Banner Server Back to ImageShack

Sorry, but bandwidth is getting high on the banner backup server so we had to switch back to ImageShack. If we can, we'll switch back in a few days. It depends how much of the bandwidth is sucked up on the first day the banner is created.

Banning for Extremely Large File Sizes

Excessively large files are being uploaded far too often. The banner maker already allows up to 10MB per file, which is more than generous and actually means we've got a lot of processing to do on your file, so when someone uploads a file that is 60MB, it's pretty moronic. Since most people that upload files that are too large not only fail to read the maximum size limit but also the error message that appears immediately afterward, we're going to start banning them after the third upload. For those select few that chose to upload files like EXE's and DLL's, we'll be banning them after their first warning. On the extremely large files (over 30MB), we'll be banning them on the first upload.

It's unfortunate, but these people are sucking up way more than their fair share of resources. On a standard cable connection it takes well over 5 minutes to upload a single 50MB file, and that entire time that it is happening it keeps someone else from using that connection from the server. Not cool.

These changes will go into effect later today or tomorrow.

Going Smoothly Thus Far

We are still hosting banners off of the backup server without any issues thus far! I'm pretty hopeful about this, since it is an affordable method of hosting the banners without relying on an image host. If this works for at least 2 weeks worth of banners I'll go ahead and get an additional shared hosting account with Dreamhost as needed so there is more latitude. For the price, we could use five accounts without incurring any crippling costs. What will happen when we have multiple accounts is that the server responsible for the next saved banner will rotate so the banners are evenly distributed amongst them.

Keeping the fingers crossed!

Changing Traffic; Any Insight?

Alright above is a graph showing the traffic trend from profile.myspace.com over the last few months. The big dip in the middle is when Myspace blocked traffic to MyBannerMaker.com. After a couple weeks of that, they realized they made a mistake and unblocked it, and traffic went back up. Well, over the last month it's slowly been dropping and right now it's actually lower than when we were completely blocked, but I'm not getting any complaints from Myspace users and when I test, everything seems to be working just fine.

I'm really starting to wonder what's going on here. From what I can ascertain, Myspace hasn't been losing traffic over the same period of time, and nothing that I could imagine altering the click patterns of Myspace users has occurred. I figured I'd put this up and see if any of you might have some clues as to what's going on. It's getting pretty bad, and with the massive toll on ad revenue, decreasing traffic isn't going to help keep the site running and the A/C on this summer.

Note: You have to click on the graph to see the full thing.

Testing a Permanent Switch to the Banner Server

Since the last post we've been switched to the backup server and we're doing ok on it. It's hosted with Dreamhost since they're great people over there and offer a pretty good uptime for dirt cheap. They also give us a plethora of bandwidth. No, I'm not advertising for them...I won't even bother with an affiliate link (if you want to contribute, get a VIP account), but I wanted to clarify that before the following:

I'm going to try to keep the banners going to the banner server at Dreamhost as long as possible because it's super fast compared to ImageShack and it means we have less dependency upon someone else. However, we may have issues like we have in the past since there are so many banners saved and accessed every day it places a huge strain on the server. They've made some changes exclusively for us that should allow us to do this, but I can't promise it'll work. Don't blame them, either...it's a pretty hairy situation and they're doing a lot more than any other shared hosting provider would ever even consider simply because they understand and they rock.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Switching to Backup Server for Banners

We're still having trouble with ImageShack timing out. It's been an on-going issue for a few months now, and I don't expect to have it resolved anytime soon. It appears that it's been acting up more than usual lately, judging by the number of errors that are logged and reported by visitors.

In an attempt to alleviate some of the symptoms, I'll be implementing a system that will detect when timeouts are occurring too frequently and automatically route people to our backup banner server. Additionally, it will detect when your banner has a timeout and push your banner to the backup server without a reload or anything. This should be pretty seamless for you, and should only really result in having a different URL to your banner.

I'll update when I have it setup and working. For now, though, all banners are saving to our banner server and not ImageShack.