The Thank You Post
March has been off to a tremendously busy start, what with news of Richard Garriott’s upcoming game announcement (and various exciting things happening in my offline life). But I haven’t forgotten that a goodly number of people generously offered their support in last month’s fundraising drive, and it’s time to offer thanks where it is due.
So, first and foremost, a big note of thanks to the following people, who hit up the donation link directly:
I am genuinely humbled by the outpouring of support from all of you, and I hope that as the year rolls on I am able to justify and make good on the contributions you’ve all made. The overhaul of the website’s template was the first step in that, and that has had the wonderful side effect of boosting — considerably! — the activity in the comment forms. I’m just doing the last few adjustments to the CSS for the forum, and should be able to restore that to working order in the next few weeks; hopefully we’ll see more activity there as well. And I have to put together a proper “Donor’s Wall” as well. And get ready for a significant Ultima anniversary later this month…my, how the days become busy all on their own.
Additionally, thanks to everyone who bought things through Amazon and, especially, GOG. Going forward, there is a real possibility that what commissions I earn from GOG will actually entirely offset the month-to-month cost of maintaining the site. That would be the ideal, at least, and would make any future fundraising drives unnecessary. That said, the “Support the Codex” links will remain in place at the bottom of the site, in case anyone should feel inclined to make use of them.
We shall see.
At any rate, and again: my sincere thanks to all of you who, directly and indirectly, have helped to keep the Codex running. I really do appreciate it, and I have a lot of work to do to show that. Time to get to it!
I don’t know how much bandwidth people use here or how much your monthly bill is, but you might want to consider upgrading your home Internet service and hosting the site from there. I know the U.S. sucks with Internet bandwidth and all that, so please withhold your laughter, but I pay about $115 a month for cable Internet with a static IP and my upstream is 640 KiB/s sustained. While that’s not enough to sustain constant binary/file downloads it’s good enough for just about anything else. You’d maintain full control over your site and its content and can get a decent UPS for $200 for the server and gateway/router.
Leaving out the cost of setting up a server — because I’d have to furnish myself with a new rig, as nothing I have on hand at present is powerful or reliable enough to take on that role (apart from my main PC, my laptop, which…well…I kind of need to remain mobile) — that’s a good idea. And if at some point I can set myself up a beefy server rig, I will in fact consider availing myself of what options are available in my area.
For the record: I served up about half a terabyte in January, and maybe a third of a terabyte in February. The $99.95 plan at the link above would support that and a tad more, with up to 5 Mbps upstream (though that’s probably burst, rather than sustained). And that’s not bad, sure…but, again, there’s the cost of actually getting myself a solid, reliable server. AND the cost of moving the site to it in a timely, orderly fashion. Which (as I am sure you can appreciate, proud papa that you now are) isn’t always easy when there is family that needs attending to as well on a day-in/day-out basis.
Please correct me if I’m wrong (I’ve had a few too many potions), but half a terabyte per month is approximately 193 KiB/s sustained for a 30-day month. That’s pretty damn good in that it’s a reasonable sustained upstream but it’s indicative of a metric shit-ton of traffic. With a decent Internet connection it should be totally doable unless a lot of people start hammering a large binary at once. Even then, they expect it to be slow and legal torrents are an alternative.
The $99.95 plan at 5 M(i?)b/s equals 640 KiB/s (same as mine), so that sounds like a good deal if you get a static IP. You’d have 3.3X your average bandwidth at your disposal, assuming it’s not burst (ask them pointedly and call back to ask a different tech the same, etc.).
As you hinted at, the tradeoff is that you are responsible for your own hardware, OS and config stability, but being a tinkerer it’s not as much trouble as you might think. Ideally you’d want to set everything up at home first, test it extensively, then take the old site offline and do the final database sync. Considering your day job you’re probably better qualified than I for such tasks. 🙂
Two days ago I bought Driftmoon on GoG through the link here. Not sure how much you get from that, but it’s something at least.
@Sanctimonia
Really? $115 a month for 640kbs up?
I pay the equivalent of $63 for 10mbit/s up (100 down)
Could it be cheaper to look for server hosting abroad?