SCIFI 3D days on TFN servers are coming to a close.

I just been informed that TFN is trying to survive at this point and is dumping hosted sites and other things not "core SW content". They are not getting enough advertising revenue any more to support TFN in it's current state. I've been thinking about this actually for several years b/c I knew the SW movies were coming to a close and interest in TFN might wane. I just wish they would have spent more time planning for this eventuality b/c I sure have been trying to talk to them about it. Now.. the site is running on sporadic servers and I have till the end of April to move. All I can say is I have actually been thinking about this myself for quite awhile and will try to make the transition as smooth as possible... IF there is a transition to anywhere? I'm pretty sure we can at least host a page somewhere but I can't pay out of my pocket or expect anyone else to pay for the entire world to try and archive the entire site when 90% of them don't even use anything. I've thought about other ideas like using peer-to-peer networks so everybody helps out with the model downloads.

I will try to keep the compeitition/contests on schedule through all of this too. I already planned to host these new elements off the TFN networks back in Feburary. So that won't be a problem.

 

I'm sure that something can be worked out, this site is too good to be gotten rid of.

That's really odd about TFN though, it has a rather good amount of ads on the site and it can't pay for itself? Or does that also include paying some kind of salary for people?


SEE... this is exactly the sorta thing you should NOT be doing. I am told we are a HUGE part, probably the biggest, of TFN. I think there's been too many people out there who make their own "archive" of the site and 99% of them do nothing with it. People need to stop that. This is what makes it hard to have a site like this. Nobody can afford to pay for everybody to download the entire site... 1000's of people. The models will always be around. There's no need to do that. PLUS.. we need to keep the site on-line for now, allow people like me to work on it, move it, make back-ups,etc.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I guess I'll have to download everything off the site now so that I can save it all in case the site dissappears. BTW-how much bandwith does this site use in a month? Because the free hosting site I have right now has a free package that offers 2.5GB space-45GB Bandwith and it would be easy for you to get that package:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.x10hosting.com
I will keep that in mind. But some of you old-timers may remember this is what happened to SWMA. They screwed TFN and were unprofessional. They lost that host then went from host to host every few months or so. I don't want to do that. I will find ONE permanent place.

 

That's a shame. I've always enjoyed sci fi 3D (the forum mostly) being on TFN. I always thought that maybe combining fanfilms and sci fi 3d forums together might be good, but maybe not. I mean, in fanfilms, there's so much stuff being posted there that really should go here, and they seem to be getting away with it. But it's probably an impractical idea.

I suppose we'll have to re-register to where (if anywhere) we're going. Perhapps a change of screen-name migiht be needed for me .

Well, all I can say is, if it wasn't for TFN, I never would have found sci fi 3d and got into 3d work. Thanks .

 

That's a shame, Zoo. This was the first place I found on TFN before I went anywhere else. I didn't know there was anymore to these forums or site for about a month after I found this place. So it's pretty much dead for good than? ahh...darn TFN. I know it's expensive to host things, but there are plenty of things they could do instead.

~JW

 

Well... there might not be a FAN FILMS either? I don't know. I imagine they'll try to keep that part since it's more popular. But they might cut them back. Only off-site downloads? In response to another comment... I've tried to close these forums 2-3 years ago but it wouldn't die. Now you guys have no choice. We are brother-sites with SCIFI-MESHES. It's a much bigger community there, includes most of SCIFI 3D already, specifically offer peer support.. why reinvent the wheel?

 

That's a good point, we don't really need these forums, scifi-meshes has much better forums than this, with good quality work and good help, plus like thousands of members.

 

YUP. I don't think people even noticed... our own staff posts at SFM and not here. Dr.Jones is the only person who seems to be here more than there and he probably has his own reasons for that. But in general even our own staff doesn't post here.. for many reasons. We're working on altering banners so people know that SFM is our official forum too.

 

I'm going to miss this part of the boards.

 

Is the competition still going?

 

I don't like nacels. The fact is I go there sometimes, but don't post often, unless it's really amazing. And I'm a bit an old-school guy, you know, I started on swma, and moved to scifi3d when it opened up, in 1998 or 1999. I've been there from the very beginning, when Topa was posting three new WIP every week

Well Honestly I don't know what to say about this. It would be too bad if the site disappears, but I a agree that merging with SFM would be cool. The problem is that all the fanfilm n00bs would follow, and we'd start seeing post like "How do I rotate my shuttle's wings" next to Howard's WIP

 

Does SFM only cover modeling?

 

Yea.. naccelles get old...FUNNY. Not much imaginativeness with all the Star Trek stuff over there. People do complain that it's too much Trek. I don't care. People can do what they want. Seems Europeans really favor it over Star Wars. I like everything.

Ah.. the good old days with Topa. Man it was nice to see something in your mailbox everyday. Really exciting. That must be what it's like to work at ILM, BLUR, etc. Somebody is doing something kool there everyday.

Best case scenario SCIFI-MESHES might host our site but we'd never merge sites. We have two diff. functions. We might have to BIT TORRENT files on the site or something. It's really only the forums that we share. I'll see if we can move our site over there or somewhere. This forum can probably stay here indefinitely too but I'd really like to see it closed actually. People would love and appreciate your work Dr.Jones there just as much here.

 

SFM has sections for anim. etc. 2D? Maybe app specific forums too.

 

Hmm, you know you might be able to post up the files on Turbosquid put down as free for people to download (If worse comes to worse which I don't think it would get THAT bad).

 

As I told Zoo via e-mail it's sad to see this happening - SF3D is an awesome resource and it's too bad TFN can't take the weight of it on the site anymore. That said I'm willing to assist if possible so if there is a way I can help I'll do what I can.

 

Me too

if there's anything I can do

it would be sad to see this go............

I can't imagine that the forums would move to since they are part of the TFN.Net boards........so..........

but we'll see ... as I sad......I'll help if there's anything I can do

 

This site can't go! We can't let it! Sci-fi has been too good to us, We must give back!
Zoo if you need me to host anything PM me, I will try.

This may sound crazy, (and don't kill me guys!!)but can we charge a low low monthly member fee to cover costs? Maybe like a dollar a month ($12.00 yearly charge)??

I think $1.00 from everyone will not be bad and help out tremendously, considering the amount of members that frequent here.

In the meantime, have you looked into other hosts that are cheap like:
MIDPHASE.COM

Unmetered bandwidth and 12,000MB of free storage for like $8-$12 a month I think.

~Rory

 

You're the 2nd person who has suggested this free or near free offering. I'm not techie web-guy so I'm really out of my element on all of this. BUT... it does sound strange that somebody would have 10 GIGs unmetered bandwidth for these figures. Very FISHY. I think maybe what's going on here is they are just trying to use big numbers to impress when they know all they are doing is hosting personal sites?? I talked to Aceman at SCIFI-MESHES and he told me what I've been thinking all these years... $500/month. That's how much it costs to pay for a site like SF3D. And we've been hosted for free all this time. That's the cost for bandwidth, GIG's of space, your own new server, etc. I don't want to go down the road SWMA did long long time ago. I'll have to look at how the site can pay for itself in ad revenue or something. I don't want to hop around from one cheesey server to another. What I really need to do know is go back to these techie guys and ask them about these places you guys mention, costs to expect, where to go, etc.? I'm not paying $6000/year out of my pocket. YIKES. I guess we could turn off downloads but that might still cost $500/month?

 

id gladly pay a couple bucks a month......

 

I'll have to dig through some of the hosting plans I've seen in the past, but I know for sure with a company like Servage you can host a site with 500+ GB of bandwidth for under $10 per month. Even if it had to run on two accounts they are awesome over there and extremely professional. (I use it for all my webhosting now - great people.)

As far as ads and such go, you could drop in some Google ads and such or run it like deviantART does - have a couple different methods for subscriptions and put more ads on the pages for non-subscribers.

Just some thoughts.

 

I'd have absolutly no problem paying a small amount a month/year, but unfortunatly, my parents absolutly deteste putting their credit card number onto the internet (They hate technological advancment). Obvioulsy it'd be coming out of my pocket, but they'd be the ones paying direct.

It would take alot of presuation, and I hate asking too much of them.

 

Don't worry Morpher, if something like that came up, I'm sure that something could be worked out.

But yeah, there are some low-priced hosting plans availible on the internet. Heck, I've seen some that are free that have almost no limitations except that you already have to have a domain name and certain amount of hits a day--and that's a free service. I think the high prices come from paying for an entire server rather than just part of it.

 

Like I said... I don't know how serevers like Midphase work commercially, but yeah I was thinking that they do use big numbers to impress. But when my film first came out I had alot of downloads plus I host stuff for people all the time and I never run out of bandwidth. I have never had a problem with Midphase, but it doesn't hurt to ask them how it would work in our situation.

But if they do allow unmetered bandwidth with sci-fi then maybe we can do a yearly (all in one) payment. Of like $12.00 a year. Which is really nothing coming from one person, but alot when combined. I mean I think it's the least we can do for downloading and using the many files available to us for free. Besides it could help Zoo keep the rift raft out.(not pointing at anyone in particular okay!!!) Then the boards wlll be frequented by serious forumers. I'm not saying I am, but I am very greatful for all the resources that are available, not to mention all the trouble Zoo has gone through in the past.

As far as I'm concerned....you can count me in!

~Rory

 

All this sorta info could help. But I have to tell you.. I'm highly skeptical. If it normally costs $100's/month how can they do it for $10? Like you said.."two accounts".. I guess they call it virtual service? where people share a server. That's ok but I don't want to do something where the site is as slow as molassess. I'm gathering stats right now. I just noticed yesterday.. on just 1/2 a day or less.. it was 200,000 hits and 4000 downloads. I'll have to watch the stats for the rest of the month and see how it goes. What sorta sites are you running with them?? Another issue is taxes and business stuff. If I start paying for the site is it a non-profit org. now? If I start accepting the GOOGLE SENSE ADS will that make us profit? Do I pay taxes on that now? I have to register as a company? YIKES. I know some places do really well with GOOGLE SENSE ADS, and I'll look into ads from the contest sponsors. But all of this introduces more problems b/c I'm not WEBGUY... and PAUL who made our current ASP-driven site is really busy.

 

Look at the "Agreement Form" when you try to download something. I even have a mailing address there if you want to hide some bills in an envelope. I go into great detail about diff. methods. With PayPal of course there are pros and cons like fees, etc.