MOD ANNOUNCEMENT: RE: MOVING

[archimedeia]

Hello, Ataraxites! In light of the recent changes made to Livejournal’s commenting system and general usability as a result of Release 88, we think it’s time we had The Talk about moving off of Livejournal.

Comments

[uncodlyawwesome]

I will say that this game is the only game I've made a plan for moving off of LJ for, so it's not like it's gonna cause me many problems if we do move. I do wish there was a way for us to get some kind of definitive answer from LJ about what the hell they're doing, and I really do wish we didn't have to leave, because I've been with LJ since 2002, but things happen, right?

Also, I'd like to point out that if we move, the safest bet would be to move to Dreamwidth. First, they're going to be releasing a way to transfer communities (have already?). Second, they seem to be much more interested in keeping the fandom-goers like LJRPers, kink memes, etc etc, happy and generally seem to care about their userbase like LJ did back in the day. Third, if you want to have a large game or at least a game connected to the rest of LJRP as it stands, DW is the safest bet as most people seem to only consider games from LJ or DW. (IJ to an extent, but IJ is nonetheless not quite as... idk nice? as DW seems to be.)

The one main issue I have, remembering back to the days of Greater Journal and such, is that any one journaling site might not be able to handle the sudden influx of people, including DW. They seem to be on top of it, but LJRP is a pretty hefty load to bear, and if we, say, don't all buy paid accounts there (whatever the term is), then they run the risk of not being able to support our bandwidthing needs. BUT like I said it seems they're okay with it.

So basically if we move that's cool and if we don't that's okay too. I just wish there was some way we could stick around, especially given that Eridan here has a million icons and i hate the idea of transferring them over.....

[suitedforcoffee]

Just throwing in a note, DW rent servers rather than buying them, so it's easy for them to toss a new one on the pile to cover an influx without having to worry too much about added cost. I wouldn't worry too much about overloading them.

[uncodlyawwesome]

I've heard that, I'm just woefully understudied when it comes to "how fast rented servers can add up" mathematics, so I'm worried that they might not get enough funding for the rent, or something.

[suitedforcoffee]

I'm admittedly not an expert, but as I understand it, if you run your own servers, you basically have to buy the server ($200+ easily), then pay a technician to install and maintain it ($10.25/hr min. wage in SF beginning Jan, and techs cost way more than that). This also means there may be downtime between the time they go "oh crap, overload commencing" and the time they can physically lay hands on the server.

When renting, you pay a monthly fee per server for someone to do all this crap for you. The cost per month to "own" a server is less than the cost of the server itself, and it includes professional tech support. Adding a server to your number is easy and practically instantaneous because the company you're renting from already owns a building full. And the cost breakdown usually means that the more servers you rent, the less you pay per server, if that makes sense.