State of the forums - April 2021 - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > State of the forums - April 2021

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Time for another update on the forums, financial and otherwise.

Income:
January 2021:
Raw store revenue: $8,922.35
Processing fees: $627.44
Hosting cost: $1,156.97

February 2021:
Raw store revenue: $6,301.55
Processing fees: $480.14
Hosting cost: $1,026.24

March 2021:
Raw store revenue: $6,394.30
Processing fees: $478.02
Hosting cost: $1,096.97

The forums store is chugging along, with a spike in January. This corresponds possibly with the capitol riot, possibly corresponding with the previous State of the Forums. Our costs have stayed about the same server-wise, but are going to be higher for April as we have rolled out some new servers without taking down any old ones.

This quarter saw follow through on many of things promised last quarter. Astral is officially an employee of Something Awful and has been kicking rear end, right out the gate. Together we've made great steps in modernizing our infrastructure. Astral is going to follow up this post with details about what's been going on, server-wise - I've had him take the lead on the project and it's best you hear it straight from him. This was first on the agenda for good reason. There is still much to be done - the site architecture will look rather different from where it started after we're through with it.

Gonna quote myself from last quarter:

quote:

I think this has the potential to be a really good year for something awful. I intend to be proactive in growing this place, be it be enticing old users to return or attracting new ones, and I intend to do so without compromising the culture here. I think old-style internet forums are the best way to communicate online and I think a lot of people who have never posted on a forum would use them if they knew they were there.

This very much still holds true. I've spent much of the past quarter getting a handle on the here and now, but the time is here. We already have a couple Photoshop Phridays posted, thanks to GRINDCORE MEGGIDO, and I intend to have the frontpage up for real in the coming quarter. I've reclaimed the @Something_Awful twitter account, which I can use to do outreach to goons, past and future. I want this place to be fun and happening as always and intend work out how to get new people to come look at our site.

Last time I asked about opening a Patreon to cover the cost of development. The money made by the forums store is being spent on development and there is a lot of room for more. In addition, I would like to pay artists and writers to contribute to our front page. Any money spent will go directly towards these things - namely paying for labor from goons to help the site! You can contribute here: https://www.patreon.com/SomethingAwful

Oh I almost forgot - one last thing. Not all the changes we've been working on have been under the hood. After so much time, I am super excited to announce DARK MODE. LITERALLY A BIRD and I have been working like crazy on this and we hope you enjoy it! Being such a long-awaited feature, we didn't want to half-rear end or disappoint - thought and effort were put into every page, and we hope it shows. You can turn it on here in your forum options. Let us know what you think and see known issues, here in this feedback thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3965797

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 07:53

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 10:23

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Neddy Seagoon posted:

Wasn't there a "delete the forums" button for several years until Jeffrey quietly killed it in the backend?

Well it only deleted one forum, and maybe all of its subforums, but yeah it was there and terrifying.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 09:29

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Awake now and catching up!

GreenBuckanneer posted:

You have offsite backups, right? Not just a local one? "3-2-1 rule"

Working on it but not yet!

Quotey posted:

Why a patreon instead of something on forum? IDK how big their cut is but they�re also made to charge VAT in the uk for some stupid reason.

Their cut is 8%. Basically, it's pretty difficult to implement recurring donations safely, without storing the credit card info ourselves. My payment processor maintains a way of doing it, but it will be a good bit of work to do. It will happen eventually.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 18:45

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Mr. Nice! posted:

7%+ for processing fees? Holy cow, man, you're getting ROBBED. I don't know who you're using for payment processing, but there's no reason you should be paying more than 3%. Many processors don't even charge a percentage and just charge 25 cents per credit card transaction. Your processing fees are double what they should be.

It could be better certainly but it's never that good - often it's "interchange + 25 cents" where interchange is the passed through cost charged by the credit card company itself. Stripe is 2.9% + 30 cents with no interchange, which I think would be a small improvement. The real thing would be more payment methods.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 20:42

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Jailbrekr posted:

I am happy you are (hopefully?) going to take the killer forums content and monetize it on the front page. That itself would be the draw to the forums, because it'll showcase the site as a legitimate force on the internet, and that we like pie.

I don't even want to say monetize - my goal would be more to find like-minded people who would fit in with the culture here, and show them the value of forums over social media once they are here. Frontpage articles are just way more linkable than random forum posts.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 20:46

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

DamnCanadian posted:

Sorry if this has been covered, but since the site has to go down for several hours, would it be cost-effective to host failover servers at another site, using something like Zerto to handle the replication, or is that just too much of a headache and cost for a few hours downtime every so often?

Fwiw I think this is unprecedented - my memory is bad but I don't think they've ever taken the servers offline like this.

However, yes, having servers at another site would be good overall and is something we're researching already.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2021 23:47

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Mission success!

# ¿ Apr 25, 2021 11:45

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Armitag3 posted:

Did you know that if you hover over the lower left corner of the screen, a button appears that will take you to the top of the page? I never use it, but it's a neat QOL.

It works in the lower right also - I never use it but it's cool that it's there. I actually had no idea there was a lower-left version until this post.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2021 21:49

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 10:23

Jeffrey of YOSPOS: Dec 22, 2005; GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

Quantum of Phallus posted:

That tab and your precious pencils are costing the forums 2TB of bandwidth a day

Yeah it's actually a live video feed of real pencils. When the last person stops watching, they die.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2021 08:22

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > State of the forums - April 2021