Web Server Blues

Ron Niebrugge Arizona, Phoenix, Photos, Travel 15 Comments

Owl’s Clover

Owl’s Clover.

This Owl’s Clover really has nothing to do with our web server – we were adjusting a few photos from earlier in the trip for a customer, and I thought it was kinda purdy, so I went with it.

Our main photo website seems to grow in spurts, and lately it has really been spurting.  According to Webalizer, we had over 336,000 visitors last month!  This month is even busier.  I believe Webalizer counts spiders and repeat visitors, so that number is probably a bit overstated , but even if you reduce it by a third, it is still a lot of great activity.

That’s the good news, now the bad. 

We have been jumping back in forth between shared and dedicated servers the last few years, but it seems those days are over, and we will need to move to a fully dedicated server.  Our bandwidth is approaching 300 gb a month, and our search feature uses a lot of server resources.  It seems having a fancy computer in a high-tech data center in a large city isn’t cheap!  I could make payments on a very fancy car for what this thing will cost.  Fortunately, I really don’t have a need for a fancy car.

I must say, it is exciting to see how far we have come.  When we started our website almost 10 years ago it was just a couple of pages put together with Frontpage.  Unfortunately, our expertise hasn’t grown as fast as our bandwidth :).  Well, these are good problems to have.

Comments 15

  1. That is impressive Ron. I remember last year when you had the “problem” blowing your stats up to the 8k number. Seems like you are getting even more traffic than that now. On the Webalizer, unique visitors is that column called “unique sites”.

    For the server costs, that is a main reason why I went w/ Photoshelter Archive. $30/month, and I’ve got about 3,000 high res jpegs on there and over 2,000 more lower rez images. there is no bandwidth limit on there.

  2. I have no idea if this would be cost effective, but could you host your own site with a dedicated computer at the house? I know of one photographer that get’s a bunch of traffic and that is the route they took. Just a thought.

  3. Post
    Author

    Hey thanks MG!

    Hi Richard,

    Yeah, I am getting much more traffic this year. Are you sure the total unique sites number is unique visitors, because it is even higher then the visitor numbers column on my stats – my unique sites number is over 412,000 for last month, that seems too high. I need to look into it a little further.

    Your Photoshelter solution is a good one. I have some photos there and at DRR via Mira – DRR seems to sell a little better, but I think it is too soon to judge. I have considered using one of them for my search function like you and Gary do – I’m not wild about sending my customers to another url with other photographers. Of course, this added cost does change the way I look at things. $30 per month is a heck of a bargain really.

    Thanks for the suggestion.

    Ron

  4. Post
    Author

    Hi Rick,

    That is another option I have considered – the problem is where we live in Alaska, we have slow, unreliable Internet connection, and it drives me crazy to have any down time. Not to mention, I don’t have a clue to what I’m doing, and the house sits empty for about half the year. But, for what I’m looking at paying, I suppose I could considering hiring someone part-time if I could find someone with the expertise in such a small town. I will have to give that some more thought.

    Thanks for the suggestion! That is why I posted this here, I though I might get some good suggestions on solutions.

    Thanks,

    Ron

  5. From what I have read on a couple web analysis websites, they said that unique sites is the unique visitors. Mine is about 60 – 70% of the total visitation so I took their word for it. Could be wrong though.

    It might be too much work for you to add the search function onto your site since you have several thousand pages of html, unless those bandwidth costs are really ridiculous.

  6. Congrats on the growth Ron, hopefully it is the real stuff turning into sales for you. Way back last year when I though I might have to move to a dedicated server, I did some investigation into the IP addresses that were hitting my site. (Webalizer gives a report on this).

    One of the big ones was from a particular company in China. I don’t do any business with China, so didn’t think I was at too much risk for completely blocking that IP from my site. Between that, and blocking access to certain PHP files that bots didn’t need to hit – it reduced me down so I could stay on a shared plan.

    You have a big number of unique visitors, so perhaps this isn’t the case – but I would look at the IP addresses anyway just to be sure.

  7. Congratulations on the growth Ron. As long as sales are keeping pace if not exceeding the rate of bandwidth use. One of these days I’ll have to pick your brain on your Lightbox Photo set up.

    Oh and if you haven’t employed Google Analytics yet you should. The small JavaScript code in your footer is all it takes and free metrics. Perhaps the Google Analytics reports would enable you to better dissect what is happening with your traffic.

  8. One other thing to look for are people hotlinking to your images. If people are doing that it will add to your bandwidth totals. Cutting that out of the equation you might be able to save some money.

    Reference this link for more on how to do this*
    http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html

    *I’ve not experimented with this fully to see what impact there is on search engine image searches. There is a work around to not exclude them.

  9. Post
    Author

    Hi Mark,

    You know I remember you writing about that issue awhile back – I was going to look up that post, thanks a lot for the reminder.

    Hi Jim,

    You know I am signed up with Google Webmaster Tools, but not Analytics – I need to do that pronto.

    I have had the same concerns regarding the blocking of hot-linking, I will do some reading, good suggestion.

    I would be more than happy to share all I can about my Lightbox setup. You can call me anytime that is convenient if you would like – our office phone rolls to our cell phone when we are on the road.

    Thanks again,

    Ron

  10. Hey Ron,

    So THAT’S where my traffic is going to lately! 🙂

    I’m sure you can find some reasonable solution, better than a fancy car payment, anyway. I hope so. i can’t offer you much help there – I’m not really a technical guru, like so many folks seem to think I am. 🙂

    Good luck with it all.

    Cheers

    Carl

  11. Post
    Author

    What do you mean, Carl Donohue, Tech Wizard!

    I think I have figured out how to block China – I think that is where a lot of my traffic may be coming from, I don’t know, we will see if the numbers drop.

    Thanks,

    Ron

  12. Not sure how things are done, but the site structure of PS or DRR might not be the best for the SEO that has been bringing you the nice traffic increase. If you need to move to a dedicated server, I highly recommend theplanet.com which I use. Unlike many hosting companies with similar prices, all their plans include 24/24 competent tech support, that you will need at some point. If your site is business-critical, do not even think about hosting yourself if you are not a computer expert with a T1 (which alone will exceed the cost of many dedicated hosting plans).

    Tuan.

  13. Post
    Author

    Thank you very much for the advice Tuan, I really appreciate you sharing your expertise. I had wondered what you were doing for hosting.

    I hadn’t mentioned it here, but I agree, at this point I think I would take a big SEO hit moving my search function to PS or DRR.

    I have ruled out having my own computer – heck, in Seward we don’t even have reliable electricity!

    I will take a look at theplanet.com. It seems dedicated hosting is not all equal, and I definitely need fully managed with good tech support.

    Thanks again,

    Ron

  14. Pingback: More on Photoshelter Archive, Bandwidth Costs and Other Stuff Only Web Geek Photographers Would Enjoy | In the Field: Picture Blog by Richard Wong

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