Featured: Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2019!

Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2019!

Stone Worlds: Narrative and Reflexivity in Landscape Archaeology

Stone Worlds: Narrative and Reflexivity in Landscape Archaeology

Who's Online

There are currently, 345 guests and 4 members online.

You are a guest. To join in, please register for free by clicking here

Sponsors

<< Photo Competitions >> Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ

Submitted by Andy B on Saturday, 13 March 2004  Page Views: 7558

Rock ArtDear All,
We're now up and running again. We had become too popular for the server I upgraded to in January. I was going to send a mail out threatening to close the site, but on reflection I feel that would be rather dishonest as I'm sure you all know that it means too much to me to it to shut it down.

Instead, I've paid for another hosting upgrade, which is now costing me $99 (£53) a month. At least exchange rates are working on our favour at the moment.

This will bring our total web hosting bill for 18 months to over £1200 ($2300). I'm a fairly ordinary person with a small house, wife and kids so we run the online shop and ask for contributions towards our costs. The shop sells original CD-ROMs, very reasonably priced books, rings, T-shirts and lots more.

The recent site suspensions have been due to the high resource usage of our real-time pages and map plotting features. This is purely due to our popularity, with up to 100 users browsing at once. No data has been lost in the suspensions so please carry with on your submissions.

I worked night and day last weekend blocking unwanted search engine traffic and adding complex efficiency improvements to the core SQL database queries. I increased the page loading speed but it wasn't enough to bring the resource usage down. It also introduced some obscure problems with user logins so I'll probably take these changes out again.

The eGallery and photo posting restrictions are now removed.

If you think $99/month is a lot of money for web hosting, this gets us 1/3 to 1/2 of a 2GHz Pentium 4 server, and the OK to use up to 512MB of RAM.

The site is currently peaking at about 300MB RAM use at the moment (!) so this gives some margin for growth, without shutdowns. We also get 45GB Diskspace and 600GB Bandtwidth a month. Yes, that's 45 Gigabytes of web space. Enough for rather a lot of photos. :-)

If anyone would like some web space in return for a donation this could be a good way to bring in some money. We will also be looking to sell advertising or sponsorship of appropriate things on the Portal.

I have seriously considered setting up my own server, but I don't think I could handle the worry of having to install/maintain/backup/secure our own server on top of all the other things I'm doing. Quite frankly, the level of time and money commitment is not going down well with my wife and kids as it is. Vicky and the other volunteers are working very hard also, so we could really use more contributions of all sorts.

Thanks for reading,
Andy

Note: We're upgraded, please get posting again. Now, more than ever, we are relying on sales from our online shop to keep running.

<< Latest Poll: What IS the biggest threat?

Prize for the 6000th photo, Images from all over the world >>

Please add your thoughts on this site

Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods

Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods

Sponsors

Auto-Translation (Google)

Translate from English into:

"Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ" | Login/Create an Account | 9 News and Comments
  
Go back to top of page    Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Re: Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ by Andy B on Tuesday, 16 March 2004
(User Info | Send a Message)
Hello,
Thanks for the kind offers, which I'll be in touch about. I'm updating the shop at the moment so please send details of any new products over.

Please list second-hand books for sale in our Forum where there's a special section.
Cheers,
Andy
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ by Anonymous on Tuesday, 16 March 2004
Hiya peeps, ive sent an order today, and a donation to you today, happy spring equinox this w.e.,and after our deep fall of snow in the cotswold, at last some sunshine!
Was "dragonslair" now Mother_JadeWood
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ by Anonymous on Sunday, 14 March 2004
Dear Andy, To help the site, will donate ten of my books, sold through academic bookshops, the British Museum ordered some copies eighteen months ago. These sell for £3.50. Arthur, Burbage. Leic`s. email for an address to send,if of interest.
[ Reply to This ]
    Re: Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ by Andy B on Sunday, 14 March 2004
    (User Info | Send a Message)
    Thanks Arthur, I'd like to do that.
    Andy
    [ Reply to This ]
    Re: Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ by Anonymous on Tuesday, 16 March 2004
    Dear Anonymous
    Which books are you willing to sell, I too am selling my personal old library, I at present sell through amazon.co.uk marketplace, as I have no other outtlets, Im selling secondhand books on the occult, witchcraft and research into magical systems, and nature sites in UK.Also 1950s childrens classics, two GIRL ANNUALS, from the daily sketch, and lovely new art books.
    MotherJadeWood @ Perelandra
    [ Reply to This ]

Re: Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ by Anonymous on Sunday, 14 March 2004
Andy,

I run small map business with a friend and would be happy to advertise with you! We have built up over 20 000 old OS maps in six years. We principally reproduce maps but do sell some large scale originals too. Are you interested? I think we would not compromise your site at all, what do you think? Let me know, as I would love to give the site some support,
Belinda Bucahanan 01600 869009
[ Reply to This ]

Re: Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ by Lissyvigeen on Saturday, 13 March 2004
(User Info | Send a Message)
I'm not much of a shopper, but would be happy to pay a modest amount in dues... e.g. through Pay Pal (as I live in the U.S.). Given the number of members and the cost of running the site for a year... How much does each member need to contribute annually?

BTW, though I'm not very active here, this is, IMO, the ultimately most wonderful megalithic etc. site on the web.
[ Reply to This ]
    Re: Megalithic Portal upgraded and costs tripled PLEASE READ by Andy B on Sunday, 14 March 2004
    (User Info | Send a Message)
    Thanks for the kind comments, I can accept Paypal. A suggested subscription is £10 ($20). See the Contribute to our running costs link at bottom left.
    Cheers.
    Andy
    [ Reply to This ]

Contributing by cereus on Friday, 12 March 2004
(User Info | Send a Message)
Andy,
How can I contribute without sending money? You know that I live in Sweden. I do photographic images. So far these are only from Sweden, but still images of remains fof the megalithic era. I am willing to contribute with my images to your shop, one way or another.
/Jan Bernhardtz
[ Reply to This ]

Your Name: Anonymous [ Register Now ]
Subject:


Add your comment or contribution to this page. Spam or offensive posts are deleted immediately, don't even bother

<<< What is five plus one as a number? (Please type the answer to this question in the little box on the left)
You can also embed videos and other things. For Youtube please copy and paste the 'embed code'.
For Google Street View please include Street View in the text.
Create a web link like this: <a href="https://www.megalithic.co.uk">This is a link</a>  

Allowed HTML is:
<p> <b> <i> <a> <img> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <tt> <li> <ol> <ul> <object> <param> <embed> <iframe>

We would like to know more about this location. Please feel free to add a brief description and any relevant information in your own language.
Wir möchten mehr über diese Stätte erfahren. Bitte zögern Sie nicht, eine kurze Beschreibung und relevante Informationen in Deutsch hinzuzufügen.
Nous aimerions en savoir encore un peu sur les lieux. S'il vous plaît n'hesitez pas à ajouter une courte description et tous les renseignements pertinents dans votre propre langue.
Quisieramos informarnos un poco más de las lugares. No dude en añadir una breve descripción y otros datos relevantes en su propio idioma.