, a 'comfy space', if you will, and these corporate websites come in and throw money around....and it's all gone.....pay for it if ya wanna know it!
Disgusting.
Sigh [emoji849]

I had a phone call from John Brabyn a few minutes ago.

He's also disappointed that all the information pages have gone.

I have emailed the forum owners to ask about the RR information.
Haven't had a reply yet.
Terry

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 16PMark

People develop a relationship with forums, a 'comfy space', if you will, and these corporate websites come in and throw money around....and it's all gone.....pay for it if ya wanna know it!
Disgusting.
Sigh [emoji849]

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sadly the independents are hitting the wall more and more with no end in sight while the big social media players continue on unabated, diluting the knowledge base.

only way to keep independents alive is to subscribe to them if you can...

revenue from ads etc for small players continues to decline 10-15+% per year while the big players hoover 80+% of all the ad revenue and channel nothing back in...

hosting costs for larger independents increased about 30% this year on average..

I believe the figures above but I must say that I do not see those costs myself. I have been fortunate enough to live in europe and close to one of the first and biggest internet exchanges which probably helps, but...

I have run my own servers (colocation mostly, leasing them since a few years) for decades and although it has not been cheap most of the time, I can't see how a forum like rangerovers, or aulro for that matter, would cost a fortune to run. Please do not take this as any negative comment whatsoever I am just curious. I run a forum aimed at ham radio enthusiasts in my country that costs me next to nothing. The forum has 5.6K users and 20K topics and is hardly noticeable in the traffic stats and uses little to no resources otherwise. A vps with a bunch of traffic, a perfectly suitable cpu and mem and decent storage costs no more than a few beers a month, at least down here.

Why is it then that sites like rangerovers.net needs to get sold? Am I missing something or is hosting in .au that much more expensive.

Cheers,
-P

lots of factors lead to the costs of hosting a decent sized interactive site

how many users online at any one time ?

you use google analytics ?

how many does it say is on at once ?

things generally start to really bite $ wise when your consistently having 1000+ users online at once and again it depends on how actively people are posting or searching the site, just reading doesn't take much. people searching your database is what uses the hp and i/o here. the general post rate here on AULRO.com was three times that of the largest UK based Land Rover board last time i looked.

also depending on the time of year etc etc this place has 1500+ active users on at once

how big is the database your tossing around?

lots of little things addup.

good hosting in expensive in AU compared to europe etc

software licences for addons that add functionality or help optimise seo and i/o loads etc etc etc

this site runs on 2 large VPS instances running Debian linux, one for the web and the other for the database server

look up how much litespeed costs for 1000+ users if you want a fright...

I can't find where it says how many users are online at a time but seeing as there are only 13k registered HAM radio operators in my country the theoretical limit of users is reasonably low. Also, it is in native language and not english so it does not attract users from all over the world.

I grabbed some statistics:

Messages: 214514
Subjects: 18048
Users: 5679
Attachments: 14861

I guess we are not close to your figures :) I do not like google one bit so definitely no google analytics. The database total size is something like 10GB. It runs phpbb and we have no plugins that cost any money afaik.

Nice to do a comparo though!

Cheers,
-P

edit: I found it: max number of users online was 637

Hi

The files can still be accessed at the internet archive "wayback machine"

Wayback Machine

I looked at Feb this year and the files were there !

Steve

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheTree

Hi

The files can still be accessed at the internet archive "wayback machine"

Wayback Machine

I looked at Feb this year and the files were there !

Steve

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Thanks Steve, but I don't understand how to access them, can you elaborate?
Terry

No reply to my email so far...
Terry