Looking for Dedicated options

[Susan]

The time has come to begin looking at Dedicated servers. I'm by no means a sysadmin, but I'm willing to learn...or, if reasonable enough, pay for services...

So my question is this: Which dedicated option offers good support, everything we need to put the VB on it out of the box, sufficient equiptment to run a fairly moderate board (20k pageviews/500posts a day), and is reasonably priced. Is such a thing possible? Is it available for under $500 a month?

Your feedback would be appreciated.

Susan

[www.heisomni.org]

Hi Susan, I came to your post in a quest towards increased knowledge of dedicated hosting, fortunatly I can answer your questions. I am in about the exact same position as you, looking to get a dedicated server for my own sites and some customer's websites. There are many different levels of dedicated hosting, you can get a beginners package which includes server lease, some tech help, some software installed, all the way to co-located servers which you supply and they supply the environment and connection. If you can get your own server then you would save lots of money. As far as bandwidth, the minimum packages I have seen would be ample for your demands, then they go all the way to unmetered t1 and beyond. A good company for beginners, although not real cheap, is http://www.webhosting.com . There are many many companies and they all have their pros and cons in pricing and service, just do a search for "dedicated servers" or "server colocation" <you supply the server> at http://www.yahoo.com and you will get tons of sites to look at. If you want to get your own server, well you can get that anywhere.. Perhaps you would be interested in going in halfers? or leasing some space on my first server? It would save us both some money. I have a guy who can setup apache server and administer all the virtual IP's etc...

Thanks.

[Shaman]

I do it for starting at $300 (Canadian, $200 U.S.D.) a month which includes the rack space for a rack-mounted computer, basic support, power for up to two peripherals/computers and a 100Mbps port.

Bandwidth is logged, of course.

It's pretty comparable to a lot of places stateside.

[Martin]

Susan,
Check out http://www.hostsearch.com

They have a very comprehensive search enging there that will let you plug in what you're looking for and read reviews by other customers (and former customers).

I know you have a site already, but some of the things you really need to be wary of is the "unlimited" bandwidth. If they are offering a really low price and saying that, chances are their idea of unlimited is somewhere in the neighborhood of 4Gb/month, which would suffice for now on a board your size, but not for long. They tend to make up the low cost by really sticking it to you in the excess bandwidth charges.

If you are truly a beginner and know little about telnet, etc, (I'll prolly get crap for this) you might want to consider going with an NT or Win2k server to start with. If you can get Apache as your webserver you should be able to run PHP as a module and get close to the same performance you would with *nix, plus you will have an easy GUI to admin your server with.
Overall, if you are familiar with telnet, I would recommend a *nix server, though.

[Susan]

Martin, we're pulling close to 15 gigs of bandwidth a month already! Over and over we've heard that a dedicated server is in our future. Virtual accounts just don't seem to be doing the job for us...(although we're fine on the virt account we have now...we want to expand...and don't have a lot of growing room left.)

I've heard so many nightmare stories about NT servers and such that I'd like to stay with what we have on our virt server (ie: apache/linux) I'm not that familiar with telnet, but as I mentioned, I'm willing to learn...and we have a few months time for me to play with telnet and learn how to do what I want to do. There are plenty of dedicated options out there that have web control panels...so I'm hoping that we can find one that will let me do everything I need to in a web based way.

Alabanza.com looks good as far as holding my hand with that kind of stuff, but I couldn't find a price list and that makes me cringe thinking that "if you have to ask, you can't afford to buy". Site5 is EXPENSIVE for start up...but I'm comfortable with Matt and he's said he's willing to help me learn what I need to know. CIhost is cheap, but I'm wondering if it's a case of "you get what you pay for". Verio, ditto. I'd like to get out of the VDI NOC if they don't clean up their act soon...but it's what I know. LOL

I'm off to look at hostsearch.com Anybody have any more suggestions?

Susan

[WebStyles]

Susan... You can get a Managed Server from most hosting companies, which means you aren't the sysadmin. You won't have root access, but you can call up the hosting company and yell if anything goes wrong with your box.

We're just getting on a dedicated (unmanaged) server at VServers (http://www.vservers.com), so I can't really give an in-depth review of them, but I've heard wonderful things. We had a very short experience with Digital Nation (http://www.dedicatedserver.com) which was very good, but VServers gave us a better deal, and we never actually got on the DN server.

The only advice I can give you without any hesitation is to avoid Interland (http://www.interland.net), they are the worst dedicated hosting company I have ever come into contact with... They are truly the worst! For example, we paid 6 months up front (since that's their "policy") for a 600 p3 HP server. They put us on a 400 Celeron for 5 months of our contract, we found out by accident when we were snooping through all the config files one day. This was after they blamed us for the performance problems and told us we needed more RAM (which we bought). I'm still flaming mad about that.

Anyways, enough about me... Good luck in your search! :D

[Martin]

I have to agree with WebStyles about Interland. I've been there a coupla months and I have to say I'm not very pleased at all so far.

They have taken my server offline twice now for maintenance on the farm without any prior notification. The second time they told me it was because I was being moved in to the new data center. They lied. I'm still in the same, crappy old building.

I had a major database crash the other night. The reason for the crash, a power outage. They told me I would have UPS on my system. They lied. If it was there, it wasn't working.

[WebStyles]

Originally posted by Martin
They have taken my server offline twice now for maintenance on the farm without any prior notification. The second time they told me it was because I was being moved in to the new data center. They lied. I'm still in the same, crappy old building.

Yeah, our site was down for about 2 hours when they moved our box over to the new data center. We actually got in though, and after that the site never worked right again... They broke the ethernet card in the move. It took them two weeks to stick a new one in!

Whenever they asked which box we were on when we called tech support, we always told them it was the one with smoke coming out of it! ;)

[werehere]

InterFlam is the worst in my mind.

They have us on a new server there and it has been fine oddly enough, but I am leaving very very soon to vservers like WebStyles said :)

We are hoping they are a quality hosting firm like I have been told they are.

[Michael]

I'm on a dedicated server now with the following config.

Dual 9 GB Hard Drives - One SCSI, One EIDE
Pentium Class 450 MHz
100 Base T Ethernet
96 MB RAM
20 IP addresses
120 GB per month bandwidth transfer.

Its $399 a month, but that gets me 24/7 tech support cause I'm not the worlds best sys admin, it'll do everything and anything you need done though.

[Kathy]

Originally posted by Michael
I'm on a dedicated server now with the following config.

Dual 9 GB Hard Drives - One SCSI, One EIDE
Pentium Class 450 MHz
100 Base T Ethernet
96 MB RAM
20 IP addresses
120 GB per month bandwidth transfer.

Its $399 a month, but that gets me 24/7 tech support cause I'm not the worlds best sys admin, it'll do everything and anything you need done though.



I have the website along with Susan in our quest for a ded server...my question, Michael, is:
Is 96 Ram enough for 20 IPs and all that bandwidth? I mean, if a person needs tons of bandwidth, shouldn't a server require more Ram than that? I'm learning the needs as we go...and I've been looking at 256 Ram.....and hopefully as much bandwidth as you've listed. So, is 96 enough?

[werehere]

I would not guess that 96MB is really enough for a dynamic site. Just my opinion :)

[Michael]

Actually 96MB of RAM is holding up extremly well, however I think there is a reason for that. On the server we are only using PHP and MySQL - not much Perl (or any actually that I can think off).

I think that they are both very effiecent and don't put too much strain on a server. I'd suggest starting at 96MB, and go up if your server isn't handling it. Upgrade the RAM though, upgrading the processor etc won't do too much.

[tabernack]

I have a dedicated server at Dialtoneinternet.com with the following specs:

Celeron 366
128 Megs Ram
6.4 GB Harddrive
RedHat6.1
Unlimited IP's
50 gb traffic included ($3/gb extra)

$177/month. Mind you that was a memorial day special. They have a July 4th special right now for $225/month :

http://www.dialtoneinternet.com/specials/specialoffers.htm

Their hardware upgrade options are very reasonable as well.

I have to admit that I think this company is definitely one of the best in the industry. You can check out posts on them and other hosts at http://www.scriptkeeper.com/cgi-bin/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&forum=Web+Hosts+|AMP|+ISPs&number=5&DaysPrune=20&LastLogin=

Other good companies I have looked into are:

http://www.tera-byte.com
http://www.dn.com
http://www.rackspace.com

Hope this helps.

:)

[eva2000]

well i have been looking for dedicated servers for nearly a year before i decided last month....

you're either an person with knowledge of admining a server or a person like me who doesn't know a thing about linux and admin and need a control panel to help you admin stuff...

admin knowledgeable i suggest looking at

http://maxim.net if you need alot of bandwidth 0.5 MB line (160GB+ /month) or more

http://digitalnation.com - spent about 6 months bouncing emails with their sales but decided to go with another place, rackspace.com

if you need a control panel like i do

i went with rackspace.com for

PIII 500
128MB
10 GB
8 IPS
50GB/month
fot US$405/month
US$250 setup

i have 7 sites on the server right now and plan another 16 - 18 sites on it which includes my vbulletin powered site at http://animeboards.net/forums/ :D

there's also

http://i-interactive.net - expensive on setup fees, but reportedly uptime is the best and the ensim control is pretty good i hear...
http://netinfra.com

[www.heisomni.org]

This is an awesome board, you are all real helpful. Looks like interland is a major no.. regarding ram, my recent desktop setup came with one 256mb card and has room for two more meaning a total of 780 or so... I don't know why anyone would have 96mb, especially when you're paying several hundred a month to have it connected.

I Have a real problem though... I think my friends have left for breakfast without me, oh well, no biscuits and gravy this morning.

Regarding my situation, I am a total newbie to sysadmining and I want to get my own server up asap. i have nothing against linux except I don't understand it at all, yet, so I might stick with the devil and go win2k. Where can I find some good websites on sysadmin? What I basically need to do is get a system up with about 20 sites on it right away, must have SSL, mySQL, PHP, Perl, and all that other fancy jazz. In the near future I will want to run a webhosting company from that server also for virtual hosting and would like to have it all as self managin as possible.

I am currently with prohosting.com with a virtual account and would like to setup a system like they have, with my account there I can go in and setup emails, do cgi stuff, see web stats, how will I be able to have that for my customers, where can I get that software/interface? Also.. when I setup an account with them it seems pretty automated, how ca I do that also? any help is much appreciated.

[werehere]

I would still have to recommend Digital Nation (which Johns boards here run on), or vserver. They seem to be superior in the dedicated market to me. :)

[f150guy]

FWIW,

I have been with digitalNation for almost a year now and with the exception of one eight hour power outage (which I received a credit for), I have been extremely happy with them.

All DNS requests are handled quickly and they automatically email notify me when they do not get a response on Port 80 (i.e. your web server may be unreachable). Their tech people seem quite smart and were very helpful as I was getting my feet wet with Linux.

I am looking into DellHost now, as their hardware is obviously top-notch and their pricing seems quite reasonable. Not that I am unhappy with digitalNation, but I am at a point now where the back-end admin assistance may not be necessary.

As far as control panels/sysadmin stuff, I would highly recommend looking at installing Webmin (http://www.webmin.com) as it can be a great learning tool for Apache administration (as well as other stuff).

I will agree 10000% percent that you NEED TO STAY AWAY from Interland. The company I used to work for was one of their first multi-domain customers and they were and have been clueless in every encounter I have ever had with them. If you value your site and your business, don't even consider them.

Good luck in your search!

Steve
F-150 Online
http://www.f150online.com

[Chris Schreiber]

Well I've been looking for dedicated hosting for a while, not because I've outgrown virtual hosting (yet...) but more so just for extra performance and root control over the server.

I looked at Rackspace.com and called a few reference accounts, who all had good things to say about them. I was just wondering if anyone has ever had any problems with them before I made my final decision to go ahead with them.

I also looking for some advice on server configuration and your experiences. The config I was looking at is:
500 Mhz
256 MB RAM
10 GB EIDE
RedHat 6.2
10 GB Bandwidth
16 IPs
for about $325/month

I will be adding 3 site immediately to the server, one being a vBulletin fourm. I am at around 100,000 page views per month. Will this configuration handle that load well, and how much further could I go before I need to add more processor/RAM to the system.

Thanks,
-Chris

[werehere]

I would be warry of the bandwidth limits you listed. Also, I would check into the possibility of Rackspace being part of Interland hosting, because I believe they may be an associate, which I would steer away from if that was the case IMO.

[Chris Schreiber]

I know the bandwidth is about what I am using now, and rackspace will allow over-usage for an extra $30 per 10 GB, so that should be ok.

I am very interested in finding out if they are associated with Interland, since it seems everyone here has had bad experiences with them. I looked around on rackspace.com's listing of alliances and partners and didn't see them listed, but if someone could confirm or deny that relationship I would be intereted to hear it.

Thanks,
-Chris

[www.heisomni.org]

Rackspace has the same price for extra bandwidth as http://www.digitalnation.com, they charge $50/150gb/month. If anyone can tell me of other admin programs, not totally sure what you would call them since I'm not even really sure what I need, I would be glad to recieve any help. Here is another question, why do many of you guys accumulating huge page hits not run banner ads? 100,000/month even at $30/month = $3000! That's not chump change. Does anyone also know of a good banner exchange/paid advertising administration and management software? Something like what runs microsoft linkexchange and which could also manage paid banners. What is the situation on hardware? Does anyone know where there is a chart or something which would show what hardware = what demand capacity? I.E. will a 500mhz proc handle 1million hits a month? what ram is needed, which element is most crucial, hard drive space too.. Is it critical to go scsi, would an athlon single proc be sufficient, like a 1ghz or something? what all is needed in the tower, standard components + ethernet card? How easy and efficient is it to manage your server remotely through dial-up and which software would you use for this?

Thanks much for any and all help.

BTW - my virtual host gives me my own IP, just found out, within the $18/month account which also has 100mb and up to 15gb trasfer/month - <bandwidth generousity varies but right now they are good, probly cuz 90% of their customers use 1% of their alotted space and bandwidth.

[Kathy]

Originally posted by http://www.heisomni.org
Here is another question, why do many of you guys accumulating huge page hits not run banner ads? 100,000/month even at $30/month = $3000! That's not chump change.

That is funny. Sorry to laugh but I have no idea where you get your stats and info from....

I get over 600,000 page views per month with ad banners...and I don't get half of what you are thinking. IN fact, I don't get one third....not one fourth (for my stats.)

If you have an ad agency that pays per view (a miracle for for bigger sites)...they paid per K. 100,000 would be 100K and they usually pay (about .75-1.50 per K.....unless you are a million view a month website and can hook up with the big boys which pay a bit more)

And unless you can sell targets ads yourself.

You don't need that fancy ad banner rotation. SIgn up with an ad agency online (flycast, advertising.com, etc) who rotate the ads through your site with their code...and these guys do NOT pay for the view, but by the click. Until you are getting a million views per month, they will usually only pay for the click throughs....

Don't quit your day job. ;-)

[Martin]

we get between 1 and 2 million pageviews/month and we don't make $3000/month thru ad agencies.

we are currnetly with flycast, but given the nature of forums, they quickly run out of unique ads for our viewers and we wind up with a lot of default ads, which are set up for us thru advertising.com.

also, with 1mil a month DblClick (who pay the best rates) still shunted us down to their little sister company, Sonar.com. Their requirements are ridiculous. They want a top and bottom ad, plus they want you to put a big, ugly button on your site directing people to go sign up with them.
I sent them an e-mail 10 days ago asking if it was possible to target an ad to a new window with their code and they have yet to answer me. I wish they would get back to me, though. Their base $15 CPM is a lot better than what I'm doing now.

You will do good to pay for a high-end dedicated server relying on an ad agency alone.

[www.heisomni.org]

Ok, I am back, boy was that a relief. Kathy, I don't know what planet you are from but if IT work is your day job I suggest you stick with it cuz you have much to learn, as I do and as I will. Here on earth only chumps bother with chump companies who offer chump change. I worked with some company like what you guys are talking of, and advertisement intermediary, back when I was trying to make my fortune with a tech help site on angelfire and a cjb.net address.. That was after being on the web for about 2 months, two years ago, and it didn't take me long to figure that to make money online you had to secure your own advertisers. Yahoo charges $15 absolute minimum per CPM <one thousand ad views> for untargeted ads, for demographic specificity you can pay up to $80 per cpm with would mean $80,000/month with 100,000 hits.. This is what I am encouraging my brother to do on his aviation website, call aviation companies and sell one thousand ad views for $80. Many sites I know of have done this. What I want to do, and this is what I was asking about in regards to software, is setup a banner ad management system within which I can run a link exchange, sell demographically targeted ads on my sites and link exchange sites I am associated with <3:2 ratio means 1 ad for me!>. I know doubleclick will sell me their software to run on my server but I have the feeling it would be pretty expensive. I have also downloaded freeware cgi scripts which say they will do all I need but if so, then not with the kind of user friendly, function rich, anually updatable interface that I would like.

SO.. This is what I want to get setup and I don't know why anyone who was serious to have their own servers would not do the same.. It is foolish to imagine that some company giving you a chunk of code and counting clicks or hits would pay you reasonable sum.... I am trying to think of an analogy.. perhaps it is like being a paper boy as opposed to making the paper. Another big advantage is that all banners hosted on your own server would load faster and everything is more smooth. Many sites I have seen with doubleclick and the like load the top... pause till the banner loads... then the page content, this is much better if all content comes from the same bucket :-)

I figured $30 average on CPM's was good a while ago, maybe it has gone down a bit but only chumps are taking $2 cpm.

The per click deals are useless.. The average click through ratio is .8% which equals to about $1.10/CPM if you are getting ten cents.. also, they only allow up to a certain ratio and afterwards they show their companies ads which don't count. You don't have to be yahoo to make money in advertising but if you are small, get in a niche :-)

I came, I saw, I conquered.

[Kathy]

Originally posted by http://www.heisomni.org
[B
I figured $30 average on CPM's was good a while ago, maybe it has gone down a bit but only chumps are taking $2 cpm.

[/B]

Ignoring the rest of your comments because I happen to be a lady ;-) I can explain that the $30 average for CPM's are way way way down.

Thanks for sharing your website with us. Fascinating theories for advertising on your huge site :)

Blessings....

(And now I'm off to check on more ded server prices.....)

[www.heisomni.org]

It is soooooo nice to be sooooo right. I am suuuuuuuuch a genious. BTW, no wonder you can't make money advertising if you think my site is big, it only has like 30 pages! I have another site which should be launched soon, then to be conjoined with 20 other subject oriented websites, I own about 200 domains though and have about 50 customers which I can transfer, that's why i wanna go dedicated. Click em, read em, and weap..

http://www.doubleclick.net:8080/advertisers/commerce/rate_card.htm

You can check in any of their categories.. moderately targeted demographics are $50, the likes of which any website could supply, and the kind of service which any site, like say an auto site, could call automotive companies and sell ads for 80cpm each. Doubleclick has options which easily put the number past $80. And I bet they have some of the best prices. I bet there are hundreds of companies charging 100cpm for the kind of ad space that anyone in this string could supply. To take $1.10/cpm when you got a site with 600,000 hits/month is assenine <i wonder how to spell assinine? I guess that makes me asenien> and financially criminal. Sure, i am gonna pay pennies for ads on space where grandma or some 3 year old might see them but if I know my ads are being shown to people which are already interested in the genre of product I sell or better yet, have looked up certain keywords, then $80 is not bad. Demographics are KING online, and you aren't using them at all!

Wise old sage.

BTW - did you like my article on "My Dog The Athiest"? You should all read it - http://www.heisomni.org

[www.heisomni.org]

How can I type one of those real evil sounding, hahahaha I told ya so, you lose, I win, you suck, I am awsome, kind of laughs? MUAAAHHHH MUA MUA MUAAAA AAAAHHHH Sorry, maybe I am going a bit over board on the gloating, it's just been so so long since I have had a good gloat. And what's all this for? Kathy is probably 13 and looking to make more money for barbies.

Read em and weap - Royal Flush - http://fusion.yahoo.com/

Click on "rate card" near the bottom of the sidebar and you will see yahoo charges as much as $159/cpm!!!!! I guess the prices are going up from when I saw them last!!!

http://fusion.yahoo.com/ http://fusion.yahoo.com/ http://fusion.yahoo.com/ http://fusion.yahoo.com/ http://fusion.yahoo.com/ http://fusion.yahoo.com/

[Kathy]

Thank you for your update on rate cards. I am aware of those as I spend a great deal of time dealing with advertising on my websites.

I wish you well on your endeavors in sharing Christ through your websites...... However, I am a bit confused why I'm being attacked.

Thank you again for your time.

[www.heisomni.org]

well... i've gone too far on this subject on this board.. so I will conclude-- do I even need to conclude? do you forget what you wrote? You said you laughed at my foolishness and that I was very misguided then I proved to you that I absolutely was not. Habla Englais?

[werehere]

Kathy,

Please just look past his remarks, they are sounding to rude to listen to anymore. :D


My sites make good money off of advertising, but they still arent yahoo's, and I am sure that http://www.heisomni.org's are not either!

[Martin]

I guess he doesn't realize that if you are going to charge more than $30/CPM for advertising you better have more than 10m impressions a month. Any less than that and people are going to start laughing at you.

Also, if you're going to be making your riches, I guess you should make the initial investment in Dart. It *is* the best software out there for ad management. Last time I looked it was only about $3000/year.

[Susan]

Wow...so much knowledge of rate cards! I have a rate card to show you too. It SAYS $20-$50 CPM for targeted ads. Do we get $50 CPM? Good heavens, NO! (http://www.heragency.com/info/adpaks.html ) is the rate card. We get half the amount they charge for the ads...which generally is about $3 CPM. The best campaign we've seen so far has been $7 CPM..with us getting half that. Are we putzes for accepting that rate? I don't think so.

Sure, you can call/email/solicit companies for your own advertising, but the fact of the matter is that those who have the kind of money it takes to support websites of the small to medium size (less than 1 million page views a month), aren't interested in advertising on these little sites...they employ the big dogs to resell their banners (at about $6 CPM...rate cards are ALL inflated...nobody gets that kind of money...nobody.) Like it or not, with less than MILLIONS of views a month, we smaller sites are the "little fish" in this ocean. To go after big advertising accounts (which we would need to give us the kind of steady income that the ad brokers give us)well, that would be akin to a single plankton trying to eat a whale. Personally, I don't have the time to dedicate to that sort of thing...smaller advertisers aren't necessarily around for the long haul and they're certainly going to want to see results for their money, so it's a full+ time job for just getting one advertiser to stick...let alone the SEVERAL of them it would take to earn the kind of money you're talking about.

If you manage it, congratulations and pardon me for remaining skeptical.

Susan

[SonnetCelestial]

*hugs kathy*

Yep... another tally for a rude internet persona. :/ Well I don't have much to say except what I've heard from the fellow ladies has been correct.

I don't have a site to prove it but I've worked with a friend who's gotten QUITE a bit of traffic and the most she could have turned out was about $30 a month. It's a small site but already most virtual hosts would have ran screaming from the bandwith usage.

IT's just like another one of those get rich quick schemes.

[www.heisomni.org]

Well, i know many who have, one is in the volkswagon industry and I forget his url but he solicited all the companies which were currently advertising through industry publications, he got huge cpm rates and repeat business. You see, there is a demographic which is golden, something which is specified and topicalized and localized... get 10 companies to advertise with you on a rotating basis and there you have the chumpless change of $3000/month.. I know this is how I will go because all the services you speak of, as you have said, pay half nothing.

It was nice to get a response to one of my questions - where can I get dart and how is it better than doubleclick if you know? Thanks.

<I never said you would get the big money from the resellers, all along I was saying to take advantage of your demographics and run your own advertisements, the advantages are numerous and it completely compliments all other efforts especially if you run a link exchange which you can funnel your own ads into.

Thoughtfully yours.

PS. why would it matter how many impressions you had when selling ad space?

[www.heisomni.org]

Ya, *hugs kathy*, didn't you know it was amway I was tryin to sell all along! :-)

<that was sarchasm, for those who weren't quite sure>

[Kathy]

Thanks all...

Back to the original topic which Susan posted regarding ded servers...(and we were interrupted..)

If you have any more thoughts regarding ded servers, I would like to hear them. Experience shared is worth hearing.... (theories and sarcasism by the wayside ;-) Bandwidth is zinging daily and the webhost keeps gritting his teeth. :-)

BTW, I'd like ideas on the difference in some ded server hosts that "sell" the hardware to you in setup fees...and then charge a bit less each month....comparing to the "leased" hardware at a bit of of higher price.

Is there any advantage to owning the hardware/server?

[www.heisomni.org]

Gosh, why didn't I think of this sooner, I even talked to my brother about it today. He started a community website <very nicely focused demographics> and the local economic development association is paying him $80/cpm for a total of over $3000... a perfect example.. now he can expand that and start to get local businesses to advertise there instead of the newspaper and tv or maybe also.. It's not hard to sell $3000 worth of ads and at $80/cpm, 100,000 = $8000.. Then he can also sell to people elsewhere who want to reach this demographic.. And the beauty is the immence amount of demographic fields.. beekeeping teenagers is a great demograhic, PHP programmers is a great demographic, farmers, geographical locations, people who like peekachoo. What I am saying is that you all likely have nicely focused websites and even if you don't, you can pull some demographic out of it, then use that potential goldmine rather than sticking some chump change gathering code on your pages which just ain't worth it!

[Martin]

for someone so knowledgable in internet advertising I would have thought you knew that Dart is the system that DblClick uses and that they lease is, not sell it. Of course I haven't looked into them in over a year for the software, The price may be higher now.

You make a good point about demographics, but the simple fact is, keeping the customers is where the trick is, not getting them. Most of us here are 1 or 2 people operations who don't have time to continue development of our sites, start development on others, do the contract design work we do AND spend full time selling advertising. If you can do it, more power to you.

[Susan]

http://www.flashkit.com/board/warriors/flame21.shtml

'Nuff said.

:)

[Freddie Bingham]

For Tireless Rebutter there is no such thing as a trivial dispute. He regards all challenges as if the barbarians were battering at the gates. His unflagging tenacity in making his points numbs and eventually wears down the opposition. Confident that his arguments are sound, Tireless Rebutter can't understand why he is universally loathed.

[eva2000]

Well Chris it should be fine... i have been with rackspace for 1 month now and have a 500mhz, 128MB ram 10gb 8 ips and 50gb/month red hat linux server using webmin to admin it.... runs fine on the domains i have on the server so far

my vbulletin at http://animeboards.net/forums has been running for 13 days at 5,500 - 9,500 pageviews/day with no problems

added to that

http://www.anime2001.com, http://eva2000.org, http://dragonball-search.com and 3 other sites are on the server totalling another 2,500 - 4,000 pageviews/day in their dead states...

i have another 7 - 10 sites to be added as well

I got an email from rackspace and today they are upgrading their network and stuff even further.....

I have no complaints......... they really care... i am in Australia and when i had some questions and stuff, they rang me long distance to clear them up :D


Originally posted by Chris Schreiber
Well I've been looking for dedicated hosting for a while, not because I've outgrown virtual hosting (yet...) but more so just for extra performance and root control over the server.

I looked at Rackspace.com and called a few reference accounts, who all had good things to say about them. I was just wondering if anyone has ever had any problems with them before I made my final decision to go ahead with them.

I also looking for some advice on server configuration and your experiences. The config I was looking at is:
500 Mhz
256 MB RAM
10 GB EIDE
RedHat 6.2
10 GB Bandwidth
16 IPs
for about $325/month

I will be adding 3 site immediately to the server, one being a vBulletin fourm. I am at around 100,000 page views per month. Will this configuration handle that load well, and how much further could I go before I need to add more processor/RAM to the system.

Thanks,
-Chris

[eva2000]

also rackspace ain't associated with interland..... i have a virtual account with interland as well and rackspace service level is much much better........

also if you are looking for advice on ad revenues to cover hosting costs you should check out the forum i frequent daily at http://geekvillage.com/ubb/Ultimate.cgi

my name over there is 'singloon' :)

[www.heisomni.org]

Hey, that tireless rebutter thing is a very good description of me!

[www.heisomni.org]

If only you knew it is the tireless rebutters of this world who make it turn. We give meaning to the input of others and give meaning to the response we give. Then there's the thoughtless masses who don't care a bit what goes in and out of them, conformist swine who think confrontation is sub-human. Someone said they laughed at my stupidity and told me I had no idea of what I was doing, I took that to heart and formed a reasonable response to prove that my ideas are not laughable nor am I ignorant. If anyone here does not understand my motive and the validity of my action then I am glad I stand in the ranks of tireless rebutters and not yours.

Other, famous, tireless rebutters. Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Mother Theresa, Leaders of "Solidarity", Martin Luther King, Steven Spielburg, many more including all those who give worth to their existance and interaction with humanity.