Author Topic: New Server Migration Information & Club Member P&R Status  (Read 3658 times)

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Online running-man

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New Server Migration Information & Club Member P&R Status
« on: January 13, 2015, 07:08:34 PM »
As you may have noticed, SKS-Files has expanded rapidly over the past 3 months.  We initially started the boards up on a very affordable, low-cost, hosting platform to 'work out the bugs' of starting up a brand new site.  The admin (mainly LC) paid for three years of hosting on these servers in the hope that we could utilize them the entire three years as we grew and learned the ropes.  Fast forward to today and it's painfully apparent that the hosting company whose servers SKS-Files were on was simply not very responsive to our needs.  The site became exceptionally slow and unresponsive and the 'fixes' to the problems were more problematic that the problems themselves.  We realized that we needed to do something to quickly remedy this situation and ensure we didn't have members losing interest in a board that didn't perform well.

As of 01/12/15, we have migrated the site to a new set of servers with a different hosting company.  We will be evaluating the performance of this company over the next couple of months to assess whether this will be our permanent home or whether we need to look for another hosting company that would be able to meet our needs.  I can tell you that the first full day's performance has been nothing short of outstanding!  The site has never loaded this quickly, even on the rare occasions when things were running optimally on the old servers.  We now have a dedicated processor and dedicated RAM on the new server so it is much harder for another user of the server to bog things down on our site like has happened so many times in the past. 

Unfortunately, with the new server comes additional costs that we had hoped to forestall until the initial three year contract with our old hosting company was up.  It looks like costs will be anywhere from $60 to $120 / year with this new hosting company, depending on the duration of our contract.  All five admin started this site with the full intention that we would not be holding our hat in our hands asking for handouts right off the bat.  We actually rejected all offers of assistance that members made in the past 4 months thinking we were set for three years.  Now that reality has smacked us in the face, we have decided to set up a donation system and actually accept any donations any members wish to make from now on.  The money collected will go into a board specific account and will remain there until it is needed.  The money will not be used by any admin to assist with their personal ammo collection or to pay for any admin perks.

I want to make very clear that donations are not mandatory, and the performance of the boards including access to members profiles, the search function, and access to all sub-boards will remain the same for all current members.  For any new members that sign up for accounts after 02/01/15, we will no longer be granting automatic access to the Politics, Religion, and Club boards (Club Member P&R Access). 

If you wish to have access to only the Politics and Religion boards, you must specifically opt-in by asking an admin to give you access.  If you want to become a club member and have access to the boards in the Club House, a small donation of anywhere from $5 to $50 will be requested.  To make this donation, click on Profile->Actions->Paid Subscriptions and chose a value.  Currently Paypal is the only way to donate online, but if you want to donate in another manner (postal MO, check, donating an item to be raffled off, etc.), please PM one of the admin (Adam7, Blicero, GreaseMonkey, Loose{}Cannon, or myself) and we'll make certain you're taken care of. 

Access to the boards in the Club House will allow you to post on boards that have current auctions (yes unlike many other places, we actually encourage you to discuss and debate on-going auctions!), deals and steals, free items that members may be giving away, discussions about militaria, jokes and humor, and a nice members lounge where any topic within the rules can be discussed safe from the prying eyes of the general internet.  These boards are truly the heart and soul of SKS-Files and are where much of the best discussions take place.  Help support the site and become fully integrated at the same time.  There is no time limit for when your membership will 'end', one donation per member really should be more than enough to keep SKS-Files up and running.  If you're feeling generous, please go to the donate page and consider making a donation to the boards.

Thank you,

-RM
« Last Edit: January 13, 2015, 08:05:18 PM by running-man »