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

I guess it'll come down to references. Don't want some screwed up slow as a turtle host, somebody who caps bandwidth and then all of a sudden downloads cease, and if it's FREE like that then they probably put ads all over your site. I'd like a little autonomy than that. I think we've built up quite a thing here since 1999 and I'd like to see any ad revenue go to the site and not some host.

 

Well I wouldn't say I'm clueless. When somebody pays for the site all you have to do is run it then. Nobody needed to worry about how big the site is, how much bandwidth is used, how many visitors there are, do you need to run ads, how will that affect you tax-wise? Nobody on TFN is going to help now. I am getting a good idea on the stats, and I'm researching all those other issues. I'm not a web-guy either. I don't do PHP, ASP, SQL, JAVA, etc. Paul created the site... his email is at the bottom of the site. Somebody else is helping make the new contest pages. I have one sponsor who is asking about running ads too but I wouldn't have a clue what to charge. Never done that before. Plus I have to work closely with whoever is making the site to create a layout for banners. First thing is to collect stats before even approaching anybody about ads anyway.

SCIFI 3D is a little bit bigger of a venture than your personal site Rory. People don't just pay for stuff like this for free. It's a $500/month site. What are you stats? I am gonna investigate one of these like Servage though. Ask around and see what's going on. Maybe you are just paying a huge premium just to have your own server. If that's the case then I don't care. I just want to know what the pros and cons are. I'm not interested in the prestige or something of having your own server.

 

Alright ...what do you mean by "what are my stats?" exactly?


When somebody pays for the site all you have to do is run it then. Nobody needed to worry about how big the site is, how much bandwidth is used, how many visitors there are, do you need to run ads, how will that affect you tax-wise?

Ok but that's what I mean. Those guys that pay for it and etc should atleast give you (or someone) the low down on how to continue the operation of the site. They just can't shut it off like that without asking you if you wanna take it over....right?Who's ultimate decision is it?
~Rory

 

Hits, unique hits (traffic)... bandwidth used, etc.

They just provided the space... that's all. They don't owe you anything. They don't even have to give you a month notice. They can just disappear. That can happen with any business too. Your site is on their computer. Philip Wise owns TFN. It's all his decision only.

 

Yep, which is (unfortunately) the way things work with online stuff like this. I'm just glad they allowed most of the month to prepare for the move!

Well I think the difference with this sort of service is (like you said) that you're not paying for your own dedicated server. I've always had good speeds with them though - in fact if you want to test it out here's a 25 MB file I had up there a while back you can download just to see what the speed is like. I know that doesn't say a lot about thousands of hits a day, but at least it's some sort of indication.

Right now I'm still in the process of uploading/updating the Pro Show Studios homepage, but I've been using them as a place to dump things for temporary storage and such with various Fan Film projects for a while now. I haven't experienced traffic like SF3D is according to those numbers you quoted, but I wanted to make sure I threw that out there.

One thing I hadn't considered before was something like FileFront. I started the mirror (now main site actually) for the Sound Bunker over there and it's a great place for hosting large amounts of data. The structuring would be a bit tricky compared to the setup now but if people were only redirected for the actual download you could run the site itself on a small hosting plan with no problems.

I've set up a few things like that for PSS - it's relatively simple though I doubt it'd have the same revenue SF3D would. Another option is you could link to books on Amazon, etc. I don't know how that affects taxes in the long run but from what I've done it's pretty simple to get up and running.



EDIT: Just a note, but that file I linked to is a tiny piece of an old project. I was just using that for reference so disregard the content itself.

 

you know, if you break it up by file types, the entire archive isn't all that big, I know from personal experiance, all the LW meshes all put together in one uncompressed file don't even break 600 MB.

Might it not be more efficient to just stick all the meshes in one folder, presumably one for each file type, LWO, 3DS, MAX, OBJ, whatever...., rar them into one archive, and then host them via torrent, as 600 to 700 MB files... it's the only way I could think of to make any sort of P2P alternative work, I mean having thousands of files being sent by torrent, there'd neber be anyone on the other end with the file you want, but if you just stick them all in one file, then there's a much greater chance of a seeder being online with the exact file you need..

on the downside anyone using a dial up would be ****ed, since obviously it would take them a really freaking long time to download http:\\somehost.who\SCIFI3Darchive(3DS).rar, weighing in at a whopping 600 MBs, over a 56K

 

Not to mention the fact that you may only want a 5 MB file and you are forced to get 500 MB. Huge waste of bandwidth too. Even these free places wouldn't let you do that. I saw the FileFront "SoundBunker" site. Really kool. I might use that myself one day if we ever get enough material together so I have something to edit.

 

that is the reason I was suggesting this as a way of organizing a torrent based system, that way all your server has to support is a 2 or 3 KB .torrent file..

..the nice thing about torrents is that your server doesn't actually have to handle the strain of hosting the file itself

 

Yea.. but you forgot about the main and HUGE drawback... the actual peers. How many people are gonna have what you want on their hdd when you want it? Probably a better solution is FileFront, MegaUpload, or one of those type of places. But it may not be necessary. That would be a lot of work to create all these links. I'd rather pay for a server than do all of that work.

 

(I posted before on the fanfilms board thread, continuing here)

If a dedicated server is what's needed for the number of hits, then it probably costs around $100/month if you can get enough money together to pay for a year at once.

I linked dreamhost because I've found them to be helpful, friendly, and well run (I have an account with them, though not on a dedicated server), and the other recommendations I checked from this and other threads either cost more for dedicated servers, or didn't offer them at all.

Good luck, wherever this goes

EDIT: Regarding torrents. If you don't rar them into a single file, instead just torrent all the files together, then with the right client you can download just the files you want out of the larger file. Then again, it makes them very unorganized.

- Phi

 

As I said, that would be the one, and only advantage of sticking the thing all in one folder, if there's only 1 folder, than there's a 100% chance that if there's a seeder, they'll have the file you're looking for..

only an idea

 

First and foremost, I wanted to say that its terrible that TFN is shutting down Scifi3d. Like a lot of others here, this is what first got me started with 3d. Its an incredible site.

That being said, I'd like to offer any assistance I can to help migrate Scifi3d to a new server. I have experience with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and some Java (like JSP, and applets). I do a lot of database related web development for a local high school district. I've also been creating straight HTML pages for years now, including hosting my own sites. I'm actually a lot more knowledgable about web development than I am 3d modelling.

Yeah, if you make a torrent of a directory, then you can pick and choose files using clients like Azereus or BitComet. About people hosting the files in order for the P2P network to operate efficiently; I'm sure we could pull enough volunteers from the forums to seed the files. All you would have to do is download the entire library on a few users computers and then just leave the torrent active after the download has completed. Clients like BitComet and Azereus even allow one to limit the upload rate, so it wouldn't interfere with regular browsing/usage.

To figure out if Bittorrent is really an option, though, we would have to know the file size. I've seen torrents larger than 8gb. The larger the torrent, the harder and longer its going to be to transfer to the seeders, and the less willing people are going to be to actually seed (thats a lot of space on an HD).

 

I haven't been in the market for a host in a while, but I don't think you would need a dedicated host if you could find a plan with enough space and bandwidth.

It depends. If there are certain periods of peak traffic you might severly affect other sites in a shared host. Space would probably not be a problem.

 

It's a great way to go because you get all the hosting space/bandwidth you need with only the ads to deal with. If nothing else it could be a way to create a temporary archive until the new server is decided upon.

 

So far the options are/were...

1). something like Servage.com. BUT... they as with many others don't support ASP and our site is ASP-driven.

2). Tim Brazeal who is the guy who runs trekunited.com and saveenterprise.com might be interested in hosting SF3D. He raised 3 million dollars through fans to keep star trek alive for one more season and offered it to paramount. Paramount turned the fans down and closed it's doors to trek. Anybody know him?

3). Aceman at SCIFI-MESHES.com is offering to share his server with us for $40/month. He's checking the ASP thing too.

 

Sounds like it's going to work out great.

That's kind of weird thought about Star Trek, I wonder what he did with the 3 million dollars.

 

Guess that will help him with his donations issue, $40 less he has to worry about, but really man is it worth it?

Basically $500 bucks a year to keep the name Sci-Fi3d in circulation, wow.

Hey if you have that kind of money to throw away. Personally I would give Aceman the files and let him just keep the models on his server, or someone is bound to make a mirror site like they did with SWMA....

 

It's so unfortunate that the interests in this site wane, I feel it to, there's little left to talk about, and because more people think the same way, every day less and less people visit this site...

 

Too bad..I just discovered this part of the forums, and I find out that it will be shut down..

 

There will still be places to discuss 3D around here - it's just the SF3D site itself that will have moved.

 

Oh, well...

Those are relatively good news...

But you say "moved". Does it mean that there's a place to the site to be moved?
Or we should begin downloading all as we can before the site dissapears?

 

No don't do that - Zoo mentioned not wanting everyone to hit it at once as that would make the bandwidth situation much worse.

I don't know about a new location yet, but then again I've been out of touch for a while thanks to internet problems.

 

QUESTION:

How many MB's or GIG's is the Scifi 3d site?

Because in my country (netherlands) we have a provider that will host 1000 MB with unlimited bandwitch for ? 1,- a month....or 1.20 dollars a month

just wanted to tell

If needed I would be wanting to be a translater or pay it if needed

 

Wow! Wich provider may that be?
Ben wel benieuwd