Well it's fairly simple really, it is YOU!
It is however worth explaining to all where we are now.
In the past 2 years we have nearly trebled the amount of members that use the Zone and this has now caused us to face up to the fact our server space is to small.....Recent issues with crashes and tables collapsing has brought this to a head.
We have always been part of a shared server with others and this was fine when we had 4 to 5 hundred visits a day, this is no longer the case and the current set-up cannot handle the new figures.We regularly get 8 to 900 members visits a day now and that is without guests/bots and spiders crawling the site.
To this end our Data and Web files have to be split and this can only be done on a dedicated server.We have looked at various ways to sort this and after a great deal of discussion we will in the near future (for you Techy's out there) be running on a dedicated setup with 14GB ram and 300GB SAS hard drives with Cloud.
We are therefore in the process of a major change with the site, but unfortunately this does not come cheap. This was and still is one of the reasons we are always looking at new donations and fund raising ideas. To give you some idea the current server costs us about £800 a year, the new one will cost over double this coming in at £1800 PA.
We had the option to dump a lot of our old data but that was something we did not want to do as we felt it was a backward step for the site.We have no choice in this if we wish to take the site forward and have taken the decision to make sure whatever we changed to would keep us in good stead for the foreseeable future.
People often ask us "What does it cost to run the site" and we have always been open with members about this..if you take into account the costs of the new server set-up, the vB license and upgrades, the accountants fees and general costs, our total running costs stand at about 2.8-3k PA.
We are one of the biggest sites outside of the Prem clubs and are admired from afar, not only on vB forums (They have 200,000 forums that use vB software) but by other teams for the way this site is run and the success of it.
I hope this helps all members to understand the costs of running The Zone and why we have to at times ask for your help. Please feel free to ask us any questions you may have and do not forget to use the Green donate button in the Nav bar whenever you have a few pounds to spare.
(On behalf of the Owners of ShrimperZone.com)
John.
It is however worth explaining to all where we are now.
In the past 2 years we have nearly trebled the amount of members that use the Zone and this has now caused us to face up to the fact our server space is to small.....Recent issues with crashes and tables collapsing has brought this to a head.
We have always been part of a shared server with others and this was fine when we had 4 to 5 hundred visits a day, this is no longer the case and the current set-up cannot handle the new figures.We regularly get 8 to 900 members visits a day now and that is without guests/bots and spiders crawling the site.
To this end our Data and Web files have to be split and this can only be done on a dedicated server.We have looked at various ways to sort this and after a great deal of discussion we will in the near future (for you Techy's out there) be running on a dedicated setup with 14GB ram and 300GB SAS hard drives with Cloud.
We are therefore in the process of a major change with the site, but unfortunately this does not come cheap. This was and still is one of the reasons we are always looking at new donations and fund raising ideas. To give you some idea the current server costs us about £800 a year, the new one will cost over double this coming in at £1800 PA.
We had the option to dump a lot of our old data but that was something we did not want to do as we felt it was a backward step for the site.We have no choice in this if we wish to take the site forward and have taken the decision to make sure whatever we changed to would keep us in good stead for the foreseeable future.
People often ask us "What does it cost to run the site" and we have always been open with members about this..if you take into account the costs of the new server set-up, the vB license and upgrades, the accountants fees and general costs, our total running costs stand at about 2.8-3k PA.
We are one of the biggest sites outside of the Prem clubs and are admired from afar, not only on vB forums (They have 200,000 forums that use vB software) but by other teams for the way this site is run and the success of it.
I hope this helps all members to understand the costs of running The Zone and why we have to at times ask for your help. Please feel free to ask us any questions you may have and do not forget to use the Green donate button in the Nav bar whenever you have a few pounds to spare.
(On behalf of the Owners of ShrimperZone.com)
John.
