Update: Welp, it looks like the migration went swimmingly, and now I’m on a server with 2 GB or RAM and a lot of other space improvements. YAY! If anyone runs into any issues or more out of memory errors, please comment here or use the contact form to let me know so I can deal with any such problems as quickly as possible. Thanks for visiting folks!
Original: Hey guys, just wanted to give y’all a quick update about some site-related stuff.
First off, I’ve been getting a lot of memory errors with the site (which other people have noted as well), and while I’ve upgraded it to 1GB of RAM a while back, with the site growing in size and traffic, apparently that’s no longer enough. I’m therefore upgrading the site to a new server on my host with 2GB of RAM. The upside of this move is that the site should be even more reliable than ever, the bad news is that it costs twice as much as before. There might be some downtime this Friday morning/afternoon as the migration occurs, but hopefully it won’t be too long.
Interestingly enough, knowing that I’ll be paying as much as a mid-tier game every month just for hosting (along with backups and so on) makes me want to take this site even more seriously and put even more effort into it, because heck, now I’m paying what feels like serious money for the thing, I might as well use it to its fullest, right? ;) Kinda weird, but according to my girlfriend, it makes perfect sense. ;) While this will mean more videos and such (because they really allow me to put up content more efficiently given the time and energy I have), it should also mean I’ll be putting up more textual content as well, such as Q&As and Op-Eds, which will hopefully make everyone happy. :)
I’m excited about these changes both in the site’s reliability and my own attitude, and it’s because of every visitor I get (i.e. you awesome folks) that this is happening, because if my traffic was low or I barely updated the site, I wouldn’t need the upgrade. :) Anyway, just wanted to keep y’all in the loop in prep for possible downtime of the site but also possible up-time in terms of more content. ;) Thanks so much for visiting folks, and please let me know if you have any questions.
I haven’t tried them, but have you seen https://www.macminicolo.net/ ?
But…I’d need to supply them a Mac Mini…?
They’ll supply/configure one for you (if you pay for it…), but it becomes yours; if you quit the service, they mail it to you.
Hah, maybe once the site makes hundreds of dollars I can justify it. ;) Love the idea though.
Know the feeling Brian, SSC hosting has gone up and up over the years but worth it and the site makes enough to support the server and pay for maintenance on the software. The host I use does everything for me with backups (nightly) and any issue I have they solve or upgrade everything for me. My server fees are about the price of a AAA title every month on average, but paying for a year at a time helps bring down the cost most times. I could bring down SSC’s hosting fees a lot if I didn’t need all the HDD space and bandwidth, use up about 200-400GB a month on avg.
SSC runs on a 8CPU, 2.5GB Ram, 70GB HDD and 6TB Bandwidth virtual private server, and most times it isn’t your memory. You can do some PHP tweaks to handle things better and talk to the support about things you see in the logs or do some google searches. the sales people will always try to make you upgrade. But personally your running a WP Blog with a forum, you could easily run that on 1GB. I would look into the php.ini file properties and does your host give you access to edit php config and apache? And enable some logging (most hosts can provide reports or logs) of memory/cpu usage. Just some thoughts, because I do this for fun and don’t intend to make a ‘fortune’ doing this. As long as the site pays its bills it will be around as long as I am :)
Now al I wish for is more time to play these great games and do videos and reviews (darn kids and jobs).
Hey man, good to see you and welcome! I’ve played with my install a bit, but I’ve not tried some of the stuff you’ve mentioned as well. I don’t mind upgrading though as that gives me room to grow, and the site thankfully is growing. :) As for php.ini, what would I be looking for? I’m kinda learning PHP at the moment.
The main attributes to configure in php5.ini (and make sure you are on php5 and not 4) are these, and sometimes the host does restrict these values on the server so you may need to find out what your boundaries are.
post_max_size=
memory_limit=
upload_max_filesize=
max_execution_time=
max_input_time=
tweaking the above values should help with some stability and performance issues, but it all depends on the server hosting options you have to what these can be set to. I would talk to your host. Or if you do have dedicated hosting or VPS you should be able to set these yourself without the server overriding them.
I tried WP for a while myself but it was difficult to combine all the tools/apps I wanted into a site and was a mess when upgrading and adding new functionality.
Hey, what would be solid values for these, do ya think? I wanna talk to my host about it.