admin

Yes, everything is ok; NO Google ads are NOT SPYWARE or ADWARE. You have nothing to worry about. The more you click the more we make, and this all goes towards funding the server and keeping things running smoothly. This is an alternative to asking for donations. We are still testing over the next week if advertising can even make enough money to be worth keeping it.

We are testing them, to see if they are profitable, because the server cost are needing additional funding.

I am trying to get a hold of dames, as I would like some reimbursement for the server on a monthly basis. If anyone can get a hold of him or has different contact information please let me know. [email protected] and his IM are the only 2 methods I know of. We may need to resort to donations from the boards or site, if I can't get a hold of him soon. As you probably already know. I fronted almost 1,000 dollars to get this new server setup and running, because it'd be a major upgrade and improvement and also took a lot of my time. Thanks for your time, Mike TSM Server Admin

Maybe I should say "Upgrading" the hard drives. No, nothing will be lost, because all the data will be mirrored on to the new drives. Mike,

The server could be down between 2am-4am at the most for server maintenance. I am replacing the hard drives with larger ones, for anyone who cares. Mike

I have left him a PM, however if the financial aspects of things don't get straightened out soon, I will have to resort to other aspects of collecting money. Such as requesting donations on the top and main page of the site or placing ads all over the site. I personally am out quite a bit of money, and do not like Dames just being on once in a while... If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know. Also we can host or do whatever we want with this server, so if anyone has websites or anything hosted, let me know. That will help cover the monthly cost. Thanks, Mike - TSM Server Admin

The blank screen is an issue I am working on all together. Because the searches and a few other methods. Thanks,

Ok, I will be checking into both of those problems.

There is simply no www. in front of the forums part needed, however I went ahead and added the www. extension to the server for special people like yourself which may place the www in there.

I would assume you are referring to the "Go to first unread post" option? It seems like its working, try it on other topics. Also, which Thread/Topic are you having the issues with? Thanks for your feedback.

The WWW.*.com being for thesmartmarks.com? or Forums.thesmartmarks.com?

Thats what I am aiming for. Those random times in the past being mainly high points in traffic. How is the speed? Anyone notice a speed up? We will probably just have to wait until monday nights, I recall the execution time @ the bottom of all pages being over 10-30 seconds some times.

Then it doesn't matter then because they never set it in the first place. So the admin adding +60 during say light savings time will correct this.

The time will be correct now. Instead of making every board member change the setting them selves for Day Light Savings time, and board admin will simply set the clock +60min when needed.

FYI: Also IF we do the PayPal thing, we need to setup an real account such as [email protected] NOT some other account which could latter be passed off as an fake. I wouldn't start asking for donations yet, as I need to determine the exact cost after everything been setup and moved over. Mike,

Ok guys, So far everything is going great. I will be installing the server at the co-location facilities tomorrow @ 6pm. Within a few days I should have a test/demo/mirror of the current server on it for testing making sure the new version of software and such since this server is a bit out dated. Within a few days of that we will move over the forums or site first, with the other soon following. I am hoping to have it with little to no down time, except when I do the database backup, the forums will have to close and no one can be on it doing anything. At this point I will copy the Forums DB to the new server and map the old server to the new, there will also be intermittent outages as DNS servers across the US update, but those are unpredictable. I will keep you guys up to date and hope to have things moved by the first of May, so we can terminate our other contract on time (8th). Mike

Dames, whenever you get a chance, please IM me as I need to know who is paying you what and we need to redirect that my way. The new server is going well, waiting on minor parts, it is up and running nice and loud as servers do. I would like to make a list of every body paying currently and get a set day monthly which they all pay or something. The EV1 server will not be charging this coming month. I have also signed the contract with the new company and everythings ready to go almost. So, but I will wait until everything is for sure to let them know.

No, No, No, I am taking care of all that, the new server will be $50 a month + cost of parts. The current server is about $120 a month. So make the new payments for server like $100 a month and only for 10 months or something. Just as long as I get paid back. If you really wanted to stretch it, you could pay $83 a month for the first year, and then after that it would be $50 a month. Sorry to make it come off so bad like that.

Update!!! First off, I would simply like to state that finding on of these free host or something will NOT work. The server pushes our current server to 100% usage on the peaks and maintains at an average of 48% usage overall. The traffic is approx 115-125Gb per month, and the current Database size is: 1.4Gigs. There is no reason or method to lower these values and no one will host these numbers for free because we already use our whole own server. The main site it self does not place much of a drain at all because of its well engineered system. The main site is all static .shtml files which don't require any processing, just bandwidth. The forums are another story... I am working out some details still, but we are going to be moving servers again and I think this will be the last time for a LONG time. The new setup will be co-located in a facility in Fort Worth, Texas. The monthly payments will be $49 a month. The main problem is that you are required to sign at least a 1 year contract and pay all up front. The second difference between this setup and our current, is that we will build our own server instead of lease one. I have already started building our own server to host there. Currently the specs will be the following: Single Xeon 2.66 GHz, 533 Bus, 512k Cache (Expandable to dual processors) 1GB Ram running Dual Channel DDR, 512Mb DDR400 x 2 (Expandable to 4 GB) Dual Hitachi 80Gb Hard Drives, 8Mb Cache, 7200Rpm, SATA 150 (Running Mirroring Raid probably, could stripe) Could add a third drive later on for Raid 3 striping Asus Motherboard 1U Server Case 1500Gb max, you pay extra for more. The nice thing about this server is we can add another CPU later to literally double its power down the road and not have to overhaul anything. Also we pay $49 a month no matter what the specs are, just as long as it fits in a 1U case, which is 1.7 inches thick, 18 inches wide, and 26 inches deep. (Basically two pizza boxes attached on the sides.) Our current servers specs are: Pentium 4 Celeron 1.7 GHz 1 GB Ram PC-133 40 GB hard drive ATA-66, maybe ATA-100 Generic Motherboard PC Mid Tower 700Gb Traffic max, you pay extra for more. The second part to this new setup is we have to fund the new server, compared to leasing one. Currently the server’s cost is about $800, of which I will be paying for half of it. All the parts I have ordered are new, and come with manufactures warranty. The operating system will probably be RedHat Linux, as our current server runs this. Overall we will need to figure out the money issue, just as in the past I had to front some money when SK left, I am willing to do it again. Basically we will need to front $400 @ least for the server itself and $600 for the co-location, after those expenses, we will have our server running for 1 year, no payments, etc. The following year it will only cost $600, which is almost 2.5x what we are paying a year now. I am hoping to have this switch done by the 8th of May, because that’s when the old server’s payments are due. That way we are out of that mess and we can move forward from there. I have no problem fronting the money, as I have already almost finished purchasing the server parts, however figuring out payment plans back would be nice. Also I have not tried much online advertising, but we could try ourselves to place some small ads on the forums or something. I am not really for it, but it may be worth a try. Also to help with the money side of things would be to find more SWF type sites or other sites to host them, and charge starting @ $10+ a month depending on their needs. The server will handle it and we will have plenty of bandwidth at the new place. If anyone has questions you can contact me via AIM, or E-Mail me @ [email protected]

Is this something you guys would seriously buy if we did start to offer it?

If anyone cares to donate towards a new server or for a faster one feel free. The current one cost over $1500 a year.