Date:  Wed May 9, 2001  6:16 pm
Subject:  There is no such thing as a free website (important)

 
 

ENCINA ALUMNI,

Some of you may have noticed that the Encina website was not
available the past few days. It's up again temporarily...

You may receive this message twice as I've sent it to the
class mailing lists too.

For those of you who are not familiar with the history of the
Encina website, it started when Will Leaver 73/74 agreed to
host the class of 73 website for free at his ISP Connect
in Washington State. Since that time, the website expanded to
encompass the entire high school and forty years of alumni.
The current website is over 300MB in size.

Unfortunately, Will has moved on, although some of his sons
are still working at Connect. Yesterday, finding no account
records for the Encina website, we were shut down. I inquired
as to what was the problem and was informed that we were shut
down because we had no account. I explained about the deal
Will Leaver had given us and the site is back up for now.

Attached is the letter that Lisa Hayes, the CEO, sent me today.
Lisa explains that a website of our size would normally cost
about $500/month and require a dedicated server. Lisa offered
to host the Encina website for $225/month. This does not include
the cost of buying a dedicated server. We had until Monday to
set up a plan with them. Note that these prices are per month,
not per year.

I deleted a backup copy of the website and reduced our disk
usage from over 500MB to 325MB in size, which is under their
threshold for requiring a dedicated server.

I talked with Lisa on the phone just now and she has agreed to
host the Encina website for $115/month since I reduced our
disk usage, PROVIDED we do not use much additonal disk space.
In other words, I can maintain the class directories, but
no pictures from the alumni challenge, the next homecoming party,
newspapers, yearbooks. Arrrgh. This is not acceptable to me,
if we stay with Connect we need to move to a dedicated webserver
at the additional cost in the future.

I have agreed to start paying $115/month for now while we
discuss what to do. Lisa suggested asking alumni for donations.
Having classes sponsor a week or a month. Will suggested having
the website being an affiliate, so that if alumni set up personal
websites with Connect, we would get the referral fee. I tried
this before and was unsuccessful.

We all like to take advantage of all the free information which
is available on the net, but the fact is, the internet is NOT FREE.
Someone is paying for all the resources you use. The Encina website
has been getting a free ride for three years, having to only pay
the domain registration fee of $35/year. We have been consuming
disk space, bandwidth and cpu at Connect without paying them.

As I see it, we have the following options:
1. stay at Connect for $115/month ($1380/year)
limited disk space, not acceptable long term plan.
2. stay at Connect, buy webserver and pay even more, perhaps $225/month.
webserver expense, lots of disk space, expensive
3. investigate and move to a new ISP (suggestions welcome)
anyone else have their own ISP???
4. find an alumni with a webserver at home or at work
who is willing to host the Encina website
5. buy a webserver and host the website at my home
requires buying webserver, access via not so reliable DSL line)
6. shut down the website...

If you have any suggestions please write. I would be interested
in reliable domain hosts who are inexpensive. I would really
hate to move as Connect has been a very good host.

Even if we can live with $115/month at Connect, I find the
disk space restrictions very limiting. But if we want to use
more space at Connect, we will have to buy our own dedicated
server and the hosting fees will increase substantially.
So $115/month is the minimum fee at Connect.

I talked with Will Leaver's son Jacob, the CTO, about webservers.
He said they could put something together for $500-1000 dollars
depending on our requirements. The Encina website is pretty
low traffic and it's our disk usage which concerns them.
But at least buying the webserver is a one time cost.
Buy us a server and we'll name it after you!

If anyone has their own company and could squeeze the Encina
website onto their server, that would be great. We'll even
buy our own hard disk!

I have enjoyed being the primary webmaster of the Encina website
these past three years and I hope we can figure out a way to
keep it online. For those of you who have found it valuable,
I hope you will once again open your wallets and contribute
to the cause. Sorry to always be asking for money...


Sadly,

Harlan Lau '73
Encina webmaster
www.encinahighschool.com


----- Original Message -----

Mr. Lau,

I have reviewed your emails and have agreed to have the site turned up
through the weekend to support your event.

However, as you know your site is very large. If you were a paying customer
the cost of hosting your site would be around $500.00 per month. When have
been hosting the site at this rate for a very long time. When Mr. Leaver
agreed to host this site on a complimentary basis it wasn't nearly this
large. It has grown to such a degree that we simply cannot host it for free
any longer.

I understand that your alumni association is a nonprofit and has little or
no budget to work with for this project and the $500.00 a month is a lot to
pay. We have discussed your situation internally and all of us agree that
you should move your site to a dedicated server. We will host that
dedicated server at the reduced price of $225.00 per month. We would waive
the set up charges associated with that type of account unless we have to
become involved in the building of the server. However, I think with your
technical skills that shouldn't be necessary.

So, in summary, we will keep the site live until Monday of next week. We
will need to establish a plan prior to Monday if you want to maintain
continuity of service for the site beyond that.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Lisa Hayes