Why is coastergallery having constant problems

I don't know how much money you are willing to spend or how much space you need, but I recommend checking out http://www.drw.net .  My site (starcoasters.com) is hosted by them currently (just started 2 weeks ago) and I am pretty impressed by what I get for the price.
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Top Gun: The Jet Coaster Flights in 2001: 70
Coaster Tracks Ridden: 57
www.starcoasters.com

If I press the back button and click on the links again I usually get into the section im trying too now.
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STAND BACK, THERES A HURRICANE COMING THROUGH!
My Top 5 Coasters:
1. Raging Bull 2.Millenium Force 3.V2 (SFGAm) 4.Viper (SFGAm) 5.Cornball Express/Raptor

Starcoasters, have you ever had any problem with reaching your bandwidth limit? I see one of DRW's accounts (the $29.50 per month one) gives you 10GB per month. Seems like it'd be too low for a site like coastergallery.com - their photos averaged about 100k each. That's about 100,000 photos shown per month. Considering coastergallery.com had 1100 photos this means every photo could only be shown 90 times in a month. Granted, most people aren't going to look at all the pics but the ability to turn over all their photos only 90 times seems a little low to me. Maybe I'm overestimating the traffic coastergallery receives but it seems like a pretty popular site.

Anyone know of a hosting service that has much higher bandwidth limitations for about $20 or $30 a month? I'm looking...

I did see the Batwing photos even though it doesn't let me look at them. Also Peabody if you HAD to give a guess of how long it will be down what would you say.

I love coastergallery I can't live without it.

I found another way to see the picture you want. Just keep clicking on it and it will come up.

PEABODY how long will the site be down I can't live without it.

Medusafanatic, not to be mean or anything, but I hope you have a life outside of the computer. Im sure the webmaster of that site has more important issues at hand, than to be worrying about when he can get his site back up. He's taking his *own* time to build a website for other coaster fans to see. Give him time. Relax a little.
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Dayuum, Your HOT!

I know i'm impatient but I love that site. And no its not the only thing I do that would be my friend.

The site is working pretty good now.

Peabody, here's a suggestion...COASTERBUZZ!!!!!

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Mayday - Memorial Day Weekend - Nonpoint, Nickelback, Oleander, Staind
Ozzfest - June 8 - Drowning Pool, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Black Sabbath
Awake Tour- June 15 - Darwin's Waiting Room, Puddle of Mudd, Deftones, Godsmack

I can't get anything by you guys, can I?

I have been having website problems.  My site is hosted by webhosting.com, but I am pretty fed up with them.  I was promised "You have unlimited data transfer (or hits) on your shared server. Any outward-bound traffic from your Web site is considered data transfer. For example, each time an html file, image, or other element on your Web page is loaded, data transfer is generated. "  However, today I was told that I have exceeded my bandwidth limit.  I am outraged that their website claims unlimited bandwidth, but they say CoasterGallery has exceeded some unspecified limit.  And instead of politely notifying me, they didn't do anything so I just got lots of people emailing me about the 503 errors and broken images.  I am going to move the Gallery to another host as soon as possible.  (Thanks for the suggestions everyone!) Until the move, keep hitting REFRESH until the page works for you.  I promise it will work eventually!

As far as the future of www.CoasterGallery.com, please see my letter on the home page: www.CoasterGallery.com/911.html Since I will soon be unemployed, adding new pictures to the Gallery is pretty low on my list of priorities.  When I do resume flying, I will be adding plenty of new parks and pictures.
So for now, I thank you for your patience and ask you to keep hitting REFRESH.  (And stay away from webhosting.com.)

P.S.  Thanks to those of you who have emailed their support during this time of airline furloughs.
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Joel Rogers
CoasterGallery
www.CoasterGallery.com

*** This post was edited by CaptainJoel on 9/24/2001. ***

Joel,

I'm not specifically sure about webhosting.com's policies but there is NO webhosting service I know of that offers unlimited hits - almost all that do contain the dreaded asterisk and subsequent fine print. Like I said I've been looking into hosts for a photo site and I'm finding that most companies aren't too kind to sites hosting galleries of any kind. It eats up a lot of their resources and I'm honestly surprised you got as far as you did before webhosting.com came down on you.

I'm currently looking at spending $20 to $40 a month on hosting and the best deals I can find only allow 20, maybe 25GB of transfer per month. Again, with the sheer number of photos coastergallery.com has this seems to be your big hurdle. I'm still looking and if I stumble onto a host that has high transfer allocations I'll be sure to pass the info along.

I've been asking around on many message boards and contacting various services and it seems that a good deal in most cases will get you 1GB of transer for every $2 to $3 you spend. I've found a few that range closer to a buck per GB but after you go over the limit (again, usually around 20GB per month) the fees increase substantially. I just see no way of having an online gallery as large and as popular as yours is without spending some serious cash on it. Now I know why Jeff doesn't have a whole lot of photos on Coasterbuzz... and he still shells out some big $$$ to keep it going.

Hope it all works out for you. :)

Lord Gonchar,

Check out http://www.readyhosting.com for unmetered (not unlimited, they don't even monitor it) data transfer:

"We don't meter the amount of traffic you use.  You won't get a suprise bill for additional bandwidth.  This means that unless your site compromises the performance of the web server (which, by the way, probably won't happen), or the performance of our network - we don't care how much traffic you have. Your site should be successful."

They're a good host.

Since CoasterGallery.com  is soon going to be my sole source of income soon...... PLEASE BY MY NEW T-SHIRTS!

(Sorry for the plug!)

But seriously, thanks everyone for the suggestions!

I guess this the price I pay for the growing popularity of the Gallery.

I appreciate the time and money Jeff spends on CoasterBuzz even more now!

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Joel Rogers
CoasterGallery
www.CoasterGallery.com

KenK,
I have and sadly they also include hidden fine print. I mailed their sales department explained my situation (looking for a site to host a gallery with high bandwidth expectations) and the reply I received was rather curt (in my humble opinion).

They explained that traffic goes unmetered, not bandwidth, and that if I fell into a certain top percentage of system usage (which a site delivering mostly photos, videos and other downloads certainly would) that I would indeed be charged additional fees. I know readyhosting's site contains the exact text you passed along and many others do too, but there's a catch to all the hosts I've looked into...and I've checked into quite a few.

The fine print is included on their Terms Of Service page and reads as follows:

Unmetered Data Transfer – Ready Hosting, Inc. provides the unlimited space and unlimited transfer in good faith to our Customers so that they may create their websites without the fear of running over their web space or web traffic allocation. While most Customers will use the extra web space and traffic for their legitimate web site needs, we recognize that others may try to take advantage of our offer and use the space and traffic in ways for which it is not intended. If at any time the Customer’s website generates enough bandwidth usage to affect the performance of the other customer sites on the server, Ready Hosting, Inc. reserves the full right to terminate the Customer’s domain name without refund.

The main thing with unmetered traffic seems to be that it includes only "average" sites which would include mostly text and few images supporting the text content. The problem with sites like coastergallery and similar ones (my planned addition to the world of amusement parks and coasters online included) is that they deliver content that is about as much of a polar opposite of what these hosting companies consider the "average" site as possible. It's looking ugly and I originally planned an x-mas/new year's debut but may push it back a bit to rethink my approach.
I'm just wondering how other large photo site are doing it. Coastertown immediately comes to mind. Rob (he owns the site) has a counter on his mainpage and he gets roughly 2500-3000 hits a week (since I began keeping an eye out) - his site also features almost 2300 pics. I also know he's hosted by cihost which allows gallery sites 20GB of transfer per month then charges an additional $20 per GB per month - you can prepay but it's still $10 per GB per month.

Again a little simple math says with 2300 pics averaging 100k each that all the photos can only be shown 87 times before the ridiculous additional fees kick in. I have no idea how Rob keeps that site alive unless I'm severly over-estimating the number of pics each visitor looks at... or he's independently wealthy, of course.

Looks like it truly is difficult to maintain a large, highly popular coaster gallery online. I'd expect most of the sites that stick around to adhere to Joe Schwartz's (joyrides) philosophy of only putting up the best of the best photos, but even he switched hosts as Peabody pointed out earlier in this thread.

Every one keep an eye out to try to help sites like coastergallery.com even exist. If you stumble onto any good info pass it along, I'd certainly appreciate it and I'm sure Joel would too.
 
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*** This post was edited by Lord Gonchar on 9/25/2001. ***

"Unlimited" bandwidth is a myth, and anyone who claims to offer it should be sued for bait-and-switch. Bandwidth just ain't free. Since I started Guide to The Point in '98, I've had everything from a small Unix virtual server account to a rented dedicated Win2k box to my own pair of servers on my own T-1. One way or another, you always have to pay for it. When I got to 80 GB of monthly data transfer, it no longer made sense for me to continue on someone else's connection, so that's when I called Sprint.

Here's the interesting thing about recovering expense, though. In the last year, as things really got ridiculous, I realized that advertising would not support the site. It just wasn't going to happen given the hostile ad market. That's where so many other sites have failed. The saving grace has been POP Forums. As long as I sell two or three licenses a month, it makes up the advertising short fall.

I could just drop it all, get a $20 virtual account somewhere, and sell the forums at $175 each and pocket all of that profit, but where would the fun be in that?

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com
"From the global village... in the age of communication!"
Watch the grass grow!

Joel did you officially lose your job yet or are you just assuming. If were told you were going to be laid off I am very sorry and you have my deepest sympathes. I would just like to know and I understand if you can't are Indiana Beach,SFOG, and Worlds of Fun pictures going to be put up since you have already visited the parks.

Please Joel I need to know.

I assume Jeff can help you put those parks up.

Maybe you could seek out hosting from whoever hosts some of these porno sites ? There are picture galleries all over the freaking place, and they have to consume tons of bandwidth. As Jeff pointed out, advertising doesn't pay for his site entirely, so I would assume it doesn't pay for the porno sites either. I am talking about the free sites, so they are not really making income either. How do they do it ?

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Current favorite coasters:
Wooden: 1) Beast 2) Raven 3) Son of Beast 4) The Boss 5) Timber Wolf
Steel: 1) Raging Bull 2) Millennium Force 3) V2 4) Wild Thing 5) Mr. Freeze

I was looking for a hosting company to host my website and I found http://liquidweb.com and it had some pretty good services. I recommended it to the guy at Screamscape.com, and I think he used it. Check it out, and good luck with everything!!