13 March, 2006
- ArtWanted.com Staff
- 2,738 Views
- 35 Comments
Website Down Time
Over the last few weeks, our IT staff has been going over every inch of our web servers to locate the reasons for the random down time. We have found several issues that are causing these problems and we have done some things to greatly reduce the 'down time' in the last week. We will continue to work hard to always improve our server performance - it is out top priority.
This being said, there is still a major server component that is to blame for the random down time that has not been fixed. We are referring to the need for a new database server, due to the huge amounts of traffic/hits our website receives. Only one 'small' problem...it will cost about $20,000 for the hardware and software to purchase this new database server.
For those that want to know, here is a little info about our IT structure... ArtWanted.com owns and manages all of our own equipment. We do not rent or share servers with other companies, so we are not effected by things outside of our control. We only purchase high-end equipment to run our websites and all of our servers are less than one year old. Our Internet 'pipe' is burstable to over 25 times the current traffic we get now, so bandwidth will never be an issue. We simply pay for what we use. We have onsite and offside monitoring that alerts us when our site is down or there is a potential problem. In almost all cases, we are well aware of any server problems and working on them before our members notice them. We feel very strongly that we should never cut corners when it comes to server hardware.
Despite our website going down from time to time recently, we have still averaged over 98% up time in the last few weeks. Which means for every 100 minutes, ArtWanted.com is down less than two minutes. If you get a 'timeout request' or 'gateway timeout' error, this is usually resolved in less than a minute and you can be back to surfing our site. The longer periods of down time are usually at night when our staff is not accessing the site, so it may take a bit longer to restore the website. However, most potential clients or artists that surf our site occasionally will not notice a problem getting to what they need.
In order to purchase the needed equipment and increase our site up time, we need to raise a bunch of money from the sale of our products and services. We are asking for your support to reach this goal.
Currently, only 5% of our members (1 out of every 20) are paying Premium Members. Our premium membership contains a dozen extra features and we feel the price is very reasonable for the upgrades that are included. We would hate to fill our site with flashing banners, raise our prices or cut off free members, so we hope that we can raise the money needed by having more free members upgrade their accounts. Even if you don't need any of the additional upgrades that are included in the Premium Membership, if you like ArtWanted.com then we are asking for your support.
There are also other ways to support our site. This can be done by purchasing our products (ArtWanted.com Book or Calendar) or by purchasing artwork from other members of the site. You can even purchase a premium membership for another person on our donation page. If you are flat broke and don't have a cent to spare, we also understand. You can support the site by telling more people about ArtWanted.com that may have the funds for some of our products/services.
In conclusion, we do want to thank all the current Premium Members of our site and everyone else that has helped make ArtWanted.com what it is today. We have hundreds of new members join every month, and we know that this is from many of you spreading the word about our site. Our traffic and membeship grows by huge amounts every single month and we know that our current members are the reason of this large growth.
Having our website up and available for you and potential clients is our top priority. We will continue to work on increasing our website 'up time' with the equipment we have and hope that we will be able to purchase this new equipment very soon.
