Transparency On The Future of ATS

a reply to: SkepticOverlord
How much money does it take to keep this going, including how ever much profit it takes to keep you in it? Just a rough figure, no breakdown.

a reply to: IAMTAT

That also has MySpace at $30,660 and YouTube at $3 Billion. That is some odd metrics at work.

originally posted by: IAMTAT

originally posted by: randomtangentsrme

originally posted by: JBurns
a reply to: Bigburgh

What would such a venture even look like? I have about $75,000 in disposable income and could probably get financing for double that amount. Say $200 even on the safe side. Not nearly enough alone. I'd be willing to enter such a venture

Down the rabbit hole

*Sites like ATS matter and are crucial to maintain meaningful ways to express free apeech

This may have been mentioned before, but from what I was able to find-
ATS is valued at ~1.3 million, with revenue of about 300k per year.

Assuming the upgrades asked for are needed, 2-3 million will need to be raised to buy, sustain, and improve the site. It will take about 10 years to see a return on the investment, assuming the revenue is correct and it sustains at the same level.

Is there a listing of ATS assets with that 1.3M?

I looked into a previous posters web search, which linked into a web crawler. But it suggested the name is the 1.3 mill. number. So you are correct. There are assets at play that have not been accounted for.

Well...

Thanks a bunch for the ride boss....

As I learned so much from this site through the years...

improper quote function replied again to a different poster than was meant.

a reply to: IAMTAT

The search I did was for Abovetopsecret.com.

It's also only one web search, so no conflicting information.
But if SO is suggesting 25k a month in costs, the number fits.

a reply to: JBurns

You have a PM.

originally posted by: IAMTAT
THIS has ATS valued at

Estimated Worth
$ 10,182
Last updated on 19th June 2020 04:45:37 AM

www.getwebprice.org...

Under the current circumstances it is worth minus $10.182.
Of course the database with all the infos (aside the political chit chat of the last 4 years) is worth much more.

a reply to: JBurns

Anyone tried to contact chrisonabike?

www.abovetopsecret.com...&list=posts

He last visited May22nd and he posted some time in April so he must still have some interest in the site.

A long shot but maybe worth asking the question?

I would totally be down to donate/invest in this. If anyone wants to join up in an investment group together to take a go at being member run pm me! I would love to make a commitment to this site.

Skeptic made a great post about pooling funds and becoming Member run. I see your trying to find some investors.


Can we collaborate on this? How many members would we need to group with to have enough to make a reasonable offer? reply to: JBurns

originally posted by: SkepticOverlord

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
but $25k per month is quite a bit for something like this.

That figure was offered as the ball-park for total expenses: hosting, upgrades, etc.

A bit more than a year ago, I got a "friends and family" quote from trusted and talented developers that it might take 3-4 months and $15k-$20k a month to make everything ready for efficient hosting on a cloud platform like AWS.

$25k was my average sum... stuff always takes longer... it always costs more.

Highly encourage you to seek out other consultants here. A straight up 1 to 1 migration from whatever your current infrastructure is to AWS should not cost anywhere near those numbers.

1. Determine dependencies/packages your php 5.3 app needs to run. (Whatever extensions / libraries you've installed on the current box(es).

2. Set up your rds instance in aws, for this app youd probably want to go with a db.r5.xlarge. 4 compute units with 32GB of RAM. With a storage allocation of 100GB, this would cost you about 450/month (for Mysql-Aurora)

2b. Either dump your data and import to rds instance, or set up master/slave replication between your current instance and the aws instance and let replication complete. A few minutes to set up an rds instance, getting the data over is limited by network speeds. Once replication is complete, take a snap shot of the db and terminate the instance.


3. Fire up an EC2 instance (class doesnt matter as you are only using this to take an AMI) and pull down your code. Install all dependencies gathered in step one. Upgrade php 5.3. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD UPGRADE PHP5.3. Update your app's relevant confs to point to the new rds endpoint. In the perfect world this is only in one place. If not and you have dsn strings all over the place, grep/find and replace. Probably a good time to send your images to S3, probably can use s3 sync. Update image references to new S3 bucket. Take an AMI once you're done and terminate the instance.

4. Now you have an AMI and a snapshot of your stuff in AWS. But there are a few more things you'll want to do.

5. Request an ACM cert from AWS, DNS validation is usually instant, unless AWS determines your domain name is high value (you won't be able to do something like request a cert for walmart.com, for examle). Free SSL cert. Youll attach this to an ELB you'll create later.

6. Now you can start doing the cool #. Use terraform/cloudformation/some other orchestration tool to express your infrastructure. Let's go with cloudformation. Make a .yml file ( people that use json for this are the devil) and create:


A VPC: AWS's virtual private cloud. Youll assign a cidr block for things thats going to go in here. Think of it as a cloud network. In this VPC, you'll have two subsets, one that's your public subnet that will have an IGW attached to it and can route out to the internet and one thats private where only things that exist within the VPC can route to.

One auto scaling group: These will be your boxes. Judging off what I can see on sites like Alexa, id set this to min 2 max 4. You'll always have two instances, and will scale up to 4 when required ( Id do based on CPU usage, maybe scale out when usage is >=40 for 5 minutes). The would be c5 compute instances. You will provide the AMI you took for the launch configuration. This will be assigned to the public subnet of your VPC.

Mysql Aurora instance: youll pass in the snapshot you created earlier. This will be assigned to the private subnet of your VPC via db subnet group.

An Elastic Load Balancer : Attach the ARN from the cert generated earlier to this for SSL to the ELB ( really wouldn't need it to the boxes as at this point youre in AWS). This will forward traffic to your EC2 instances.


7. Run cloudformation create-stack and watch it fail several times because of stupid reasons.


8. Once you fix all the typos in the cloudformation template and the stack is up, update your dns records, add a CNAME record pointing the the ELB. You know what this is becuase you told your cloudformation template to output that resource.

Basic, but secure quick AWS deployment. Your security groups etc will all take time. Additional things like S3 bucket securing, multi AZ etc... will all take time.

But theres really no way that a move to AWS should cost anywhere near the numbers you've been given.

a reply to: AScrubWhoDied

A hundred thousand stars to you.

I'd gladly turn off my blocker if the ads didn't create issues for me. Which as long as I've been on ATS and across many diiferent computers has always been a problem for me.

Sell merch? Unless you already do and I just cannot find it. I would happily drop some cash on a coffee mug or t-shirt.

Honestly not sure why this site struggles so, both financially and technically. As a former web site designer and host. (Retired recently YAY!) I've never found it that difficult or expensive to run a website like ATS. aka a glorified forum. Then again I've seen a few websites over the years where the 'web master' alone gets paid thousands a month just for doing basically nothing. Seems common with American sites.

But alas just speculation because I have no idea of ATS's finances, like incoming money and where it goes. Are there paid staff for example? How much income is actually dedicated to the actual site and its costs?

Heck poorly optimized advertising, performance of the website in general and current events in the world due to covid-19 imho isn't even the real causes of traffic to the site dying.

The real problem is content on the site.

It used to feel like an international community here, and most of us came for the UFO's ghosts and bigfoots etc.

Now the front page is just American politics, same # over and over. And well most people coming here for trippy 'conspiracies' are generally met with the front page, and will look no further, a front page that is just U.S.A. Donald Trump this, Joe Biden that. The kind of crap we are inundated from other sites like Facebook and the MSM.

ATS has kind of lost what it used to be about. Yep I know if you go digging you'll find the UFO's etc, but new users and even some established ones don't even seem to know how to click 'new' and 'forums' at the top of the page.

The front page is what greets them and sets the 'tone' for the experience. Might be time to seriously cull the Trump/Clinton/Sanders threads back a bit, just kill back the politics in general. Especially when it is literally the same things being posted by the same people over and over.

Make ATS into what people came here for originally and what they expect it to be. Reckon you'll find the visitor counts will spike. But as long as it's just echoing the MSM and twitter on the front page it won't get any better.

Seriously, if I have Hamburgers at home, I'm unlikely to go out to McDonalds. Same applies for websites.

It's not just ATS, a lot of websites are going through this. People are tired of the same old same old. Many of us have expressed it, just to be ignored. I myself have been nuking accounts across the net Facebook, Reddit and more because it's all blurred together into one big 'MURICA echo chamber. (7+ billion people on the planet. The U.S only makes up 300 million of those.....)

Instead of worrying about the money. Focus on the content. Take this moment to ask yourselves (Springer and Co.) what do you want ATS to be? A top conspiracies site, or a mainstream media twitter clone?

If nothing changes, if the real issues behind the site failing are never addressed then it's never going to get back to where it needs to be.

ATS's appeal was it was different, offered topics not found elsewhere. Now it's turned into 'generic' post whatever gets you the most stars.
S&F over quality and content. And Orange Man and Co are easy high score makers requiring zero effort.

Try it, for one month block all "Orange Man Bad" posts and American politics in general from the front page. Allow only UFO, Supernatural, Cryptozoology, Top Secret Tech, etc etc threads to get on the front page. I reckon you'll see a difference.
You censor #pizzgate when you should be censoring the 6 o'clock news posts.

Seriously if I want Trump/Biden and other crap 24/7 I'll subscribe to fox news or CNN.

Just stop blaming the advertising revenue. This is a issue of management and site content. You manage the site properly, the revenue will come.

Now excuse me I'm going to go look at the billion "Black Lives Matter" and "Donald Trump is Destroying America" posts.... you know the kind of content that made me delete my accounts on many other much bigger websites.

I love ATS, but yeah, it hasn't been the ads or covid-19 making me visit less and less over the last 12 months.....

If the site gets sold, I recommend the new owners use their brains and change things, because insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, which it feels like ATS has been doing since at least the 2016 U.S election.

tl;dr quality, not quantity.


edit: oh and FFS get a bloody SSL. A website in 2020 without one is doomed no matter what it does. They don't cost that much. Hell you can even get them for free if you shop around.
Many of us who know what we're talking about have tried telling you this for a very long time now, and it just gets ignored or brushed off.
If I was a new visitor and saw no SSL I would 180 and nope the # outta here.

I would pay 15.00 per month for access. It's a great idea that would solve multiple issue's. Other conspiracy sites have done it for over ten years. Maybe only allowing limited access to freeloaders. Benjamin Fulfords setup seems to work well financially, although I dislike his framework. I would like to see a shift in networks to something similar to data over the citizens band, Clustering CB something like SETI but over CB??? Or maybe HAM...

originally posted by: AtomicKangaroo

The front page is what greets them and sets the 'tone' for the experience.

Instead of worrying about the money. Focus on the content.

Just stop blaming the advertising revenue. This is a issue of management and site content. You manage the site properly, the revenue will come.

tl;dr quality, not quantity.

many people have said it for years, put the political and religious poop flingers on a third tab. 1. "woo" 2. off topic 3. flingers. only woo on front page, it's what 90% of ppl come here for.

a reply to: SkepticOverlord

I think the short term solution to appease the ATS loyal horde (those that came from the desert , and were in search of UFO's , and other such weird things)
would be make a patreon and get a couple content providers
to make some standard ATS content about the new ATS

get patreons and get subs and then just from those donations by the required server space to host this
and just run from patreons

IM sure there are enough of us to keep it going
I already have patreon subscriptions for things , id be happy to donate to my own online sanctuary where I can discuss things I love with my online friends
well "carers"

Thanks

originally posted by: Emit1

originally posted by: AtomicKangaroo

The front page is what greets them and sets the 'tone' for the experience.

Instead of worrying about the money. Focus on the content.

Just stop blaming the advertising revenue. This is a issue of management and site content. You manage the site properly, the revenue will come.

tl;dr quality, not quantity.

many people have said it for years, put the political and religious poop flingers on a third tab. 1. "woo" 2. off topic 3. flingers. only woo on front page, it's what 90% of ppl come here for.

Yep, but they keep on ignoring it. Then wonder why things have turned out this way.
*insert Picard facepalm image here*

Maybe make the front page feature only the top post from each forum. So every topic gets featured. I dunno. There's definitely a tonne of different and better ways than how it's been done for many years now.

Sadly seen too many businesses go under from ignoring what people say they want, instead going with 'this is what we think you want' as if we are clueless about what we're looking for.

a reply to: Emit1

only woo on front page,

Woot!

originally posted by: SmikeS
I would pay 15.00 per month for access. It's a great idea that would solve multiple issue's. Other conspiracy sites have done it for over ten years. Maybe only allowing limited access to freeloaders. Benjamin Fulfords setup seems to work well financially, although I dislike his framework. I would like to see a shift in networks to something similar to data over the citizens band, Clustering CB something like SETI but over CB??? Or maybe HAM

CB doesn't have nearly the range you'd need (certainly not in the legal power ranges), you'd need thousands of relay sites which would all need to be connected together via leased land line.

The very low end of the amateur radio band could work (in theory), but only in certain areas at certain times in different areas of the band. Just look at how the old numbers stations used to have to hop all over the spectrum (yes, some of this was to avoid jamming, but it was also a propagation issue). Plus, this area of the amateur band takes the largest capital investment to get into, and requires a fairly significant technical background to understand the propagation. And the other thing is many people live in areas where they are prohibited from setting up the necessary equipment (i.e. large antenna arrays, etc.) due to HOA's and zoning laws. Yes, there are some ways around this, but they're challenging, and require even more technical skills.

I have to say though, the general concept would be really cool to see in action! Just imagine how mysterious ATS would become!! It would be the stuff legends are made of!! Members burning the midnight oil, surrounded by radio gear in some tiny dimly lit shack in some distant corner of the world, scanning the spectrum to pick up fragments of a broken ATS signal...man, almost sends chills of 'coolness' down your spine! Now something like that would make ATS the absolute coolest thing on planet Earth, hands down!