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[Janus]

The site has (out of necessity) been moved to a new server! Hosting is now handled by Toady, and the domain name has also been updated from dffd.wimbli.com to dffd.bay12games.com. All old links to dffd.wimbli.com file listings will still work, they'll just be seamlessly redirected to the correct page on the new domain. You should still consider updating old links just in case.
Downloads should also be a lot faster, but we'll see how it goes once there are several people downloading at a time.




Original message below:
As per the announcement on the site: http://dffd.wimbli.com/index.php

For as long as the DFFD site has been up, I've been hosting it on my own dime and completely ad-free (primarily because I hate ads). That hasn't been a problem so far, as I have a hosting plan for other sites which I was able to piggyback the DFFD site on without much trouble.

Unfortunately, that has now changed. My host has contacted me and made me aware of a policy that they (now?) have which prohibits people from having file hosting sites like the DFFD on their VPS or shared plans (it's on a VPS). I have a little less than a week to get the files off of there before they remove them, though they have offered the possibility of extending the deadline if I really need it. I'm currently in the process of downloading and backing everything up. The site will remain up and functional in the meantime, and I should be able to get any updated files before the site is moved.

So, I'm looking for new hosting for the site. The main features needed for hosting the site are a reasonable amount of storage space (currently needing at least 150 GB just for the uploaded files), the ability to run custom server software builds (thus a dedicated or VPS plan with root access), and most importantly a lot of available bandwidth. The bandwidth is the real problem, as most hosting plans, even dedicated ones, have shared bandwidth which can be fairly limiting and sometimes unreliable.

I've looked around and the best hosting plan I've found to cover all the bases is one for a dedicated server with dedicated bandwidth, which will cost $169 a month. That's a fair chunk of change, and more than I can handle myself. Cheaper hosting plans would be possible, but I couldn't find any with an indication of dedicated/guaranteed bandwidth.

The benefit of new hosting, however, is of course that uploads and downloads on the site should end up being much faster.

So, the dilemma: would people be willing to donate enough to cover that new hosting plan ($169 a month), or does anyone have any other suggestions? If all else failed and the site did go down permanently, I would at least be willing to keep a backup of all files (and file descriptions and comments for that matter) and provide them to the file authors at their request. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, though.

[mifki]

Can you tell how much data is transferred in/out per month approximately?

[Neckbeard]

If we could find about 35 - 40 people willing to donate about $5 a month towards the maintenance of the Dwarf Fortress File Depot, then that would cover the cost of the site.  I would be willing to be one of those people actually, as I play dwarf fortress often enough to be willing to part with $5 a month for this.  The only other issue would be having backup donors incase one or more people stop wishing to contribute.

[SkaiaMechanic]

Yeah, it's definitely worth $5 a month. I mean, for the number of people who use it it's obviously a valuable resource for many. The question is how you're going to get the money. Patreon might be best for a recurring payment system, but I don't know enough about their processes to do more than suggest it. And people who donate can have, I dunno, Masterwork Quality Usernames for uploading? Or whatever.

[Janus]

Can you tell how much data is transferred in/out per month approximately?

I have most logging disabled for performance on the VPS, but the highest it reached long ago while I was actually checking was somewhere in the range of several TB in a month for the DFFD site. The bandwidth usage does of course fluctuate corresponding with DF releases and such.

I've never used Patreon, but I've considered it as a possibility along with the usual PayPal.

If need be, Toady has indicated he can handle hosting the site, so that will be a fallback position. I'd kind of prefer not to have the burden of it moved over to him, but if need be, that's available.

[Taffer]

I wish I had a solution to this dilemma. Thank you kindly for hosting DFFD for so long. I'm comfortable setting up a host for my own work if I need to, but I certainly can't afford the cost to host DFFD. I suspect that raising a consistent $169 per month to keep it up will prove untenable, given the lack of support in the thread here so far.

Again, thank you for hosting the site until now.

EDIT: Allowing attachments in the forum would surely be at least one solution to this issue. Many things uploaded to DFFD already have an accompanying forum thread directing people to it. Having somebody other than Toady host things is the better solution, but if Toady does take up hosting things enabling forum attachments might be a better solution bandwidth-wise than having DFFD separate.

[Untelligent]

EDIT: Allowing attachments in the forum would surely be at least one solution to this issue. Many things uploaded to DFFD already have an accompanying forum thread directing people to it. Having somebody other than Toady host things is the better solution, but if Toady does take up hosting things enabling forum attachments might be a better solution bandwidth-wise than having DFFD separate.

Mind you, a good chunk of the DFFD uploads are bugged saves, which generally aren't posted on the forums.

[Miuramir]

A proper hosting plan, run by Janus with Toady One having a backup admin account in case of disaster, and supported by a payment system designed for regular support, would seem to be the desired answer.  Patreon seems to be the most obvious choice; it is specifically designed to aggregate many small payments on a monthly basis to provide support. 

Patreon takes 5%, payment fees (credit cards, PayPal, etc.) take another few percent (~2% - 5%+, less if folks support multiple creators), and getting paid from them has a slight fee (trivial if you can take a direct deposit to a US bank account); from their FAQ "We're happy if a creator sees around $0.90 of every dollar!".  So, to cover a $169 hosting plan, we'd probably want to shoot for a goal of about $190 / month.  I think the odds of getting 38 people willing to support at the $5 / month level are pretty good; and you could have a $10 / month level to provide some more room for a cushion.  If you end up with extra, you could pledge that, say, every three months you collect any donations in excess of the next three month's fees (in other words, keeping a buffer balance just in case) and donate them directly to Toady. 

If something unexpected happened to Janus, Toady could activate the backup admin account and folks could drop or switch the Patreon.  If Patreon goes under or otherwise becomes dysfunctional, there would be a few month's balance in hand to give time to set up something else.  It's about as durable as can be arranged without excess bureaucracy IMO. 

[Rose]

I don't really have any suggestions to add, or cash to donate. I'm just posting to keep abreast of any developments.

[mifki]

Honestly, I think it would be better if Toady hosted it (of course if he's really willing to do this).
First, it's quite a big sum per month, and if something goes wrong with donations (ie. they are not regular), either someone will have to pay their own money or the site will go offline/online often.
Second, Toady already has some hosting, and we don't know but maybe there are unused resources/bandwidth, so that actual additional charges won't be as big as for a separate server.
Third, if there are 38 people willing to donate $5 for hosting, why not to donate them to Toady. If it happens to be more than required to pay for hosting, he gets extra, which is good.
Fourth, I don't think Toady will participate in schemes involving him having backup admin account, or stating that every three months he gets the excess.

Also, while I'm surprised someone hosted DFFD for free all the time (thank you!), some things could actually be hosted on free file hosting services. Actually, for me download speed from DFFD is ridiculously slow, so I anyway preferred to get things from other places when there's a choice.

PS. This topic should be named "DFFD is CLOSING DOWN" - I think people just not paying attention otherwise.

[Janus]

EDIT: Allowing attachments in the forum would surely be at least one solution to this issue. Many things uploaded to DFFD already have an accompanying forum thread directing people to it. Having somebody other than Toady host things is the better solution, but if Toady does take up hosting things enabling forum attachments might be a better solution bandwidth-wise than having DFFD separate.

Handling uploads decently without causing undue stress on the server is one concern, especially as the size of the files goes up. It has to be set up properly on the backend (Nginx or I suppose Apache with the right modules) along with special handling on the frontend (PHP in this case). The SMF attachment upload code would need to be reworked for larger uploads to be feasible. And of course, it comes down to whether hosting a lot of fair sized files for download would eat up too much bandwidth on the forum server's plan or just otherwise use enough file I/O to impact the forum.

I've now gone ahead and looked into Patreon, but now I'm not so sure it's viable. Their intro video as well as their FAQ indicate it is for use by content creators, which this doesn't seem to fit with. From their FAQ:

Who can be a creator on Patreon?  Anyone can be a creator! If you've got a passion to create awesome content for your fans, you can do it on Patreon. Creators are already making:

• YouTube Videos & Channels
• Web Comics
• Blogs
• Indie Games
• Music
• Articles
• Podcasts
• Animations
• Illustrations
• Photography
• Anything you'd want to share!

The site isn't likely to be changing all that much, and the money would be going towards hosting rather than directly towards content creation.

From the general lack of response so far, it's looking to me like it will be probably end up being up to Toady. The plan, I think, will be that he will pay to set up and control the hosting account for the server, and he will give me access to the server to get everything transferred over and set up.

The problems I have with the usual free file hosting servers haven't changed in all these years, and are the main reason I set up the DFFD site to begin with:

• the large number of ads, especially the ones with fake Download buttons
• the timed wait to download unless you're a paid "premium" member
• the fact that they will eventually delete your file, often without warning

[mifki]

I don't know why people proposed Patreon - there's a bunch of such services for 'creators', for software authors, for someone else.. But even with PayPal you can setup recurring donation, so I don't know why to use some special service in this case.

When talking about free file hostings I didn't mean the ones with fake download buttons, but rather just Dropbox, Mega, etc. - their bandwidth limits should be enough for many uses like sharing bugged save or a community game (because each person will use their own account). Yes, central place like DFFD is better, but unfortunately bandwidth is still not cheap (while the storage itself is). Well, to be clear, it's not an alternative to DFFD of course, it's just something that people can do to make DFFD hosting cost smaller.

[Footkerchief]

• the fact that they will eventually delete your file, often without warning

This is a big one.  On the bug tracker, we frequently need to look at saves that are months old.

[Knight Otu]

It's a shame that this topic doesn't attract the attention it deserves. Unfortunately, I can't help with any of the problems myself. I had posted a message on my blog, but that doesn't exactly reach many people either.

[Zorbeltuss]

If I had a bigger harddrive in my server and some way to guarantee uptime... which I don't sadly, I would set you up in a second, but I'd love to donate, patreon however is less available to me than paypal, as I can't donate every month.

/Zorbeltuss