Wiki, bandwidth, and server

Post by **Lucifer** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:19 pm

Ok, my webserver's got too much traffic now. It was getting noticeably bad with the cable connection, but since I started with this dsl connection that computer's become unusable. The webserver sent out 2.5GB so far this month. That doesn't sound like much, but when you consider that it's all something like 100k shots of php scripting, that translates into a lot of computing power being used.

None of the solutions are pretty, but here they are:

* Do something hardcore to reduce traffic. This depends largely on what I can figure out to do, and I"m no apache expert.

* Buy a new server that can handle the load, thus freeing up the machine that's back there.

* Move to a rented server (the most expensive option).

Most of the traffic is the wiki, which is what makes it y'all's problem too. The question is where is the money going to come from? I just plain don't have it, I'm pretty far behind on a number of important computer expenses. Hell, I only last week finally got a backup hard drive plugged in, and it wound up being $140 for a usb hard drive.

So, suggestions? (Naturally I have some of my own, but I want y'all to make some suggestions)

Post by **Tank Program** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:36 pm

Maybe some sort of round-robin on the wiki with the MySQL mirroring stuff?

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 8:12 pm

I offer what I have. The network connection is not bad (500 kbits upstream), but my server is

128 Mb Ram, 266 MHz. I don't need it for much else, mail maybe, so I would not mind if it's busy 100% with wiki stuff.

Post by **Lucifer** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:31 pm

As a recall, the problem with the round-robin thing was where POSTs would be handled. How did you solve that problem with the forums?

Post by **Tank Program** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:08 pm

The mysql mirroring has each server use a specificied range of auto assign values and so then you avoid all the conflicts that way. Specific to the forums had to add a bit of code that changed the url. The real hard part which I never finnished writing was support for mirroring file attachments. If that's what you meant...

Swampy · Post by **Swampy** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:31 am

A quick Google of "free wiki hosting" provided some hits. Has anyone looked into one of those? I'm sure there's something out there that could be used, but people who browse it may be subjected to banners.

Post by **Lucifer** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:00 am

Tank Program wrote:The mysql mirroring has each server use a specificied range of auto assign values and so then you avoid all the conflicts that way. Specific to the forums had to add a bit of code that changed the url. The real hard part which I never finnished writing was support for mirroring file attachments. If that's what you meant...

Mediawiki has built-in support for handling file uploads, but I don't recall right off-hand what it was. I'll look into mirroring, mediawiki supposedly supports it natively, now that I think about. How else would wikipedia be able to run on such a large server farm?

Swampy wrote: A quick Google of "free wiki hosting" provided some hits. Has anyone looked into one of those? I'm sure there's something out there that could be used, but people who browse it may be subjected to banners.

My personal take is if people are happy and willing to take advertising, I'd just as soon we run our own (google ads, more than likely, since I already have an adsense account) and pocket the money (read: use the money for development and/or to support the server).

Are y'all willing to take advertising on the wiki? If you are, then I'm interested in running some google adsense stuff and see how it does. If the integral of ad revenue over a 6 month period comes out around $600 USD, then it will probably sustain itself and allow for growth/upgrades. I probably only need a month of data to make reasonably good projections.

Post by **Lucifer** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:28 am

The mediawiki site suggests memcached and a php accelerator before going distributed. So I've installed memcached and am building eAccelerator. I'll get those in tonight and we'll see if that makes a difference. To get the full benefit of both, more memory is required. Unfortunately the motherboard is so old, well, let's just say adding memory isn't exactly straightforward right now.

kyle · Post by **kyle** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 2:56 am

Lucifer wrote:are y'all willing to take advertising on the wiki? If you are, then I'm interested in running some google adsense stuff and see how it does. If the integral of ad revenue over a 6 month period comes out around $600 USD, then it will probably sustain itself and allow for growth/upgrades. I probably only need a month of data to make reasonably good projections.

where are you going to put then side or top or bottom

as long as they are not on top i'm fine lol maize as well get some money

Post by **Lucifer** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:14 am

Check out my own website as an example. See, I'm a believer in placing ads where they'll make the most money honestly (i.e. without tricking people to click on them).

http://www.davefancella.com/

Post by **Lucifer** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 3:25 am

Ok, I think I have eAccelerator and memcached successfully installed and configured for the wiki. Subjectively it feels faster, but the only real test is to see if cpu load spikes hardcore like it has recently (really, waiting 10 minutes for the K menu to appear after clicking on it is quite unreasonable).

Website · Post by **Z-Man** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 6:27 am

If it's about free wiki hosting, I'd take www.wikia.com . I looked into it a bit for a university project, they even have the LaTeX plugin for slick math stuff, and the text only ads are placed in a bar on the right.

Post by **Tank Program** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:21 am

I think trying google ads is an OK idea.