ANNOUNCEMENT - Server move, Google Ads

[Gryzor]

Hello dear friends,




I would like to announce two big pieces of news for our site:


First, what many of you may have noticed - or read in the forum: As of a few days ago, we have ads in the forum.


Oh yes. Beautiful, gorgeous, succulent ads. The kind that makes your mornings brighter and your nights sexier. Huge banners crawling across the screen, towers sliding down on each end of the forum template, pop-unders for every click you make!


Well actually, none of this is true. We have a very few, very discreet ads.


Truth is, I don't really like them either, as I'm sure many of you won't. Bear with me for a second. The reasoning behind placing ads on the forum is this: up to now the hosting and software costs have been born by a relatively few forumites. While the costs have been more than covered up to now, I felt that it's somewhat unjust. On the other hand, it's totally understandable that not everyone can afford, or want, or can donate hard cash for the CPCwiki. So I thought, what better way than spread the cost around? So I placed a few ads, and made them as unobtrusive and discreet as possible.


Let me answer a few questions I was asked:


-I already donated money, why should I see ads?
-Well, truth be told, you shouldn't. We're looking into ways to disable ads for donors. The Pro version of the mod used to serve ads, which allows per-membergoup ad serving, costs $50 (€37). Not a huge amount, but still we're looking into how to disable them in some other way (if your strong suit is PHP and DBs let me know ).


-I don't want to see ads! How do I block them?
-Any old ad blocker for your browser can hide Google Ads. Otherwise you can easily block them at hosts-file level. Add these lines to your hosts file:

Code Select Expand


[url=http://127.0.0.1]http://127.0.0.1[/url]]http://127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com
[url=http://127.0.0.1]http://127.0.0.1[/url]]http://127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
[url=http://127.0.0.1]http://127.0.0.1[/url]]http://127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net




Alternatively, go download this awesome hosts installer that will block Google ads - and much more!


-I don't want to see ads about Latvian brides, gambling or, erm, equipment enhancement! What gives?
-Google actually keeps their ads pretty tame, so nothing really offensive should appear. Supposedly, those ads are targeted to you according to your interests, searches etc. Of course it's not 100% infallible, but there are ways you can fix it: some of the ads feature a small "X" button at the top right corner. Press that X to mute that ad, and Google will learn from you. Or, you can go to Ads Settings and actually edit out the categories you don't want to see. This will work for the whole Interwebz, of course, not only the CPCwiki.


-Will this really work towards covering the CPCwiki's costs?
-Well, hard to tell; it depends, of course, on how many people click on the ads. The first few days have been very encouraging. Nothing mind-blowing, mind you, it won't allow me to retire to the Caribbean at 35 (oh, wait, I'm past that... damn), but more than enough to cover the costs. We're talking about a few people clicking on an ad once a day to cover the costs nicely! As a matter of fact, once the costs are met, I was thinking we could stop ads for the remainder of the year. During the first few test days, CTR stands at .45%, which is very low, but coupled with an average CPC of €.5 it means our costs can be covered quite fast.


-So how do I know you're not pocketing bazillions of $$$?
-Unfortunately, you don't - not readily so, that is. The donations system is rather public as donations are shown publicly and people who have donated can check that. With ads this is not possible, unless I give people access to my account. If an audit is required I'm more than willing to give temporary access to people so you can check out the earnings. Otherwise, I can easily post screenshots of reports every month.




-But ads make the site slower!
-Not really, they don't. The ads are loaded asynchronously and are served from Google's servers. This means that no extra load is put on the server, while the page loads independently of the ads. As Google puts it: " The advantage of the asynchronous code is that it's guaranteed never to get in the way of other parts of your web page loading. This means that users will be able to load the content of your pages, even if they're having trouble loading the ads."





Second announcement: server migration!!!


A few days ago we hit some issues that lead to some downtime and slow connections. It seems that, although the problem was largely incidental, we have reached the capacity and abilities of the current server. So, we have gone for a new server of much higher specs and also, a much lower price. Niiice! The new servicing plan will cost $36/month (or €27), for a total of €324/year. This includes the main server and the backup server. We are going to stress-test it for a while, then will move the entire site over (this will entail, however, some downtime. Probably during a weekend).  Now, the current server has been paid for by your donations fully till the end of the year; since invoicing is done on a monthly basis, it means we can roll over remaining funds.


This also means we can defer ad insertion to 2014. Now, taking into account what I said earlier about ad earnings, and with the new costs taken into account, it would mean that we'd need around 660 clicks per year to cover costs. Which means that... with only TWO clicks per day, hosting would be covered! Is this great or what? And if four people clicked, it'd mean we could do alternate months with and without any ads. Of course this is if CPM stays at current levels, you never know, but it gives you an idea.




So, I'd love to hear your feedback. As always with this community, nothing is written in stone and I'm merely trying ways to go forward.




Thanks!
Themis
aka Gryzor

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

I've removed the site from my AdBlock, if I see an interested Ad that I'm interested in, I'll click it.


Good luck with the server move. What are the new specs?

[Zoe Robinson]

we're looking into how to disable them in some other way (if your strong suit is PHP and DBs let me know ).

I've written something similar for one of my own sites. I'll send you a message.

[ralferoo]

I must admit, whilst I don't have any great desire to have adverts, Gryzor makes lots of good, well reasoned arguments why we should at least try them to see if we can cover the hosting fees from them.

I also think he's done a good job of putting them in a fairly discreet place. I must admit I hadn't even noticed them, whereas I can't help but avoid the ones on gmail!

I've got a friend who runs a small site full of nonsense (it's basically a read-only copy of an old wiki that some friends used to make random comments on) and that earns about £100-£200 per year. It's not much, but it's good for a site that they don't even update the content on any more. I'm sure with the amount of traffic we get, we'll probably get quite a good impression rate just from serving the adverts.

[Gryzor]

@Sykobee: thanks mate, much appreciated. To answer your question, it's an i5 @3.4+GHz with 8GB and a 2TB disk. Memory especially should be of great help since the db uses tons of memory to cope with the file load...


@Zoe: already replied, though I think I've found a way. Can a member of the supporter group (Ralferoo?) tell me if you're still seeing ads?


@ralferoo: Thanks for your kind words As I wrote before, I don't like adverts either. That's why I made them so discreet, and that's why I announced it too (I guess most people either won't notice or won't see them because of ad blockers). I take it your friend gets paid on impressions rather than clicks? I could have implemented a system to do that and revenue would certainly be higher, but at the expense of discreetness...

[ralferoo]

@Zoe: already replied, though I think I've found a way. Can a member of the supporter group (Ralferoo?) tell me if you're still seeing ads?

Can't see them any more...

BTW, I'm not sure if it was related... but the server was taking about 8 seconds per page to run the SQL queries earlier today (about 3PM UK time)... 

[Gryzor]

Oh great, thanks for confirming!


As for the server being slow, yes, I know; had to bring the simultaneous connections limit down to keep the server running - this means that sometimes going through the queue can be slow...

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

@Sykobee: thanks mate, much appreciated. To answer your question, it's an i5 @3.4+GHz with 8GB and a 2TB disk. Memory especially should be of great help since the db uses tons of memory to cope with the file load...

Ah yes, don't forget to increase the size of MySQL's memory cache.  That's why my company's DB servers have 192GB of RAM in them!


Also configure MySQL's slow query logging, and you can analyse these using Percona tools.

[Gryzor]

192GB... holy crap, I don't think I've ever seen so much memory in one place

[SyX]

Great Wokr Gryzor!!! As ralferoo has said everything is very reasonable and i'm glad that we can help to maintain the CPCWiki with only a few clicks

[Gryzor]

Thanks, mate! All depends on the support, but I figured, if it's so easy we can probably (hopefully) do it...

[Lazy Dude]

when I first read the message I feared impending doom.......
Just whatever happens please don't shut up shop and disappear. This sites to good to loose

[Gryzor]

Heheh, no doom, impending or otherwise. We're doing good, was just trying to change things a bit; even if funding stopped coming in, I'd probably continue paying for it myself.


As for the site disappearing, this has been discussed in the past. I don't see the project as something that I'm interested in taking with me if I ever decide to step down: I will pass it on to someone with a goof offer (not monetary, mind you) if I ever have to stop attending to it, and I have even set up a dead man's switch (seriously). For some time I was even offering the entire package to anyone just for the asking, until some less than reputable characters tried to set up a rival wiki/forum with our entire content, and size made the offer impractical.


Thanks for your interest
T