Hello, everyone.
I want to apologize for the downtime today, it certainly wasn’t our idea to be offline so long. Our web hosting company, Dreamhost, has had an extended outage over the last 15 or so hours leaving this site ane many others off-line. Richardz and I have been frantically sending support tickets and going back and forth trying to get things back online, and as you can see by reading this, it’s finally back online.
Dreamhost has, for the most part, been stable for us. Our last major outage was September ’06, and other then the occasional blip here and there, it’s been stable.
Today’s outage has made us realize it’s time to accelerate our plans for world domination growing Erie Blogs.
The first piece of that plan is dedicated hosting for this site. We’ve grown to the point where shared hosting isn’t going to cut it, but here’s the thing. Shared hosting is cheap. None of us have the couple of hundred bucks it would take to pay for dedicated hosting on our own. So here’s my question for you, our readers.
We can pay for dedicated hosting by selling ad space on this site. We’d have only one advertising location on the site – the last thing we want to do is cover every spare inch of site with annoying ads. With only one ad location, we can hopefully make enough to cover the hosting (and maybe a pizza at the Erie Blogger Meet Up). I’ve mocked up a quick sample to show you what this would look like:
I want to know what you think about this. Please vote in our poll:
Thanks so much for reading ErieBlogs.com. We really appreciate it.
You guys don’t need a dedicated server for erie blogs. Look at media temple’s (dv) dedicated virtual server solutions. There are some fairly high traffic sites running off of their entry level offering. I also run my site off a (dv) server. http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/dv/
Try VPS instead of dedicated it maybe cheaper without paying for entire server. You will get a ‘slice’ of a server that meets your bandwith, memory, storage space. Most good providers will work with you and customize to fit your needs.
Check out webhostingtalk.com and search for for feedback on all the companies out there.
Let me know if you have any questions. I have a small reseller account holding mostly blogs but have been thinking of upgrading to VPS account with reselling capabilities.
Good luck
Scott
For all the great information that you guys provide on a daily basis, I think I can put up with the ad. And from your mockup, it isn’t in the way anyhow.
I’ve had great results from Midphase. 3 years and no downtime. http://www.midphase.com/newaff/redir.pl?a=0.698749756514193&c=1
Another option would be TextDrive/Joyent. I’ve been using them for about a year and a half now and have had very little problems with downtime usually less than 30 min when there is any.
Hey Mike– I’m fine with whatever. If you want to place an add up, feel free. I don’t think the big hot dog add is too annoying ;)
There are a few Erie Bloggers and readers who do reselling. If there was a reliable host, perhaps Erie Blogs could host (for a fee) some of the blog’s around town.
I agree with JL. I love the site and rely on it daily. I certainly wouldn’t mind an ad here and there. Keep up the good work!
As long as the content and the ads are separate entities, I don’t see where it would be a problem for the average reader. And if it keeps the site going? My vote is “yes.”
Mike,
There is no need for you to apologize to us for anything. Each and everyone of us who are part of your community extend our appreciation for all you do. Do what you must do and start advertising. You guys are great.
Being that I formerly ran a large site and at first did it with shared hosting then went to our own co-lo paid for with 1 rotating banner ad (as long as people paid for it) I strongly suggest doing your own thing… just MAKE SURE people pay. That’s what killed fordexplorer.net, people stopped paying me and I couldn’t afford the co-lo bill on my own.
Mike what ever you decide is fine by me. I had another thought I would like to run by you so if you could email me i would appreciate it.
thanks, toni
That is one of the most unintrusive ads ever! I like it. And quite frankly, I wouldn’t care if there were more ads placed on the site just to keep it running.