New Month New Problems

[Kakashi]

Yep new month again, and unfortunately still have one more bandwidth bill to pay. NarutoMania is now down to 4 Servers from our once grand total of 15. I've cancelled another one last month because the bandwidth charges were too excessive totaling $1200 for the one server. Combined with the current costs this puts us over $3000 in costs for this month.

I along with a few others we have picked up the majority of the bill to go with our regular donations and help keep this website up lsat month.

My life is more than a bit hectic at the moment. I've just rented my own place for the first time and combined with the website costs from last 2 months and GF being between jobs, I am flat out broke. I'll be able to make ends meet but there is no way I can put any contirbution from myself for this website this month.

Break Down of costs are as follows for July 2008:

-Bandwidth Overage : $1200 (One off fee which they split over two months June / July)
-Forums Server cost :- $599
-Forums Firewall cost :- $100
-Private Server costs - $499
-General Anime Server costs - $189 + $189 + $219 (cancelled as of this month)

Invoices are available to any donator, simply PM me.

After this month of July there will be no more bandwidth overage fee as all of our other servers are unmetered. So as of August our target will be $1300 ish for everything.

Basically this month will be the hardest for NarutoMania for the forseeable future. Short of all the hard disks failing on the remaining servers there shouldn't be any surprise costs.

We do need your help to keep this place up and running. If you donated last month, please help us again.

Donate Here.

Edit :

Issue #10 of Naruto and Bleach Mania's Exposed has been released! It's a great issue and covers a lot of the forum and member's interests, and reveals a lot about the community. So go check it out!

You can find the link for Issue #10 and comment on it here:

Issue #10

[/win]

i say cancel everything but the forum server and its firewall. will make things a lot easier and if people truly do like this forum and dont sign up just for the anime DL's then they will donate to keep this place alive.

[superbob]

well, there are still a fair amount of donators that just use the download feature, thus, it would help if everyone sent even a little bit of money.

I get paid on thursday, i'll see how much i can send after that.

[SEXYTIME]

I would reccommend getting rid of the firewall and private server.

if some good hacker wants to hack a website it will get hacked firewall or no firewall.

redtube was recently hacked and its one of the most popular sites in the world.

and the private server isnt updated very well besides naruto episodes so its just a waste of money and people wont stop coming here if u get rid of the private server so i think u should axe it in addition to the general anime server

[Kakashi]

The private server more than pays itself so cancelling that is not really a smart move. Can't cancel the forums server or firewall.

Only thing I could cut further is $360 for the general episodes. However I think for now that they are well worth the investment because they do attract new people to the website that are needed to replace the ones that leave. Without that any website would die a slow death.

Also the $189 x 2 servers are 100mbit unmetered. For the specs and price they are very hard to find now. If I were to cancel them now and buy them at a later date I would be paying more than double for each server.

@ Sexytime - The private server is in constant use, and yes it isn't as updated as I would like (working on recruiting someone to do that) it does pay for itself and more over. The firewall isn't there to stop hacking. It's there to stop the DDOS, which this website has had lots and lots of over the past few years.

[allie]

Wow... that sux...
I will see how much I can spare... just paid my bills and aint got too much left but I'll see how much I can gather...

[SEXYTIME]

If people really want to download episodes there is dattebayo and torrents. Thats how i feel about that. isohunt n mininova do wonders.

with that said it would be better if you just buy a server. you wouldnt have to pay monthly then.

But anyways has anyone donated yet this month?

also if i could be a regular mod id donate like 150-200 each month to help out because i really like the site and dont wanna see it shut down.

[Kakashi]

I do feel really stupid for asking so much two months in a row. Believe me I hate it. If you know me in RL I have very rarely in my life asked for help, but the way I see it and the reason I decided to make this website and exception is because it's far to big for one person to handle. I won't let it overwhelm me and close it down.

I am looking into a couple of text based ad companies to put on the forums. Donators won't get any ad's etc... but no final decision has been made.

@ Sexytime : Torrents are being throttled big time by ISP's all across the world now. Universities / other firewalls block them. Buying a server doesn't mean costs will go down. Then I also have to buy the bandwidth which will still have to be paid monthly. Furthermore any hardware defects won't be covered and replaced within a couple of hours as it would if I were leasing it. Last but not least this forums ahs gone through about 13-15 different server upgrades over the last 4 years. If I were to buy one, I would be extremely limited as to the upgrade oppertunities / costs.

[SEXYTIME]

Originally Posted by Kakashi

I do feel really stupid for asking so much two months in a row. Believe me I hate it. If you know me in RL I have very rarely in my life asked for help, but the way I see it and the reason I decided to make this website and exception is because it's far to big for one person to handle. I won't let it overwhelm me and close it down.

I am looking into a couple of text based ad companies to put on the forums. Donators won't get any ad's etc... but no final decision has been made.

try google adsense

[Kakashi]

Tried, and they are a bunch of scammers. You should try googling google adsense problems. They terminated our account and withheld payment as they do with nearly every other anime website. Yahoo is for U.S. Citizens only.

Believe me there are very few options that have not been tried I've been in this shizzle for a long time now.

[FireSight]

I'm feeling generous and just covered 1/25th of this months server costs. Don't expect it to happen again, as my finances tend to be rather tight.

[Kakashi]

Thanks muchly. Like I mentioned above this should be the last month for a long long time that any surprise costs can occur. I don't see us getting any more servers for the next year at least.

Then as long as we can get $700 between the 1st and 13th (forums server and firewall) of the start of the month and the remaining target by the end of the month you shouldn't hear anything from me

[notmebug]

Despite being refused invoices. How is the forum server $599? I looked at SL and unless you are saying this requires a quad core with 8 GB of ram to run a 300~ active user forum. I don't see where that money is going.

I seriously question your figures.

[SEXYTIME]

starting in august if u get 2000 donated u should have some left over for the next month it seems.

so im guessing the 150-200 donated per month by me in return for trial modship doesnt sound good kakashi? im upped the amount by 100 dollars if u remember the pm but i guess that wont change the decision.

[Kakashi]

This is indeed a Quad core system with 8 GB Ram and 3 SAS hard disks in Raid 5 Server loads average between 3.0-7.0 during the day.

@ Sexytime, no sorry no can do Nice try though. I will be giving modship for a day in an upcoming competition.

[SEXYTIME]

and what if said winner of the competition did a good job on that one day could there be a permanent position for them

[Kakashi]

Just for you notmebug. Please see a screenshot above I took 2 mintues ago. It shoudl give you an idea on what's on the server.

[FireSight]

notmebug, this server is under a HUGE load, when you think of the fact that several hundred THOUSAND posts are made per day, from what I've been able to track..... and I've rarely seen less than 100 users at a time on the forum.

[Haohmaru]

Originally Posted by SEXYTIME

starting in august if u get 2000 donated u should have some left over for the next month it seems.

so im guessing the 150-200 donated per month by me in return for trial modship doesnt sound good kakashi? im upped the amount by 100 dollars if u remember the pm but i guess that wont change the decision.

Originally Posted by SEXYTIME

and what if said winner of the competition did a good job on that one day could there be a permanent position for them

If there was a way for me to donate, I would do it in a blinck of a eye. I don't have a credit card and I'm sure ain't posting money through mail. Only way for me to send you money directly to your bank account. Don't know if that's possible, but that's what I do here.

[X2thaU]

Dude I keep forgetting to write down your real name when i donate......next time.........