Please ATS Members and Non-Members alike, STOP Blocking Ads- Or there may be NO ATS at ALL

a reply to: theySeeme

I gladly openly challenge you here on ATS. We can create a topic in the appropriate section and duke it out with current and up to date information, technologies and configurations.

Oh boy, a showdown? I'm not one to shy away from a good debate but wouldn't it be simpler to just admit that you pulled a number out of your ass?

I'd also like to mention that this page (page 3 of this topic) is currently 14.2kb in size

If you can extrapolate the resource requirements from just the size of the html for a single page of posts, you're obviously some sort of supernatural being.

Why don't you start with what sort of server/specs you're expecting to get for $15-$25/month? Then we can talk about a realistic estimate of the resource overhead for the average page view for ATS and with that, it should be a relatively simple matter to come up with a rough estimate of the number of max concurrent users the server could handle. Be sure that you figure on hosting all the images from your $15-$25/month server too.

I feel SO has more than adequetely explained the realities going on here. Unless one wishes to assert that he's simply lying, at which point discussion becomes futile anyway. This post more than addresses the situation as far as I'm concerned:

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord

originally posted by: theySeeme
40 million hits per day on a website like this could be hosted on a $10 VPS (virtual private server) with like 1gb of RAM

Since cutting costs a while back, and moving to a lower-cost metered CDN provider for all the image assets, the cost of serving our images alone is several dozen times more than your estimate. Just for our images. The outbound bandwidth of our images exceeds the typical bandwidth allotments of dedicated servers by several times.


A bit more than a year ago, we engaged a professional IT management firm to review our full stack and recommend the most cost-effective hosting option, as well as optimization strategies for the stack. Most of the code optimizations have been either tested and discarded (trying to cache mysql queries was a disaster) or deployed. And we are running on robust but relatively inexpensive dedicated server. I have a low threshold for logging slow db queries, and check it regularly... there hasn't been any for months, so the code is well-optimized.

When people say, this site could be hosted for X, they typically don't consider some of the unexpected items for sites with more than four million distinct pages. One such item is search engine bots. On some days, more than half our overall total traffic can be non-human indexing agents, and it's never less than 30%. Looking at the live log right now, of the last 100 lines of access (which represents less than the last 5 seconds of activity), 70 are indexing agents. Each of those lines of the log from indexing agents is accessing a different thread page... that alone is 70 different queries against a database of 1+ million threads and 20+ million posts in less than 5 seconds.

Using our stats, we approached AWS, The Planet, and SoftLayer for quotes on a VPS solution. No one came in under $3,000/month. Google App Engine may have been a possible alternative, but looking at the datastore and processing cost estimates, it was going to be well over $2,000 a month. So it was more cost-effective to hire a professional IT firm to customize a high-performance dedicated server specific to our needs.

For me, ads are an irrelevancy that I can simply ignore and a small, small price to pay for this entirely free and monumentally useful, powerful, and yes, even entertaining resource, which I access almost daily.

The only thing SO has ever said on this topic that I disagreed with was the whole, "taking food off my table," criminal characterization comment. Which, while totally understandable from his point of view, is... unfortunate imo. Because my view of the ethics of this situation boil down to: everyone has the freedom to either ignore the ads, or not use the site. The site isn't something we're entitled to use. It's a private business and service and we are granted the privilidge of using it for free. It's voluntary. So from where I sit, it should be possible for things to be copacetic and harmonious and for everyone to simply say, "Okay, live and let live. You can use ad block if you wish, but you won't be able to use the site as others can," and, "Okay, live and let live. I'll just ignore the ads, or I won't use this site." That's everyone's prerogative, nothing is being forced on anyone, everything is fair, everything is voluntary, and it seems like a good compromise to me.

So when things get more heated... whether it be people accusing SO et al of just trying to profit for its own sake (which... wouldn't be an intrinsically bad thing in and of itself anyway by the way, imho) or SO or others accusing members of theft and so forth (even though I agree a valid argument can be made from that position,) it makes me sad. If only because I feel it's unecessary. The existing compromise already seems fair enough to allow disagreements to end simply with, "Okay fine, do what you want, no one is forcing anything on you," and vice-versa.

But then as you all know... I'm someone not inclined toward conflict and confrontation lol. So that could just be me.

That said, SO has even addressed this part of it all when he said:

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord

originally posted by: DupontDeux
I do not much appreciate being called a criminal.

Okay, I'm sorry. But please understand the frustrations that inspired it.

So... he even apologized, despite having very valid reasons to be very frustrated and passionate about this issue.

In short... can we all please make our peace with this reality in a manner that is constructive or at least based in decorum and mutual respect? Because it really does seem like no one is holding a gun to anyone's head on either side of the fence... except maybe the ad blocking services.

Peace.

Firstly I hate ads. I do not have cable anymore because of it.

However I do allow certain trusted sites to be whitelisted on my desktop.
This will be one of them.

On my handheld... sorry but no. My set is locked down and no ads are displayed at all.

So that is my compromise.

Like cable i can find ad free alternatives If the ads become a pain.

After being called a thief (taking food off SO's table) and him insinuating that I am violating copyright law for running an ad-blocker, I think that's about enough. Citing, on a conspiracy forum, the governments desire to crack down on something as some sort of justification for what is happening here was absurd.

When I first started coming here, this site was fantastic. There was a wealth of information and fantastic discussions around. As time went on, probably to appeal to more advertisers, the mods turned into thought police. The "civility and decorum" push was/is laughable. The constant "removed for violation of T&C" messages even worse. I am sure the advertisers and civility and decorum go hand-in-hand.

I can only speak for myself but I don't start topics on here because we have so many self-proclaimed experts on every topic that, no matter what you post, they shoot down your source, the wording of your post, etc. etc. This is a discussion forum and I am sure the majority of visitors work and have lives outside of it. Not everyone can dedicate hours out of their day to checking all sources to make sure the "expert" is presented with the most complete story possible.

If advertisers are here it is because people come to the forum. But, people don't come here to look at SO's artwork on tumblr, they come here to read user generated content. Calling the very people who made this place criminals was a bad move.

As I said in the last thread about this, this is the business you have chosen. Getting mad at people for blocking ads makes as much sense as a personal injury attorney getting mad at people for wearing seat belts. Not everyone is going to be in your corner and do what you need them to do to put the food on your table that I am apparently stealing. People are going to block ads. Maybe the art thing will pan out for you.


With that said, I doubt you care but adios. On to greener pastures.

Jesus. And here I was just hoping for a response or two, and maybe just to raise awareness a bit more, from a member, rather than site management, about the ad-blocking problem. Phew. Ok. Guess I did that. At the expense of being accused of star and flag whoring, applying to be mod (ha- no thank you), attention seeking, and what else now? Come on people, is that the best you've got? Insult me some more please.

*sigh*

And oh, thanks stormdancer and the people who responded positively. I am so glad at least you understand the problem. The idea here was simply to issue a wake up call from another long term member who really, really does not want this site to go down.

If I helped just one person to disable the adblock, then it was worth it. And oh, thanks to the mods too. You know who you are. And for the record no one asked me to make this thread. It was simply out of concern.

SO and Springer, maybe you ought to take ATS away completely for a whole month. Think that might get the point across?

Perhaps when we return, only the true ATSers will remain, which would be fine with me. There seems to be no point in serving up content to haters.

originally posted by: kaylaluv

originally posted by: theySeeme
a reply to: TrueAmerican

This is total B.S. As a computer programmer and web developer with over 13 years of experience I can without a doubt say that a site on the traffic and size (of database/text) could easily be hosted on a 15-25$/monthly plan.

This is not about ATS closing, it's about someone wanting to make a profit off of the website, nothing more.

You are making this claim. YOU prove it.

===

In terms of hosting costs THIS is something I know about
We have an old Z10 mainframe which at the time it was
bought was a 26 Million Dollar machine. We got it used
for a hell of a lot cheaper but for a still princely sum.
(i.e. somewhere less than 3 million)

Sounds EXPENSIVE? Oh yeah .... BUT the key factor
is if you have YOUR OWN server/mainframe you've got
IO's per second and users per second which that old iron
STILL HAS PLENTY OF --- We could host 3000 to 7000 users
at a time and STILL have headroom for the website apps!

The problem comes when you start serving video
at a DECENT streaming rate and quality which tends
to favor the big boys like Akamai. Problem is that
ANYTHING with video and BIG files is getting into
$15,000 a month for thousands of users (I have
the quote from Akamai!)

Telus here in Vancouver wanted to charge me
$40,000 a month so we went with our OWN
Big Iron and a Cisco super-switch (at $200k)
fibred directly to various edge servers at
basically a mere fibre connection and admin
cost of less than $7,000 month UNLIMITED
bandwidth. (multi-petabytes in our case!)

Problem is that for a site like ATS, the daily
ad revenue WOULD NEVER cover the cost
bandwidth/hosting on the big boy servers
like Akamai so they have to goto a Tier-2
(nah! its probably Tier-3/Tier-4 server)
which means bandwidth can get down
to $1500 to $2500 a month.

If they wanted to HOST their own server they need
at LEAST 5 four-CPU Opteron servers (using Opteron
6386SE chips at 16 cores each) which is gonna be at least
$7000.00 for each server with at least two terabytes of RAM
so that's $35,000 right there! Add in a fibre-channel NAS
(RAID disk array) at another $40,000 then that adds up.
Then add the electrical costs, HVAC, admin, IT personnel...!!!
AAAK! There is NO WAY that ATS can serve lots of users
with a gross yearly ad revenue that's probably
only about $375,000 a year or less!

Put the site on someone else's big iron
and lots of petabyte-class fibre bandwidth
THEN things get different and the site could
change and GROW the userbase to make
the $25,000 to $35,000 a month IT
costs viable for the investors.

ATS is an 800,000 UNIQUE visitors website!
That could be grown to a few million+
and therefore get that ad revenue into
the $100,000 a month arena which means
my gross profit is $65,000+/mnth or three quarters
of a million a year. NOT BAD for a cool website business.

If I go TRULY international with multi-lingual boards,
I could get ad revenue into the $400,000 a month
or about $4.8 million a year with basically a few
extra international staff members. Serve up
some specialty live forums and guest speakers
with some Art Bell-like audience viewership
then I'm doing at least $10 mil a year!
I can handle that sort of Profit!

So no matter WHAT ATS DOES,
they either need to GO BIG or their
monthly server/bandwith costs will
kill them dead after taxes and loan costs!

You need to go for Art Bell like mods
and SAVVY young video presenters
who will BRING IN AUDIENCES.
Then goto a tech venture cap fund
and get the 5 to 10 million up front to
get your OWN truly BIG IRON and
bandwidth infrastructure!

I use a translated page see the ads on the left and can not see the images of visitors. on right proper symbolic meaning of this advertising. gives the impression that the administration of the website or website of advertising , or both of them they other unconventional orientation

Could "the management" be transparent with their revenue figures?

originally posted by: StargateSG7
ATS is an 800,000 UNIQUE visitors website!

According to Google Analytics, we're almost double that at 1.4 million monthly uniques. GA is a reliable standard in traffic analysis.

I got into a bit more detail in this post.

Bottom line, 100+ content hits in less than 5 seconds, 70% of which (in that snapshot) were non-human indexing agents.

originally posted by: theySeeme
Thats not true. This website does not require keep-alive connections nor does it load much of anything outside of text. The only resource intensive feature of this website is the database and PHP - which are still relatively minimal in use in today's tech field.

If you do not have active (as in current, present) experience in the web field, you will have no idea.

I think you missed my response to you in this post.

It's impossible to host a basic Wordpress site that gets moderate traffic at the numbers you're tossing around.

Seriously, you're not being helpful here. Your numbers are way off.

originally posted by: TrueAmerican
SO and Springer, maybe you ought to take ATS away completely for a whole month. Think that might get the point across?

Perhaps when we return, only the true ATSers will remain, which would be fine with me. There seems to be no point in serving up content to haters.

After having read through the various threads covering this subject, and having seen the disgusting display of entitlement and selfishness by more than a few people I am starting to think this is a good idea. Cull the herd, so to speak.

a reply to: Kryties

After having read through the various threads covering this subject, and having seen the disgusting display of entitlement and selfishness by more than a few people I am starting to think this is a good idea. Cull the herd, so to speak.

Culling the herd are you kidding me....you have noticed that not many people post and add content right ....far out culling the herd would be like cutting your nose off despite your face, this site needs more active traffic not less

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

Culling the herd are you kidding me....you have noticed that not many people post and add content right ....far out culling the herd would be like cutting your nose off despite your face, this site needs more active traffic not less

But if most of that "herd" is blocking ads anyway then what are they contributing?

a reply to: TrueAmerican

What about people like me who would Love to conttibute,but in my country you need a credit card to use Paypal? And we don't have a credit card,nor will we be able to get one.My husband is blacklisted due to financial catastrophes.

I have made threads,and been told more than once by a new member that my thread was the reason they joined.I post regularly,whether my opinions are popular or not.I expect i shall be making more threads at points in the future,and i often mention ATS as being worth a look,to people i talk to on the net.

Not everyone who doesn't financially contribute,do so because they are freeloaders or parasites.I have contributed lots of content and although we are poor,i could contribute a very small amount a month,like $10- Because the exchange rate makes it impossible for me to donate $50 a month,even if i Could use Paypal.

As for ads,i don't see many but pile 'em on my pages if it helps.

a reply to: Raxoxane

I don't know about where you live, but here in Mexico it is very easy.

I pay for a VPN monthly and one option is to pay by cell phone. You simply click on a link saying you want to pay by your cell phone give them your number, they send you an sms code, you type it into the web browser and they deduct the funds from you cell carrier.

No need of a credit card, pay pal, or anything of the sort.

Also, to make a note to those listening. The amount you have to pay in Mexican pesos is a lot less than this VPN charges in US dollars, which is very respectable. They understand that a peso is worth a lot less than a dollar. So while they charge $5 a month USD in pesos I only pay $29MXN from the cell phone.

I'm sure ATS can get a system like that going real easy.

originally posted by: ReadLeader
a reply to: TrueAmerican

Come on all! The adds are not that bad- look at the trade to be on the best site for conspiracy and general knowlage sharing!

ETA, I mentioned before, I dont have any problems w/the adds..

Have you seen what happens to many of us when we don't block ads? There have been so many ads in ATS that at times I couldn't even get on, I would wait 15-20 minutes of trying, and retrying to get on. I am not kidding. At times the browser would simply give me an error because too many ads tried to load. My pc is an 8 core i7 5960x @3.00 GHz, and my download speed is around 850-880 Mbps, and upload 10-12Mbps, and every time I tried to get on ATS it was the same thing.

Then there were those ads that when you tried to log on, as you were clicking to put your login name, after waiting, and waiting for every ad to load, it clicked on a truck ad (can't remember if it was GM or RAM) that suddenly popped in a large window exactly as we clicked on the login boxes. It simply took way too long to try to log, and then it was slow trying to change pages to look at another topic.

I wouldn't mind a few ads, but every time I tried to log on ATS it gave me flashbacks of the really slow DSL loading times back in the early 90s... It was sooooooooooo slooooooooooooooooooow. It also only happened on ATS even though I use other sites that also use ads, but not as heavy as ATS.

If ATS wasn't so heavy on ads, I am sure a lot of members such as myself wouldn't use ad blockers.

originally posted by: Kryties

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

Culling the herd are you kidding me....you have noticed that not many people post and add content right ....far out culling the herd would be like cutting your nose off despite your face, this site needs more active traffic not less

But if most of that "herd" is blocking ads anyway then what are they contributing?

They are contributing to the content of the site, the stuff that you and i keep coming back to read...

The ads are nothing more than a source of income to run the site and one would hope make some money with too

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse

originally posted by: ReadLeader
a reply to: TrueAmerican

Come on all! The adds are not that bad- look at the trade to be on the best site for conspiracy and general knowlage sharing!

ETA, I mentioned before, I dont have any problems w/the adds..

Have you seen what happens to many of us when we don't block ads? There have been so many ads in ATS that at times I couldn't even get on, I would wait 15-20 minutes of trying, and retrying to get on. I am not kidding. At times the browser would simply give me an error because too many ads tried to load. My pc is an 8 core i7 5960x @3.00 GHz, and my download speed is around 850-880 Mbps, and upload 10-12Mbps, and every time I tried to get on ATS it was the same thing.

Then there were those ads that when you tried to log on, as you were clicking to put your login name, after waiting, and waiting for every ad to load, it clicked on a truck ad (can't remember if it was GM or RAM) that suddenly popped in a large window exactly as we clicked on the login boxes. It simply took way too long to try to log, and then it was slow trying to change pages to look at another topic.

I wouldn't mind a few ads, but every time I tried to log on ATS it gave me flashbacks of the really slow DSL loading times back in the early 90s... It was sooooooooooo slooooooooooooooooooow. It also only happened on ATS even though I use other sites that also use ads, but not as heavy as ATS.

If ATS wasn't so heavy on ads, I am sure a lot of members such as myself wouldn't use ad blockers.

I can verify this.

Because while I did have my adblock on my computer I didn't on my tablet. And when I would log on to ATS with my tablet the adds were probably the worst I had ever seen on any website I have ever visited. Every thread I would open a huge popup would display and I would try to close it but instead of allowing me to close it it would open up a new page, and I would close that, and then try scrolling down to read comments and the big pop up would remain over everything blocking out almost everything.

And most of the adds were vulgar, buy this app for your phone to see through peoples' clothes, and so forth type of adds. Purely nonsense directed toward perverted and horney teenagers.

Trying to read ATS on a tablet for me has been a very very very horrible ordeal because of all of the ridiculous adds for a long time.

Owners, I want you to know, your adds suck so bad, and the way they behave, especially on tablets. It is horrible.

Horrible
Horrible.

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

They are contributing to the content of the site, the stuff that you and i keep coming back to read...

The ads are nothing more than a source of income to run the site and one would hope make some money with too

I would think there wouldn't be much point having content if it cannot afford to be hosted due to adblockers and people whinging.

Anyway you seem to have missed the point altogether. ATS is paid for by advertising. So if people use adblockers ATS doesn't earn enough to stay online, therefore there would be no forum at all for all these bloody whingers to come and cry about being asked to turn off their damn adblockers. How bloody selfish and entitled of them.

a reply to: JackReyes

I've never had that issue. I've never had an issue with overbearing or too many ads whatsoever.

Were you logged in?