Forum Service Outage

[downzy]

Apologies for having to take the forum offline for a few days.

Forum hosting costs being what they are, it's is financially unfeasible to run a forum like this one where people only show up for the first show of every tour.

Previous first shows cause hosting costs to jump dramatically.  I was happy to pay for the increased costs for two reasons:

1) People would often stick around and support the forum through their frequent visits and use.  

2) The excitement or possibility of something new from the band made paying out of pocket for increased costs tolerable.  

Neither of those two conditions exist anymore.  

Had GNR given forum fans something new or exciting to talk about, we would have kept the forum open.  But I hope everyone can understand why I opted to shut the forum down for two days.  My appetite to spend hundreds of extra dollars for a band that has been playing the same show for the past five years is gone.  

We appreciate your cooperation and understanding.

Cheers!

[downzy]

One additional note: the forum wasn't shut to prevent people from criticizing the band or shitting on any one member. 

It was purely a financial decision. 

Due to our hosting provider increasing costs so dramatically due to two or three busy days, it's not worth it considering the state the band is at present.  

[Sosso]

You could create a fundraiser. Just a thought. 

[double talkin jive mfkr]

yeah i thought it was hacked! lol 

 

[Naupis]

Should probably sticky this on the GNR section so everyone sees it. Most people don't come down to this section.

[axlinkafayette]

Wise decision.  I'm waiting for Axl to just call it a day and retire at this point.  They have NO intention of doing anything as far as new music goes.  That would actually require effort

[jimisbatman]

I thought it was shut due to new leaks/released music or something, and the influx crashed servers.........dont know why I torment myself with lofty ideas of new music

[AxlRoseCDII]

Completely understandable decision. Don’t think anyone can fault you given the current state of the band. I hope you are taking care.

[jamillos]

Suggestions: 
1. Keep the forum accessible to registered users only. No more "guests". All the guests would see is a login page. 
2. Kick out anyone who registers and then doesn’t log in for a certain period of time, similarly to Discord. 
3. Temporarily disallow registering of new users around times like the beginning of a tour or anything exciting of the sort. Imagine the traffic when they actually release a new single...
4. ?????
5. Profit. 

Edited August 3, 2021 by jamillos

[jacdaniel]

Some the above suggestions might work. 

What about a go fund me page or something similar? 

If pay to be disappointed by guns every so often 

[kanecrescente]

Them fuckin pesky underpants gnomes... they probably stole Axl's voice too 

[Stay.Of.Execution]

What's going to happen if (luzifer forbid) they somehow release something? Will this forum be shut down for years?

[Lio]

4 hours ago, jamillos said:

Suggestions: 
1. Keep the forum accessible to registered users only. No more "guests". All the guests would see is a login page. 
2. Kick out anyone who registers and then doesn’t log in for a certain period of time, similarly to Discord. 
3. Temporarily disallow registering of new users around times like the beginning of a tour or anything exciting of the sort. Imagine the traffic when they actually release a new single...
4. ?????
5. Profit. 

I agree with this.

First I'll say I know nothing about the finances of the forum, but I did feel annoyed at not being able to access the forum on a show day. It's kind of the point of being on a GNR forum to discuss when something happens with the band. Even if the first show of a new tour is the same as many past others. Like someone said: what if there actually is a release? That will generate a lot more traffic. Will we be able to discuss that on the forum? Or find info? Or do we have to resort to Discord or wherever else?

Seems a bit pointless to only be able to go on a GNR fan forum when nothing is happening (granted, which is most of the time anyway).

Isn't there any possibility to make it 'members only' during that time? I'd be willing to pay a few bucks to be able to go on the forum on moments where people actually want to talk to other GNR fans.

[DTJ80]

Fair enough. I kept checking back every few hours in the hope it was back up….🤣

[allwaystired]

I just appreciate having somewhere to come and chat stuff, so whatever it takes to keep the board going, go for it. 

Thanks for making the efforts to keep it going. This place has actually been a real help to me over the past year or so. I appreciate that. 

[Dean]

Just now, allwaystired said:

I just appreciate having somewhere to come and chat stuff, so whatever it takes to keep the board going, go for it. 

Thanks for making the efforts to keep it going. This place has actually been a real help to me over the past year or so. I appreciate that. 

This. 100%.

[James Bond]

Honestly, I wouldn't even have blamed you for hearing that Welcome to the Jungle and pulling the plug permanently to begin the conversion into MyIronMaidenForum.com.

[Gnrcane]

Complete understand why you did it.  In the future maybe you could notify in advance.  That way you don't get traffic of people checking the forum in the first place.

[gnr5]

Makes sense.

Is it possible to switch to a hosting provider with unlimited bandwidth?

[Sosso]

4 hours ago, DTJ80 said:

Fair enough. I kept checking back every few hours in the hope it was back up….🤣

Haha, me too. That shit felt like Cold Turkey for me, lol 

[DTJ80]

3 minutes ago, Sosso said:

Haha, me too. That shit felt like Cold Turkey for me, lol 

What’s that saying…..you don’t know what you got til it’s gone…..🤣

I clearly rely on this forum more than I thought!

[6lake sa66ath]

Thanks for the explanation and for all you do 

[downzy]

11 hours ago, jamillos said:

Suggestions: 
1. Keep the forum accessible to registered users only. No more "guests". All the guests would see is a login page. 

That doesn't solve our problems as much as we would like unfortunately.

The forum currently is in "members" mode whereby only Club and regular members can view the forum.  Guests can't read anything at this point, but they can still technically visit the forum.  Right now thee are over 150 guests who are on the forum, even if they can't read it. 

Even when I took the forum offline during the first show we were visited by a lot of people, members and guests alike.  A visitor is a visitor according to our host provider (since technically the visitor is using up hosting resources), whether they can actually read/access the forum or not.

11 hours ago, jamillos said:

2. Kick out anyone who registers and then doesn’t log in for a certain period of time, similarly to Discord. 

This solution conflicts with our one user per person policy.  It also wouldn't move the needle all that much if those who registered a long time ago only show up on first concert days, but are now a guest instead of user.

It would also drastically increases the workload for the admin staff.  There are 50k+ members of this forum.  Most haven't logged in here for awhile.  If we were to start deleting or blocking all these accounts, @alfierose and I would likely be inundated with DMs with members who want to view the site when we limit it to users.  

11 hours ago, jamillos said:

3. Temporarily disallow registering of new users around times like the beginning of a tour or anything exciting of the sort. Imagine the traffic when they actually release a new single...

We actually haven't cleared new accounts for almost the last six months.  There are reasons why we have chosen to shut out new accounts that I don't want to go into at the moment.  But one I can explain is that the forum population is about the size that works for long-time regular members, staff, and for financial considerations.  It use to be a GNR tour or huge news could sustain increased hosting costs because people would stick around longer.  That's no longer the case.  People will show up a day before and two days after to voice their disdain (and who's kidding who, rightfully so) for how little the band has changed or gotten worse and then leave.  Hosting costs are per month, but they can shoot up dramatically if traffic increases dramatically over a short period of time.  Unfortunately they do not average out traffic over the month, but over a much shorter period of time.  If we have a busy couple of days, our hosting provider charges me as though it's busy the entire month.  There was a time where I would eat the costs because I love the community and wanted to do my part for the fans.  But I've reached my financial limit to what I can spend on a band that continues to disappoint the online fan community.  

11 hours ago, jamillos said:

4. ?????

Interesting!  Tell me more!

6 hours ago, Lio said:

5. Profit.

This forum has never generated a net profit for me since the day I bought it in January of 2014.  The first few years prior to the reunion the forum ran at a small annual loss, but something that was within my budget.  From 2016 through 2017 when everyone was loving the reunion, the forum did return some decent profits.  But those profits were then returned to the forum members via prizes (books, ticket giveaways, pre-party drinks) and thank you gifts for staff members (custom shirts, tickets, etc).  I did keep a small $500-$600 surplus coming out of those years anticipating a return to loss but that's all gone now.  Small monthly losses are easy to justify; larger losses in the hundreds of dollars per month are not.  So I do what I can to manage the interests of the forum versus my own financial interests.  That means there might be a day or two of service outages to avoid being out of pocket for hundreds of dollars during times when nothing good is coming from the band. 

If the band were to dramatically revamp their line up, release new music, or Axl found his voice again, I would be much more inclined to pay for higher hosting costs.  It's not my intention to shut this down when there are actually good things to talk about.  But as for now, there are no simple solutions to the problems both this forum faces and those we face as a fan community generally.  The only real solution to this issue lies with the band itself.  And frankly, I don't have a lot of faith that we'll see much from them to make our lives better in that respect.

Thanks for the suggestions.  Please keep them coming if you think of anything else.  

10 hours ago, jacdaniel said:

Some the above suggestions might work. 

What about a go fund me page or something similar? 

If pay to be disappointed by guns every so often 

I really am not a fan of the charity/begging route to keep the lights open 24-7-365. 

People are welcome to become Club Members if they wish to financially support the forum and receive perks.  But I'm not comfortable with leveraging the operation of this forum based on the charity of others.  

[downzy]

3 hours ago, gnr5 said:

Is it possible to switch to a hosting provider with unlimited bandwidth?

It is but it's a ton of work and no guarantees that life would be better.

Our current provider takes care of all technical issues, including security.  Moving to a third-party hosting provider might provide us with a bit more flexibility and cheaper hosting costs, but it would likely require a lot more of my time and attention, and both are in short supply in my non-forum life. 

Maybe some day. 

[allwaystired]

How about taking an approach to it where outages are planned around spikes? Perhaps say it'll be offline for a day or so either side of the first leg of each run, when traffic will likely be at it's highest? Obviously unpredictable spikes can't be accounted for, but the predictable ones could be? 

You could also maybe just pop something at the top, in bold, at certain times asking people not to do things like refreshing too much (if that makes a difference) or simply asking them to be a bit sparing with how much they visit at busy times. It won't solve all the problem of course, but might have a bit of an impact?