Well...XS11 needs to UPGRADE our HOSTING PLAN!

[crazy steve]

... what was that all about?

Anybody else getting a 'suspended' message?

[barrelguy]

Acount suspended

I was getting that message all day.

[DGXSER]

Yep, Account Suspended all day. I felt like the end of "The Truman Show"...Now what do I do with my spare time?

[Crusty Snippets]

Suspended

I was wondering if it was me that was suspended, or the site was suspended.
Unkle Crusty

[Tat2demon]

Guessing it was time to pay the bill on the hosting server or the domain owner.

[TopCatGr58]

Answers!!

Hey there Folks,

Okay, here's the scoup! We are TOO SUCCESSFUL!!!!

Our hosting plan is a less expensive one, and so we are on a SHARED server!
The Stats for the past few months show that we have a fairly high band width of traffic....like 7 GB a month!! And we don't even host very many of the photos....we do the ones for the tech tips, and that's probably a big part of the traffic!

SO...when we have too much traffic it causes problems for the other sites on the SHARED Server. The Hosting site shut us down to allow the other sites for function more properly!

JP, the owner of the site just got off the phone with the hosting site, and then with me, and was informed that IF we upgrade our account, then we can be on our OWN SERVER, it will allow the increased bandwidth that we are generating, and will also probably reduce the access errors we have all encountered in the past. BUT, this upgrade is a little bit more expensive, I wasn't told how much more. SO JP asked me to post a STICKY thread to ask folks if they wouldn't mind using the DONATE applet on the main home page:
http://www.xs11.com/ and send a few bucks so that JP can then get us upgraded to the better hosting plan!

JP was also informed that the site will be opened and put back up for 24 hours, but IF the bandwidth becomes too excessive, it could be shut down again....because of our current hosting plan!

SO.....if you've been helped by XS11.com in getting your bike running, or fixing your bike to keep it running, finding parts, advice, etc., then hopefully you'll feel the desire to donate a few bucks so that we can continue to provide this assistance to our fellow Xsives, current and those joining anew!

Thankyou in advance! Hope to see you all tomorrow!

[JP]

Yep, the problem is we are a victim of our own success.

As TC mentioned, XS11.com is on a shared server and our bandwidth is actually crashing other domains on the server we share with them.

I am quite surprised at the numbers:

Month    Unique visitors  # of visits  Pages    Hits	   Bandwidth
Jan 2013 33,192           67,560       408,973  2,101,283  14.26 GB
Feb 2013 24,459           49,923       375,536  2,015,527  12.77 GB
Mar 2013 29,057           59,772       469,385  2,352,731  16.30 GB
Apr 2013 31,544           65,533       478,676  2,505,873  16.91 GB

TC is right, the solution is simple, but not free. We do need to move from a shared server to a non-shared server.

If any of you would like to make donation (any size - it's up to you) to help keep the site running, please go to the main page www.xs11.com use the donation form on the right side.

For those of you who have made donations over the years, thank you. If this site hadn't been mostly self supporting, it would have gone away a long time ago. The fact that it didn't reflects well on you.

Sometimes there are no donations for months. Sometimes we get a bigger donation or 2 that make it average out. That's a good thing, but to move to a non-shared server, donations need to be a little better. Not massively better. Just a little better - every month.

And now you know what's up.

[JP]

Guessing it was time to pay the bill on the hosting server or the domain owner.

The bills are paid in full and on time - just as they always have been.

[DGXSER]

Hey JP, Thanks for what you do for the site! I definitely enjoy the site and all that is here.

I just finished refurbishing another XS11, and was able to sell it to a young man who will take it to New York as his ride. I am certain I would never have gone down that path let alone been as successful as I was at the resurrection without this site.

[cpmaynard1980]

I logged in today and saw account suspended. I thought what did I do to get suspended? Did I offend someone? Did I drunk post? I didnt think so...... Then I thought that it must have been because my project was too boring.

Glad to see it back up and going. A great site with Great people. Gladly Donated. Hope it helps.

[CRXSi90]

Thoughts...

This might fall in the category of "not worth answering," so no offense will be taken.

Is the traffic legitimate, or is it bots/web crawlers?
Is there any way to tell if it's legitimate?
I browse this site on my mobile device, which is not good about "caching" pages or images. I'm sure that doesn't help any.
Can you track down which parts of the site account for the most data?
Would there be a way to limit the resource-intensive content to "members only"?

I know a lot of this trades $$$ for development time. I'm not advocating this, just bring it up. I'm sure you've already gone through that whole thought exercise, but I just wanted to bring up that a two-pronged attack might be good.
-server upgrade & bring in donations
-put some thought into where the bandwidth is going, and limit this in a sensible way

That said, off to make a donation.

[crazy steve]

Yep, time to pony up guys; this is a great resource and it would be a shame to see it go away for the lack of a few $$....

[JP]

That was my first question too.

It appears to be mostly legitimate traffic.

Countries	Pages   Hits      Bandwidth
United States   211,236 1,045,935    6.78 GB
Canada           25,924   145,387  826.97 MB
Great Britain     6,495    43,392  374.32 MB
Ukraine           6,100     6,535   64.13 MB
China             5,770     7,042  215.71 MB

There IS some bot activity (Googlebot being a big one) but it doesn't account for the majority of bandwidth.

[CRXSi90]

That was my first question too.

It appears to be mostly legitimate traffic.

Cool, that's great! I figured you had already looked into that!

[JP]

Yep, time to pony up guys; this is a great resource and it would be a shame to see it go away for the lack of a few $$....

I don't see it going away. I have faith that enough people will decide to step up. It's a good group.

A few folks have already made some donations tonight. Thank you!

If donations continue tomorrow then I think I can authorize the upgrade when the hosting company calls me back tomorrow.

Of course, monthly donations will need to be a little bit higher than they have been in the past. If that happens (and I think it could/will happen) then we shouldn't have a problem keeping it running.