@Czech

From a coding standpoint, changing the colours would be really easy. New parameter $donated on everyone's profile, the if $donated > X, change the colour to $Xcolour.

Anything more would require adding images and modifying the forum.

I want donation flavours! (with European spelling, to boot!)

@Furball...ad would look ugly? Depends on the ad...hell, i just imagined an ad in the empty right-hand column that I *never* look at (because it's EMPTY) and I saw this hot chick selling WebDip T-shirts (via a link to CafePress.com....BING! another form of income!) and below that I saw a link to BoardGameGeeks.com, because a lot of us probably like good board games and....and I'm not sure what is wrong with advertising that would be relevant to most of us???

I think I'm going to go make a WebDip t-shirt design for CafePress and will donate part of my receipts...

Ads only make money if they are clicked on. It's called click-thru for a reason.

As far as server costs, I thought I remembered kestas saying it was covered for some time and *wasn't* coming out of his pocket.

@Draug

But that may not be the case if we upgrade to one that can meet our load.

Regardless of whether it being covered, webDip isn't self sufficient and should be. I would want to donate more often if something like the above was instituted. I'd start hosting games that required your name to be a certain colour. No one would multi from an account they added money to.

But you're right. Dreamhost is part of the problem and I don't think paying for more bandwidth from them is the best solution. I've been using Slicehost for years and I know their lowest plan ($20/month) would cover the needs of webDip.

@krellin!

I think webDip merch is an amazing idea. Design a quality T-shirt and I guarantee you'd have enough presales for the first batch.

@Geofram - Have you looked at the code. I haven't but I know from experience that changing the link colors could be more difficult that you think. The problem is the players' names are also links. Now, if it done with CSS then the class could be set to different CSS classes depending on the donation amount.

I've looked at some of it a long while ago to remember that changing colours would not be difficult compared to adding something like custom images like Czech mentioned. (Though he may have just been joking)

If I had any time in the next month I'd try to do it myself. But I'm behind two months as it is.

> How much does the current server cost per month?
$7.95 / mo hosting + $1.67 / mo domain fees

> How much would a server cost that can meet our current demand?
That's a trickier question; the current server can meet demand when there are no other users hogging things up. The problem with shared hosting isn't so much the speed (the server we're on is very, very fast for the price), it's the inconsistency, because when other users on the same systems as us start hammering the system under their account it has a knock-on effect for us.
This is why performance can change a lot even with no significant change in users or code.

For a dedicated server that could host us I think it came out at somewhere around $90 / mo, for a VPS ("virtual" dedicated server hosted by Dreamhost, with resources that can't be interrupted) you pay for as much resources as you need, priced at $0.50/10MB (you need to pay for both a web server VPS and a MySQL VPS though)
I would say 500MB for web, 500 for MySQL, would be around $50 / mo (and probably not great performance on average)


Re: money generation. Plura netted ~$50 / mo during the good periods, but many people didn't like it and it was inconsistent. Donations are great but there's no way people are going to donate enough, consistently, to keep us on dedicated hosting.

Ads could probably raise enough for a dedicated server, but although I could go either way it's not ideal.
I think ads with an ability for donors to block them out might be good, but given that the majority of our users are Firefox users I wonder how much of it would be Adblocked out.

re: The donation link being hidden away; where would you suggest I put it? Bear in mind we don't really need donations on this site, and I don't really need donations personally (although I do appreciate them and put them towards the cost of hosting), so putting a donate icon on every page wouldn't be great.

(If we went with Dreamhost VPS we could use their donate-to-hosting-fees button, which I wouldn't feel so bad about making more visible)


These things happen on shared hosting every now and then (and they are a major reason we have so many scripts to try and account for downtime / extended 500 error periods).
Usually what we do is complain and they find the user who's hogging the resources, or move us to a different server, but this is a real hassle, it takes ages, and you have to convince front-line support that it's not webDiplomacy that's doing it every single time. (They just see "memory limit reached" errors, and think the reason is webDip scripts use too much memory, rather than understanding that webDip scripts take so long that they all add up and the combined total reaches the limit)

It would be good to find an alternative, but I'm not sure how to fund it, and having been to many shared hosting places I don't think we'll find better shared hosting

@Abgemacht - Someone here said kestas was paying it out of his pocket already and I thought I recalled kestas saying differently. Not trying to stop donations, though. If you'll recall, I did an Independence Day challenge for everyone on the site from America and with a Jon to donate one hour's pay. I did mine and then a bit more at that time and plan to do so again around Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and a bonus at Christmas/New Year's.

I pledge to cover one month a year of dedicated hosting time. I've already covered enough for the virtual dedicated per Kestas' estimate. Who'll join me? It's 50 AUD (about 55 USD).

@Kestas

I'm going to start counting, but I would say I get a 500 error about 1 in 20 refreshes. For me, it's a mild inconvenience, but for live games, it could be a serious problem.

@Draug

Understood.

Hell, I up that pledge to cover 2 months of full hosting on a dedicated served. I'll drop the other 150 in over the next 2 pay checks.

I thought he said 90 not 50...

@abge; Yup I'm also seeing it happen, and pages are loading much slower than usual, all very typical. I've contacted support about it, hopefully they'll take care of it without too much fuss.
I expect it'll get resolved over the next day or two, and something similar will come up over the next 2-4 months.

It's ~$50 for low end "virtual" dedicated hosting, and $90 for actual dedicated hosting on our own machine. Frankly $50 seems a bit much for what you get

@Draugnar: It's a bit hard to say "okay 12 people pledge $50 / year and we're set"; that's an easy commitment to make but harder to remember and to chase up, and these things usually either demand up-front costs for long periods (e.g. 2-5 years) or fairly hefty start-up fees which would make someone not giving what they pledged a major problem.
It wouldn't be good to rely on something like that

I think a goal with a bar would help, like on wikipedia. i dont mind donating as well even though i've only played a couple of private games w/ friends and don't care about my score. I think this is the best system.

Also, this site could definitely be optimized. Is it running an ajax request everytime you use the drop down bar when making a move? That's a ridiculous waste of system resources, you could easily output it into a JS hash on page load.

A single chat screen with a marker for private msgs instead of separate pages like it is now would do wonders to your server load.

Are past maps being cached? I sincerely hope so.

That is why I offered to cover two full dedicated months (or four virtual months). Get a quote from them that includes setup costs and lets see what we can't pull in upfront. I Bey we could get the first year if those of us who make good salaries donate accordingly. I mean, honestly, I get more pleasure out of here than a movie every week. I pay $20 per month to each of WoW and STO. I can at least cover that Mich for Webdip, which comes to 240 per year.

I think a larger problem is that the majority of our users (like myself) are poor college students that don't have the means to donate. If I had a steady income, I'd happily contribute, but I can't really.

@kestas: I really don't see the reason behind turning plura off. That generated far more than I expected, even if it's only $15 per month on average. I'd gladly click on a few ads every now and then to help out, but I think that's considered fraud and you'd get in trouble for that, from what I've read.

And I know next to nothing about hosting, but it seems like there should be an option in between $9.50/mo and $50/mo. But that's just me.

Also, I guess I assumed we were the one's overloading the server and causing the 500 errors. But I didn't think about the fact that it's shared hosting and it could be someone else entirely.

@abge: I wouldn't estimate it at 1 in 20. But it's certainly noticeable. Maybe 1 in 30, 1 in 35.

I had a bad night at poker this weekend and lost a grand. If I can afford that then I can afford to cover my share plus a lot of student's shares.

You shouldn't have/need to, being the point.

@Draug - how is STO? Love the idea...but fear the implementation. Bored as hell with WoW. Rejoined for the Cata....and now ready to quit again.

all that being asked....I'm with Draug on the donation front.

As for ☺....cry me a f*ing river for "poor college students". Yeah...sure...right. I graduated with engineering degrees and English courses and managed to drink a hell of a lot of beer on top of that. Fuck that nonsense excuse that college students can't cough up a *fe* bucks a month for the game. It's especially hilarious since most college students are all for socialism and shared this and that....except for when someone puts an open hand in front of THEM!

... I don't even know what to say krellin. Most of my friends are at my university (a public university) on scholarship because they couldn't afford to go anywhere else. They're putting themselves through college, as am I, and most of them are incredibly frugal about how they spend their money. And while I'm relatively well off because of scholarships, I have to save every penny of that for upcoming medical school expenses. Which won't be cheap. So please don't lecture me, please don't generalize me (I'm a staunch libertarian), and please don't pretend you're better than me. You're just being an ass.

re: Donate Button....itshould be on the bottom of EVERY SINGLE PAGE, with a sentence "Tired of 500 errors? Donate $2 to keep the server alive." That might be ALL it takes right now to get the funds you need. NOTHIGN dishonorable about that, and, as I said, I have *never* seen a donate button...so how could I have ever donated?

As far as donations for the site versus you personally...that it up to you...but I wouldn't bat an eye at you keeping profits, as long as you keep the site running. No problem at all. Or, alternately, you could collect extra money and pay the site up for months/years, and then disable the donate button. Either way you do it, JUST MAKE THE DAMNED DONATE BUTTON VISIBLE ***ON EVERY PAGE*** at the bottom, top, side, WHEVERER! If anyone get offended by seeing a "Donate" button on a *FREE* site that provides more service than my tax dollars ever will, then they need to find a new site to play on....but I defy them to find a better free site.

Beg for money with a VISIBLE donate button, and don't be ashamed. You might be surprised how many of us send cash regularly.

> I think a goal with a bar would help, like on wikipedia. i dont mind donating as well
> even though i've only played a couple of private games w/ friends and don't care
> about my score. I think this is the best system.
Wikipedia is much larger, has much less fixed requirements, can wait for much longer and count on the average of greater numbers of users. (I can't do Jimmy Wales' short-sighted goofy donation-beg face anyway)

> Also, this site could definitely be optimized. Is it running an ajax request everytime
> you use the drop down bar when making a move?
No it isn't..

> A single chat screen with a marker for private msgs instead of separate pages like
> it is now would do wonders to your server load.
It might make a tiny dent, but on the other hand it would require more information be requested on every board page (returning data for all countries even if the person just wanted to respond to one, and then needing JS to filter it out). It also wouldn't scale well variants with large numbers of countries

>Are past maps being cached? I sincerely hope so.
Uh-huh (I sincerely hope you didn't type that message with your feet; fingers are much better for typing)


All of this is pretty irrelevant anyway, not just because webDip is pretty well optimized but because without influence from other users on the same shared host webDip never has any load issues.

> That is why I offered to cover two full dedicated months (or four virtual months).
> Get a quote from them that includes setup costs and lets see what we can't pull in
> upfront. I Bey we could get the first year if those of us who make good salaries
> donate accordingly. I mean, honestly, I get more pleasure out of here than a
> movie every week. I pay $20 per month to each of WoW and STO. I can at least
> cover that Mich for Webdip, which comes to 240 per year.
Here is the one I was recommended a year or so back:
http://www.leaseweb.com/en/dedicated-servers/dual-core-servers
Now that I look again it's quite a bit under $90, more like $45, so that would remove DH VPS as an option. Also doesn't seem to have any contract fees which is good (more months up-front means lower cost/month, though)

However managing a whole load of commitments, chasing people up, scheduling, figuring out fallback people, pooling donations, etc, just isn't something I want to do every month / whatever it would be. I don't think it could work on a donation basis without a much larger user-base to make donations more predictable and steady

@ Happy Face....oh PLEASE! Most of your friends are poor starving college students blah blah blah. Yeah, I was a poor starving college student once, too. amazing how many poor college students find money for beer and drugs. You NEVER go out to McDonalds? You NEVER spend ANY money on yourself apart from text books? Oh....if you will be HONEST for about 1/2 a second, you will admit that you spend money on yourself.

BUT....when it comes to WebDip, suddenly you don't even have $2 to spare for the hours of enjoyment you get here?

Selfish asshole pig motherfucker. Upcoming medical school expenses....fuck off. So I take it you never date? You never go to the movies? Never buy a book for pleasure? Never buy an ice cream cone? Never ride the bus somewhere you didn't have to go but wanted to? So,...unless you are a completely dishonest asshole, you DO have $2 a month for something else that is short-lived...but if I ask you if you have $2 for WebDip, a *fantastic* free service that give you WAY too much pleasure ( you post on *EVERY* thread I ever look at)....then suddenly you have no money? Not even $2 a month? Fuck off, you selfish bitch.

Somebody needs to study this: How many people portray themselves as "Conservative" and are totally willing to donate? And how many "socialists" who think it is all for one and one for all are too fucking cheap to throw in for the cause?

"As for ☺....cry me a f*ing river for "poor college students". Yeah...sure...right. I graduated with engineering degrees and English courses and managed to drink a hell of a lot of beer on top of that."
Yes, your beer drinking is apparent in every post you make, and I am wondering what kinda of a degree "English courses" is.

I love Star Trek Online. I've gotten bored with WoW as well and probably wont renew in September. STO has some good space and ground combat and lots of ship and grew customizations. All the essential MMO elements are there with tanks and damage dealers, buffers and healers. And the great thing is you can do away missions intended for multiple players solo by having a well trained away team. In short, I thoroughly enjoy it. It is Much better than the other space based MMOs I've played.