Technical problems and a simple solution to it all

How about letting your users help you?

ATS requires money to run, that much is obvious. So how could an average Joe help you? Obviously, by throwing money in your general direction.

Set up Patreon, or perhaps some bitcoin-backed alternative for privacy, calculate your goal needed to keep the site running without any ads, and when that goal is met with some safety buffer, make it run properly?

No hangs with "too many connections" and "site under maintenance" like I just got, no ads, SSL certificate from letsencrypt, if current hosting is a problem then find another one, where you'll have full control over VPS without some cron jobs messing with your site. How does that sound?

One other site I'm using went that route, and they were free to use without any ads to begin with - but faced possible extinction. Now they're alive thanks to Patreon and it's all working nicely, taxes paid, everything's fine.

Think about it. And if you're a user willing to help ATS in this way, drop a message here.

a reply to: jedi_hamster

Over the last two months ATS has almost become unusable from 28 to 55 minutes past the hour ... Long Long delays

originally posted by: 727Sky
a reply to: jedi_hamster

Over the last two months ATS has almost become unusable from 28 to 55 minutes past the hour ... Long Long delays

yeah, i'm wondering if it's not the WATS/karma score recalculation that's causing it. if that's causing issues, i would just butcher those two things, i doubt anyone cares anyway.

I guess I would consider a donation to get it all ad free.
I really love ATS, the (now necessary) ads, not so much...

ATS works great for me. no ads at all and the site doesn't lag daily, only on the odd occassion but i assume thats when more people are using it, also it's my cache which often needs cleaning.

a reply to: jedi_hamster

The possible problem with us paying, is what happens when they want to boot someone ?
Even older. established members get booted sometimes.

Speed is fine here, but since installing a VPN: images, avatars, and icons don't display anymore.
Sometimes they do when giving a right-click, and selecting 'load-image, sometimes...

originally posted by: 727Sky
a reply to: jedi_hamster

Over the last two months ATS has almost become unusable from 28 to 55 minutes past the hour ... Long Long delays

Something in the ATS software seems to deteriorate every couple of years. Complaints from users mount. ATS is taken offline for several hours. She comes back running like new. From what I've experienced the past 2 weeks, it's almost that time again.

originally posted by: Nothin
a reply to: jedi_hamster

The possible problem with us paying, is what happens when they want to boot someone ?
Even older. established members get booted sometimes.

Speed is fine here, but since installing a VPN: images, avatars, and icons don't display anymore.
Sometimes they do when giving a right-click, and selecting 'load-image, sometimes...

nothing would change. someone deserves a boot, someone gets a boot. notice i've mentioned patreon or even bitcoin-based alternative as a solution. you're donating, not paying for a service. doesn't give you any special rights.

also, notice how those that don't complain, usually either have half of the stuff blocked (ads, sometimes images), or are using specific browser (samsung one?) in case of mobile, that does more or less the same.

the way i see it, there are two kinds of problems. one is architectural - something on the server is wrong. wether it's because of the ATS internal design (WATS/karma score cron jobs or something like that), or independent from ATS entirely, no idea. but that has to be fixable either way - just in case it's external problem, it may need some resources - read as, new server.

second problem are ads - they are causing problems for people. the fact this site doesn't use SSL yet, is likely a side effect of ads - browsers start blocking mixed content, so it's either full SSL or no SSL at all. but that's just an ugly side effect, other problems were described in a thread someone started recently.

getting rid of ads when the site has enough cash to run on, and possibly getting a new server, should solve all that, assuming those hangs aren't a result of some internal screwup - but still, that should be fixable.

dunno, maybe i'm an optimist, but i know one other site that runs on cash from patreon and has enough support to function on a single patreon post for months. operational costs aren't that high, it's more a matter of "how much do they wanna earn". owners of that other site use cash from patreon to cover the costs only. how ATS performs financially, that's something we don't know.

but a bit of openness about technical issues with the site as well as with the ads, wouldn't hurt i guess.

originally posted by: CrazeeWorld777
ATS works great for me. no ads at all and the site doesn't lag daily, only on the odd occassion but i assume thats when more people are using it, also it's my cache which often needs cleaning.

My experiences mirror these.

originally posted by: Arnie123

originally posted by: CrazeeWorld777
ATS works great for me. no ads at all and the site doesn't lag daily, only on the odd occassion but i assume thats when more people are using it, also it's my cache which often needs cleaning.

My experiences mirror these.

yeah, since you're using samsung browser as i remember? "no ads" certainly means the website is NOT working as supposed, and as it works for most people.

SO used to fix things up when the site got wonky.
But he seems to have jumped ship a year or 2 ago.

Maybe no one is left that knows whats under the hood?