Well we just broke the 30,000 members mark today!

...Um, I wasn't going to mention this next part yet because I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but I think we fixed the frequent down times too with a ram upgrade last night. We doubled the ram in the server last night and so far today, the website feels pretty zippy. tonight will tell when there are loads of people online so we'll see how she holds up.

If it crashes, then I know we got other issues. I mean we still might as I am looking at the possibility of having to have the database gone through by IPS (the website software people), but I wanted to upgrade the ram first. The reason I have not upgraded it until now was because of cost. It's $25 per GB per month and we got 4gb ram now, so that was a bit of a jump for me to afford another $50 a month but it was a much needed thing that really couldn't wait too much longer..

As I am posting this, we're running around 300 simultaneous users and a server load average of 2 which is a healthy dose of people and traffic. Normally you don't want the load average over that but this time yesterday, I think she would have crashed with this amount of traffic and drove the load average way over the crash mark (around 10 or so)... SO like I said, hopefully we got it straightened out, but we'll all see what happens tonight, tomorrow and over the next few days.

Anyway, congrats to ASF for breaking the 30,000 members mark today and let's all cross our fingers that lack of ram was the persistent crash problem

great question and I wish I knew why the data center does that, but its the way it is. I think it sucks.

nope, it's $25 / a month per GB - per data center terms

Correct, its costing me an extra $50 a month for the extra 2gb ram we went to. And as far as the monthly data transfer in GB ? lol.... guess again. how about 146 - 150 GB / month

correct - that's exactly what it is, a leased server. co-located is the other option where you own your own equipment but the problem is - you also have to provide your own support too and that can be a real nightmare and tremendous expense when having to hire a 3rd party support center to manage it.

Well the good new (in contrast to the high pricing I get from the data center) is that #1 they are always available when I need them, and #2 the ram was definitely the fix because we really haven't had any real down times to speak of (knock on wood) - so YEAH!

More good news is that our traffic stats are going through the roof because of the sustained up times as of recently. We're averaging about 15,000+ unique visitors and more than 200,000 page view PER DAY now! We're also averaging about 200 new members each week too so everyone, grab a newbie and be nice to them and pretty soon those newbies will be experts like many of you already here and the competition better run for the hills at that point lol ... did I say knock on wood yet ?