Ugh…
Published by Mike Stark March 3rd, 2006 in UncategorizedI hate this part.
Just the facts.
- The site has crashed twice in the last 24 hours.
- It is hosted on a machine inadequate to the task
- All design and hosting costs, till now, have been comp’d
- This site has brought you, in the last month, the Hannity Lieberman Lovefest, Rush Limbaugh saying the war can’t be won with the military alone, several O’Reilly absurdities (including the reason you are here now, probably) and one very crazy lady.
So… with this content coming out fast and furious… well, it’s just not going to be possible to sustain this site on its current platform. And it’s not fair to continue expecting my hosts to jump through hoops at all different hours (last night the site crashed at about 11) in order to keep me going - not when they are doing it for free.
So I talked to my hosts. We put up the fundraising buttons and have decided to ask y’all to help out. I’d like to purchase a server that will sustain this site… and I’d like to give the hosts some turkee…
And I’ve done all of this at a loss so far also… I must confess that I too, after spending about 12 hours a day doing this, five days a week… well, I’d like to at least break even on my expenses.
[Sally Struthers]Won’t you please help?[/Sally Struthers]
The donate button is to your right.
Thanks to everyone!
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Mike,
From a fellow outlaw - send my your address and I’ll send a check, but in the meantime, why don’t you ask for some advertisers. You hit the big time now, so maybe some advertisers will be willing to advertise here.
I have a business I will advertise here - you are doing the work of the patriots, don’t feel bad asking for help.
Mike,
I will offer to host, until it goes beyond my level of technical ability.
Currently I share hosting on a VPS virtual private box. It’s like $15/mo (my friend pays and I admin it). I host my site, his, and some other ppl we know. We could put callingallwinguts on it probono, until we need to put it on it’s own virtual server (w/o any other domains served from it). I’m not sure what the bandwidth limitations are (might be unlimited), or what a better service would cost, but what i’ve got now is pretty solid for only $15/mo.
Email me bro!
Done. Keep it up!
Mike,
I would also like to pitch in something, but would rather send a check. Just shoot me your address and I’ll whip out the pen.
http://blogads.com/
I made a modest donation. I wish I could spare more, but I definitely think you have a great site!
kicked a little now and will certainly add later.
Agreed on the advertisers. Scare up your traffic logs. The numbers should take care of the rest.
mike, you and the others who have been threatened by lufa boy and fox, may very well have legal action against them.
You should really speak to an atty about this,
Keep uop the good work…oh and check into blogads…with your new found fame, the hits you are getting may very well help you turn a profit.
No see the button…! Was going to contribute but can’t find the contribute button.
The “thanks” page that PayPal dumps you back to after the donation is broken/non-existent:
http://www.callingallwingnuts.com/thanks
Fixed
This site kicks right-wing ass!!! But there is a fundamental problem… It’s way too good!! I’m now forcing myself to leave the site so I don’t spend hours on it. I’ve listened to quite a few of the audio clips already and if I don’t restrain myself I’ll never stop.
Donation sent. Love the logo of
Rushthe fat guy with a wingnut beanie! Rock on Mike, you’re now a superstar!Thanks folks - all of you…
A few things:
1) I appreciate the hosting offer, but my guys have stuck with me through thick and thin. They’ve jumped through some hoops, turned around requests in record time and done it all for free. No way am I going to leave them now - not when I can finally do right by them…
2) I took the advice (and an invitation from a blogger) and I am now up on BlogAds… now I just need to get that first purchase…
3) I’ll fix the “thanks” page this morning - thank you for pointing it out to me!
And most of all, thank you to each and every one of you that has clicked on that donate button or sent a check. The site has started off better than I ever thought it would - it is, after all, only a month old. In that month, I’ve served over 60,000 visitors over almost 600,000 pages… over 70 gig of data…
All in the first month. Simply amazing.
http://www.billoreilly.com/search/searchresults.jsp?searchstring=Olbermann&sortby=0&sortdir=1&searchcategory=0&x=35&y=2
I did a Search for Olbermann on BOR’s site no results seems O’Reilly has erased any trace of his name
petition is still up here: http://billoreilly.com/petitions/viewpetition?petitionID=45714
I haven’t been paying attention to thid BO VS KO thing someone please tell me what fafafel is?
Sorry I work nightshift as Security no less and don’t catch much TV news so please tell me what this fight is all about because I use to love watching Olbermann, O’(outoftouchwith)Reality has been nuts for years he attacked Al Franken and hates him too he’s crazy
Robin: catch it all in a nutshell at crooksandliars.com:
specifically,
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/03.html#a7384
I must be dense…I can’t see a donate button.
numfar… lol… just scroll down a bit, look on the right - but it’s on the main page (http://www.callingallwingnuts.com) - not the comments page (gonna hafta fix that - thanks for bringing it to my attention!)
Bless you, my son. You’re truly doin’ the Lord’s work.
With humble servants like you, someday a real rain will come and wash all the o’reilly/horsebrithume/shrub scum off the streets.
Go in Peace.
Done! Right direction. More.
Mike Stark,
Thanks. I placed a link to your site on my diary at DailyKos. I also made a donation to your site and asked that everyone who possibly can also make a donation.
I have not had this much fun since..well..I can not recall when.
Keep up the great work.
Mike In Florida
Two words….
Restraining order….
Now that would really drive him nuts if you put the shoe on the other foot….
CafePress Paging Mister CallingAllWingnuts … CafePress Paging Mister CallingAllWingnuts …
Please, please, PLEASE … Fox Security T-shirts and mugs.
Here they are, Fox Security, listening to Bill O’Really, waiting for His Serene Instructions to restore calm, maintain order, keep the peace …
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/KeystoneKops.jpg
I’d buy one. You know you’d buy one too.
Kind regards,
Dog, etc.
searching for home
Mike;
I respect you wanting to stay with your ISP. And I’m not an ISP or carrying other vested interest. But I’ve seen people *reamed* by over-bandwidth fees, I about choked when I saw someone offer to split-host you on a $15 VPS account (far far far too inadequate for numbers you’ve just seen and could see), and I only know about (pinches fingers together) THIS much about running a major website facing large traffic loads.
But I do know a bit.
So here we go…
Have forward-minded plans that’ll let you dish bandwidth via an OC-3 or better and having your own dedicated server. Major sites grow quickly, server setup takes week(s).
From what I’ve been quoted, raw bandwidth’s current market price is 50 cents a gig, down to 20 or 30 cents for a data-only fat pipe working in predictable larger buys. I’ve seen ISP’s charge $6 or more for that bandwidth, which is absurd or criminal when you face a 70 gig surprise.
You also should get quality-of-service negotiations in place so you can, at the least, get assistance from your ISP quickly in a pinch. This will likely RAISE your per-gig price, but they should be reasonable if you’re reasonable. Don’t demand half-hour service at 3am on a sunday unless you’re willing to pay for it. 99.999% uptime!? Hardly. This is WHY you want to work with someone that you respect, like your current ISP.
If your ISP says they’re just not up to the task, split-host. Put all your fat data files somewhere else and just host the blog with ‘em. There are half measures possible when it comes to web hosting.
Use alternate sources to pull some of the traffic down. Coralcache is an incredibly easy way to temporarily release bandwidth pressure (you just change URL’s by adding .nyud.net:8080 to the domain-name part of your URL, and suddenly you get a distributed cache system to relieve content… it’s what slashdot junkies do when a site gets slashdotted). Likewise, there are a *few* political types that know bittorrent, so you should include torrent links to let us share the burden.
That above bit… coralcache… is the MOST important thing you can do immediately to get rid of your site crashing repeatedly. Since coralcache doesn’t care what it is cacheing, you can even practice RIGHT NOW by experimenting with sites you usually visit. Pick a site you know, mangle the URL, google up ‘coral-cache’ for more info.
In a serious storm, take your hot 2 or 3 pages and replace them with static HTML, rather than interpreted code. If that’s not enough, look back at coralcache, splitting your media files onto a data-only server, or starting to build a distributed host. Ask for some expert help here (that ain’t me).
Find some blog software that knows how to throttle for traffic. When traffic gets heavy, minor side-stuff is turned off to make pages go out faster. As for bandwidth throttling, I know CivicSpace or Drupal does this built-in, but the worst I’ve ever directly experienced are some DoS attacks (mildly distributed, not massive ones) and getting traffic storms from AOL or other news sites linking to our content… and none of our overloads were due to media files being downloaded by a thousand simultaneous users.
Collect email addresses and treat them (the addresses and the addressees) with respect. Having push capability to 50,000 fans can be immensely powerful.
Use ads. Don’t just do it for the money. Advertise stuff you love, like your ISP. They can’t BUY advertising like you’ll give them if they prove their supportiveness and talent. That sort of endorsement is how I found the ISP I currently use.
Remix, repackage, rerelease. Make the audiofiles self-contained with info about your blog and the content, then package them up to allow folks to email them to friends. Presuming that your goal isn’t counting page-clicks, you accomplish it cheaper: you get your message out to a wider audience without paying for the bandwidth.
Keep up the good work. Oh, and check out spreadshirt.com rather than cafepress if you go THAT route for funding.
Hi, Mike:
Been following your posts at dKos, and sent you some love.
Another 2 cents on the hosting thing - I use Fatcow (fatcow.com) for $99/year. Look at their specs to see if they can handle your load.
I understand your loyalty to your current ISP. But do youj really need your own server?
Anywho, keep it up.
Best, RubDMC
@d2:
Great info! I was just tyring to help out. I know my vps probably can’t handle the traffic this site gets, but I figured it would be first step at least. I realize that a dedicated VPS is probably a better idea, but currently, my vps hosts basically nothing. The traffic is next to nothing.
Anyways you posted up some great ideas there, and Mike would do well to think hard about them.
First: the Coral Cache. http://www.coralcdn.org add “.nyud.net:8090″ after the .com and before everything else after the .com
Second: media files on a distrubuted host. I would recommend CacheFly but there are others. Have the mp3’s hosted there, so the site doesn’t run slow.
About hosting. I’ll just post some links. Think about it.
http://www.tektonic.net/dedicated.php
Dedicated, more costly
http://www.tektonic.net/vds.php?op=budget_plans
Virtual, un-managed (Mine is UM1)