frostfire
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Posts posted by frostfire
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If there were a vote, I'd vote to stay with the current version of the forum software. Not worth the time, effort and hair pulling to upgrade, IMHO.
Edited to add: Would Phil at Le Pub be willing to accept cash donations for the board?
Ok, will tackle both of these one at a time.
First, the upgrade. Unfortunately unless we want the board to die a very slow death, upgrading is necessary. This version has not been supported for some time, which means that security patches are no longer being generated for it - but at the same time, just like with any software, more security holes are being found every month. This makes it easier and easier for hackers and spammers to access the board. As it is, we are currently unable to stop them from registering - we get up to 50 new spam accounts registered per day (average about 20 or so), and while we do stop most of them from actually submitting spam, we do not stop all of them - and there will be more and more as time goes on. Eventually someone will figure out how to crack user permission security at which point those new accounts will be able to access all our secure forums - not good! In short, its much better to upgrade, even if that means moving to a new reputation system (which is one of the hurdles)
As to Phil at Le Pub, I have not spoken to him about it yet, but based on our past discussions, I am sure it would be no problem. I will make it a point to get out there in the next couple days and
have a couple beerstalk to him about it.-
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Frostfire or one of the mods, can you determine how many major users of the board there are so that we get a better feel of how much is need from each. If there are only 20 major users, then we would need to contribute about $100/each a year on average.
That is one of the things I am going to find out. It will take some time to get everything sorted. My first priority is to get the board upgraded to the latest version, which looks like its going to be one hell of a big job. I remember talking to Martin about it back in the day when he tried and failed - and I remember thinking... well, shit... if I had the time I could do that pretty fast. lol. Oops.
So, I have a test server set up and I did a test port of the database and then did the upgrade, but so many things are broken that its hard to know even where to start fixing them. Then of course I need to keep a log of everything I fix and how it was fixed, and in some cases a file by file list of code changes (for the skin), so I can make those same changes again when I do the live port over for the real upgrade later. Its gonna be a nightmare lol.
But I do want to say again... I am not expecting or asking our members to carry the weight of this whole thing like that. I will find a neutral solution such as ads from bars etc. The results we have had already have been awesome. I plan on working on this most of the day today and tomorrow (weekend), and will update again.
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Not sure whats up with the bad redirect page. Ill check that out. I suspect it has to do with it being a donation and not a payment - I doubt i programmed my receipt page to deal with that lol. Oops.
Butch, I am sure it went thru. At least I did get one yesterday. Later tonight ill go thru and add them to the original post so you can be sure.
Frosty
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Brilliant work Frostfire.
After reading your post I'm understanding how little I know about this thing I'm typing on.......I'm guessing 'frostfire' is some computer joke that's been going over my head for yonks.
No. Its a gaming thing.
Frostfire was my very first gaming character name from when I was about 13. I don't even remember what game to be honest - I know it was AD&D but no idea what module/adventure. Back then my nickname began as "Frosty", and even my family used it. To this day I have RL friends that use only that name - and likely several that do not even know my real name lol. That was all... crap, 30 years ago now.
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So just for those interested, I spent most of the day yesterday between learning linux and setting up a test server where I can install the latest IPB and try to upgrade pattayatalk and fix any issues (likely have to re-do the skin).
In the process of that, I found the commands I needed to see request metadata and found that there were a number of files being streamed constantly from outside our forum. One was a very large video. After a bit of trial and error, I enacted protections on them (and now all files on the server) that will prevent them from being abused by other websites. This resulted in a HUGE... and I mean absolutely massive decrease in bandwidth and CPU usage on the server, and the pages load noticeably faster now. I suspect that will drop the cost of the server dramatically.
One of the videos is a porn video of some sort that must have been posted on a old (circa 2009) post that had been deleted, because I cannot find reference to it anywhere in our database (but it was in the right folder to have been a upload at some point, and its write time was in 2009). Anyway, I deleted that one. That was being streamed by a large number of porn websites as referrers, so I suspect that's where most of the bandwidth was going.
Anyway - some good news. Let me know if you see a noticeable page load time difference.
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Original post updated with donations to date. Much better than I had hoped, tho I would have much rather seen more people put in less each. I will do my best to enhance the board and make it worthy :)
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Hi
Is the Agoda referral worthwhile? Are there more or better paying referral sites that can perhaps can come on board?.
I've tried unsuccessfully to sign up for 2 of them over the last couple days - both were "down". After doing research I decided against agoda, since many people seem to be complaining that they skim commissions and obfuscate click to conversion statistics. Over the coming weeks I will be looking for things like that tho.
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You are right in what it *should* be using. But its not. One of my jobs will be to find out why, eventually.
Martin thinks that some of the photos' links got their way in to some other websites over the years. I suspect he is correct. In other words, other forums/sites use images with a URL on this website to save themselves bandwidth. We had a discussion about it some time back, but he could not find a way to isolate that. If this was a windows server I could do it in a minute. I will fix that eventually.
But this whole part of the discussion is pretty much moot - I've already purchased a very good server, so getting one elsewhere would be a step backward, not forward.
And lastly for the record, I would never put an important website on a shared host of any kind, and rarely on a VPS, unless the traffic was quite small. I know quite a bit about VPSs as I own a fairly large VPS hosting company myself :) (its a niche company, but currently leases several hundred VPSs). I know very well what they can do and what they can't - and a database heavy app like this forum would chug along like a snail under one of them, since there is never enough RAM for proper database caching.
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Yes I was thinking the same after working on IPS and running several forums over the last few years.
I did ask a few questions regarding the disk size required for the uploads folder and database. the rest is minimal ...
lets say you would need 100GB then a server of 160GB will do the trick with WHM/Cpanel a VPS is ideal for forums as you have root access.
The 3.4.9 version on the forum is not supported and doesn't carry any license fee so my guess is it can be done from 20 to 40 USD per month depending on the hosting company your decide to use.
Heres a few:-
So ya... where to start on this one lol.
Those are not dedicated server hosting plans. Those are website hosting plans.
2 problems with that. First off, between the database and the photos (many of which may be able to be deleted martin said, but I have no idea which ones or how to tell), we are using about 1.25TB right now. But the most important aspect of hosting is control. If we host this on a "website hosting" service, they control everything. We have no access to do anything special or set special permissions, etc. Further, the moment some asshat complains that we have pornographic content or "prostitution related material", they cancel the account and we lose the current database etc. Second I do not know of any website hosting plan that allows for 1TB+ - tho I may be wrong about that now since my firsthand knowledge of that is years old. Lastly, bandwidth. We use a absolute fuck-ton of bandwidth. The usual maximum bandwidth allotment for a shared hosting server account is about 5GB/mo. We use at least 50x that amount. As stated in other posts, I am not totally sure what our bandwidth use is at the moment, but I do know an approx. range - somewhere between 300GB and 1TB per month. Shared hosting just does not offer that type of thing.
So, a dedicated server it is. And yes, sure, there are dedicated servers running in unknown datacenters in eastern europe where you can get a dedicated machine for $20 a month... so ya, I could lower costs that way. But I won't do that, even if it costs me out of my own pocket. Its a weak option with more negatives than I can list, not the least of which is at any time they could shut down with no notice and all of our data is lost. Cheap hosting services are a dime a dozen, and they go out of business as fast as they start up. Think of them like a beer bar in new plaza. Sure there are a few that have been there for years, but every time you go there's a new one and no sign whatever of the one it replaced. I would never put a server I control in to a situation like that, no matter the content.
As for tapitalk, no they do not pay forum owners - at least that I know of. That is something I can check in to - perhaps Martin just did not mention it.
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Once you know what percentage you are being charged, let us know so that we can cover that also.
Also, we need to cover the amount you spent since you started paying the expenses. We need to be paying you for your labor for board administration also.
I don't expect all that. Like I said, a little bit here and there will help, but its not required by any means. I knew when I offered to take over costs from Martin that I would take a small hit on it, at least initially. In the past he was leasing a dedicated server. That was most of the cost - bandwidth was only about ~$50 or so per month. I flat out bought a new server for this ($2400 as memory serves) - which is a very modest server as far as servers go (my largest server cost ~$25000), and so my only expense is the bandwidth and maintenance. And like I said before, I really have no idea how much that equates out to each month. I could monitor it, and will do eventually, but I do not currently monitor any of my servers bandwidth usages, aside from a master total at the end of each month (which is how they bill me). I know there are cheaper hosts out there that will give "unlimited bandwidth" for a fixed fee, but I have yet to find one of those that are both reliable and allow truly unmetered access to the pipe. Most of them connect via a CAT-5 cable (100mb/s), which is way too slow for some of my operations - and others have back ends that limit speeds to reduce costs. My servers are all connected directly to multiple providers via 10gb/s fiber, and even if I found another host that would be cheaper, it would be an unmitigated nightmare to try to move all my servers to a new host. I currently have 2 full racks of servers at my host in the US. Anyway - too much geek talk lol. My whole idea here is to partially defray the costs going forward - not looking backward.
There were several donations last night - but it seems that paypal is not asking what the board name is? At least that's what one message told me... ill look in to that. Soon as I finish work today I will update the OP with the donations to date, but amounts only unless there is a supporting post about it by the person that made the donation so I know who it was. I do not for obvious reasons want to post the email of the people here, but I will put the amount and date.
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Is this treated as a cash advance or material purchase by Paypal?
If it is a cash advance, then the credit card company may charge an additional fee. If it is a material purchase, then the donor can get frequent flyer miles.
It is a payment to a merchant (PayPal), so it is likely considered a material purchase by the credit card company, and will likely work for miles depending on your terms of service. It is not a cash advance, so that fee would not apply.
PayPal does charge a percentage, but it is fairly small and comes out of my end, not yours.
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Here is $50 and thanks.
Cheers!
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Frosty has spent years helping Martin with this board. Frosty in effect took over the costs associated with running this board a couple years ago when Martin needed to pay medical bills instead of supporting the site . I believe Martin felt very close to Frosty and wished him to continue the board. That is why Martin left Frosty the necessary passwords to do so.
I am a businessman. I know what can happen when an entity is sold or control of transferred to another entity. The new owners can effect whatever change they like. And if they sell to someone else, the new owners too can change things.
I was low on baht last night. I took Frosty aside and gave him my emergency $100 bill I carry with me to help. I have been a member of the board for around ten years. $10 per year for what I have received is nothing! I pledge to continue donations of at least $10 per year. If everyone else on this board donated a few baht a year....
As an aside, its the first time I've seen one of those new bills. When I saw it under light I was like... is this real? lol. Looks kinda like monopoly cash
I really need to make a trip back to the US soon. I've left Thailand many times over the decade I've been here, but always to nearby countries either with friends or to sort out the odd visa. Never been back stateside. Really hate those long ass flights in coach, and business is just too darn expensive to be worth it. But enough with getting sidetracked - the donation is sincerely appreciated. Now just gotta remember how those exchange booths work
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And I don't see a PM from you. You may not have sent it yet. Im quick on the ball today
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I have hundreds of domains myself. Tho I use them in conjunction with other tangible asset businesses and clients - not monetizing them like I am trying to do here.
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Hi Guys,
Due to multiple requests I am adding a way for members to donate to the board's server fund.
Donations are NOT necessary, and will not grant any additional access whatsoever - this is a free site, and always will be. That said, nothing in life is truly free and the board itself (and its dedicated server) do cost money. I have been paying that fee myself for the last year and more, and Martin paid it for years before that. I will be working on getting some advertising sponsors to defray the costs, but in any case the board is not in any danger of being closed down - I will not let that happen. Help will be graciously accepted however :)
The link below (the button I wanted to add made me lose my last post' text when I tried to add it in here and go to post preview - stupid me), will take you to PayPal and allow you to make a donation in any amount you wish. Any amount is acceptable - even as little as $5 will add up very quickly and is greatly appreciated.
When you do go to that link, there will be a textbox that asks for your board name. Only put this in there if you wish your name to appear here with the amount you donated. Alternately you can PM me and I will put something custom or nothing at all.
A huge thank you to anyone willing to donate.
Frosty
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=UUKMRXXYC397W
Donations to date:
BigusDicus- $100 (cash)anonymous - $25.00 (paypal) 42F494178T911294YMrMango - $50.00 (paypal) 2BJ800147X045574WTheFiend - $25.00 (paypal) 8MC97826CM389073RBillions - $25.00 (paypal) 5R651566F27289739Jacko - $50.00 (paypal) 3UW21447AW425004Fanonymous - $100.00 (paypal) 35550252B3168245NCatBear - $20.00 (paypal) 33469836NM999410MTotal: $395.00 USD, or enough for 4 months or more. Much better than I had hoped! Thank you much guys. Side note: The ID numbers after each donation are a unique identifier from paypal, but only usable by the sender and receiver - so do not pose a security risk.-
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Frosty
I mod on here as well as another much larger UK site. I am also a member on many different sites, some are free, some are by voluntary donations and some by subscription. All work in their own way and it will depend on how much revenue per member you need to generate. From my point of view I would steer away from ads as they can be bloody annoying when they appear. Sponsorship by a bar? Well, it would be the personality of the bar that draws people into the bar and conversely onto the site. But if the bar owner changes (it's been known to happen in Pattaya!) then what happens?
If you have a voluntary donation, then you can have a specific 'paid member's area or some other enhancement to their access. However, if you have a subscription only you lean towards pushing people to other (less worthy!) free sites.
Are you only looking for $150 per month? Is it that difficult to raise that per month?
happy to chat further about it.
KM
One thing I will be clear on: While we may well add a section only visible to premium members - people who are known personally by multiple other members and bought in that way - I would not be for making that membership dependent on a fee. Whatever solution I come up with, it will not be mandatory and people that do not contribute will always be able to see all the content, provided they qualify for access to that section. I do not want this to become a pay to use site at any level. That was one of Martin's key visions for this site, and I will not change that.
When I was in town in December I suggested to Larry (Soi7) that his bar buy Pattayatalk and use it to promote his bar the same way that Pete and Martin used it to promote FLB. At that point in time I knew that Martin was ill but I didn't know that he was terminally ill. Larry dismissed the idea at the time because he was not comfortable with Martin's style.
Larry is currently working part time at the bar and that would give him time to moderate the board from his condo. With frosty continuing to be the #1 admin for the board, I think this would help keep Pattayatalk running for a long time.
(Respects to Martin)
At the current time I am not considering selling the site outright. I would not want this forum to change in any significant way, and selling it would only risk that happening. The expense of running it is not very high - if I cannot find a way for the forum to pay for itself, I will simply continue to fund it out of my own pocket, as I have done for the last year and more and as Martin did for several years before that since FLB closed.
Get involved with something like Google Ads and the next thing you know there'll be problems with "inappropriate content" upsetting their advertisers and they'll effectively end up dictating what we can and can't post (remind anyone of another board?)
That would be the end of this board as we know it.
LordFlash's suggestion is certainly worthy of further consideration.
I must admit I did not think about that at all. You (and the others who mentioned it) are likely spot on with this. This type of info is exactly why I posted this discussion. So google ads are out - at least for the time being.
This website is more - or could be more - than just a forum. When you visit www.pattayatalk.com you are taken to a very very old and outdated website outside the forum. That website is in desperate need of a major overhaul. I have a lot of ideas on what to do with it, but have not put a whole lot of thought in to it yet. I do plan to change that in the coming months. I would like to see a much broader portal with access to current information, webcams, local hotel reviews, emergency information and contacts, and just about anything else a tourist may need for his trip over here - as well as other more detailed information on the nightlife available here, etc.
Another thought I had but I never took live because I was worried about legal ramifications is a website for reviewing and rating the girls of pattaya, much like any number of similar websites in the US and UK. I actually worked on it years ago, and came very close to finishing it - and in fact, the website is up now - has been for many years, but I never advertised it and its not been used. Kinda funny too - I have noticed that there are many technically smart people on forums like this - and for years while the FLB Webcam was running there was a huge clue to the existence of that website there in plain site, but nobody noticed it. haha. Anyway, that idea is still on my mind, but the worries are still there as well, so that one is tabled for now. Still something like that would be of great value to all the members here, not only for its use as intended, but as a means of browsing girls and knowing where they work so you can go see them - as opposed to a thread where pictures of favorite stunners are, but you have no idea how to contact them (lol). I know I used to view such threads and make a game with martin of going bar hopping to see if we could find a particular girl... and while that was greatly enjoyable, it usually did not pan out. (tho it did in a few cases).
Thanks for your frankness, Frosty.
Before FLB closed, effectively, FLB paid for PT as it was a promotion for the business. (If I have that wrong, please correct me.)
Would an option be to link the board to another business? I suppose it would have to be a bar but the forum could entice people to the bar for, say, monthly get-togethers.
P.S.
PL is NOT a good example of how that would work!! But there are factors at play there which stop it happening.
Again, I do not want to limit the board by letting a single sponsor have full run of the content or otherwise limit it in any way. I would of course consider placing banners up for businesses for a small monthly or yearly fee. That is likely what will have to happen. Martin did that back in the day. We never discussed that, but I assume it was paying the bills back then, so it should be feasible now. I will look in to that.
As an aside, I will go ahead and put up a donation banner. I will make another post as well and link the banner to that post, as I have some things to say to people before they make a donation - to make it clear that Pattayatalk is free to use with no restrictions, and while donations are greatly appreciated they are by no means required at all.
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Pete, I have to ask the question. Sir, why would you want PattayaTalk? Whenever I have been in town, Pattaya Beer Garden was or near standing room only. Sir, what is your motivation?
Short, Pattayapete started Pattayatalk. He owned FLB Bar before Martin bought it (from him). I would say his motivation is fairly clear.
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Hi Guys,
As many of you know by now, I have taken over the running of PattayaTalk after Martin's passing last week. What many of you do not know is the story leading up to that, which I will share part of with you now before talking about the future.
After FLB closed several years ago, the companies that advertised with PattayaTalk started to dry up, and no attempt by anyone was made to find new sponsors, which essentially meant that Martin began paying the ~$150 per month cost of the server himself. About 2 years ago he approached me asking for options, and I offered to host pattayatalk free of charge on my servers so he could save his money for upcoming medical bills (of which we knew there would be many). Several months ago, when things started the downward spiral that eventually led to his death, he asked me to keep the site running after he was gone, and gave me the access I needed to do that when the time came. As much as I would have wished that time to never have come, it has. Which leads us to a discussion on where to go from here.
Now first and foremost, I fully intend on keeping things running as Martin has done since the start - same policies, procedures, rules, etc. He had a much better grasp of these types of things than I do, and I am not going to second guess his well thought out decisions on any of those things unless a great need arises.
That said, we do need to do something about the cost of the server eventually. I could of course just keep paying its costs myself and that may well be how things turn out if I do not find an alternative, but I would like to have the discussion anyway.
I read over Martin's old post on this subject, and I saw several suggestions put forward by you guys ranging from making this a pay to post site (membership fee), which I can tell you right now is never going to happen, to asking for donations from members, which I do not think will work. I am certain that if I put up a donation request of some sort there will be some (and I may well do that), but I also have no doubt that those donations will spike on first request, but eventually winnow down to nothing and not cover the ongoing costs of the server.
That leaves advertisements. I will be the first to admit that I am totally new to this area of the internet - I make my money via tangible assets - and have never attempted to monetize a website's traffic. I do, however, have a great deal of knowledge about technology and its usages. For instance, I know that if I put google ads up on pattayatalk and if every visitor unblocked ads on their adblocker, that alone would likely be enough to cover the costs of the server... but I also know that over 85% of users use an adblocker of some type, which makes google ads pretty much un-effective on websites like this. I could request that people unblock this site in their adblocker (in exchange for a promise that I will make the ads as invisible as possible and non-invasive), though I am not certain how well that will work.
Local advertisers are a possibility, but I have no idea how to go about finding them, and not sure if it would be worth the effort.
So... I am looking for ideas. This is your community, and I would hope that between all of us we can find some sort of a balanced solution that works. As of right now I am leaning toward finding a way to implement the google ads... but will go with what most of the community want. All ideas are welcome!
Frosty
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I keep food for a few days, and 5 of the big 5 gallon jugs of water.
If you have a house and storage room is not an issue, I strongly advise you to get several of the jugs of water. They replace them as i use them, and that way if the flooding gets as bad as it did a few years back, at least ill have water. There was a good 7-10 days when you couldnt buy just about any canned or bottled drink at all in pattaya. Supply lines from bkk were completely cut off. That was a nasty week.
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Ok well, since its also happening to me, and I have now confirmed its only happening to SSL traffic heading outside Thailand, I can tell you it is not a 3BB issue, but a issue with 3BBs supplier, or more likely, with the fiber connection coming in to Thailand.
A router could possibly be blocking SSL traffic by accident because of a failure. More likely its a overloaded traffic monitor, but it is possible that its accidental.
Connecting to a private SOCK5 SSL Proxy bypasses the issue tho... which further supports my theory that its a traffic sniffer gone rogue. Either way, hope they fix it soon.
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It may not be 3bb. I use AIS Fiber, and gmail is super slow today. So is Cloudfront. It may be any SSL service, or possibly just those outside Thailand. And if its happening to me too, its likely the governments packet sniffing servers that are causing the lag.
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No, its not just you. There was a hardware failure on one of the servers hosting the DNS, so there was a brief outage while the hardware was replaced.
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My guess is crawlers as well. Looks innocent enough for now... but if traffic gets too heavy I can research it further. Checking the first couple IPs show them as unknowns. Could still be a SEO crawler of some type.
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How to make a donation for the boards server fund
in == Announcements ==
Posted
Yes and Yes.
In short, the reputation system is totally fucked, and so is the skin. Everything else seems ok so far, but I admit I have not dug too deep yet.
I work a shitton, so getting time on this is kinda tough - so it will take some time. But I will work thru the issues and fix them one at a time. Current plan then once all the fixes are in place is to try to do a differential database port from the current server to the test server, and if that works, ill clone that server on to new hardware, turn this forum's "maintenance mode" on, port it over, then move DNS and turn maintenance mode off on the other side. But that whole process is weeks away at least as I can only work a few hours a week on it :)