Posted on 07/29/2017 3:33:27 PM PDT by djf
Sorry I have to say this. But FR has become nearly unusable these days.
You used to have a feeling that within 30 seconds to a minute, your page would be resolved and loaded.
But no more. I don't know how many times lately, I have hit refresh or picked a new thread only to wait and wait and wait and then I give up and go to another site.
The powers that be recommend limiting your window options to twenty. My reply is, if that's the problem, the just taking the option away and making it twenty should be the solution.
And I know about DOS attacks - they can easily be filtered by a front-end server - so that shouldn't be a problem.
Anyways, whatever it is, it's getting series. And Hugh!
Thank you for calling me a complainer.
That’s exactly why I stopped being a donor.
When any human endeavor that relies on the financial support of others stops providing them with what they’re paying for AND flips them an attitude in the face of legitimate criticism, said support tends to go elsewhere.
Good night and good luck.
“VM shared servers”
VM is dumb for a high performance server. Very dumb.
LOL...I would post an irony pic but, it would take an hour...
Sorry, should have said something like present company excluded, of course. But you’re talking to a sailor with poor upbringing and no social graces. At least I’ve learned to (mostly) avoid four letter words in mixed company.
Site is hosted on Texas Instruments TI-99 using Windoze 3.11a but, the script was written using Wordstar then uploaded to a Commodore 64 via a 3com 9600 modem and stored on a jukebox of Memorex cassette drives.
Why did you not respond to my post to you Jim ?
Just talking out loud.
Drop this on a CDN and be done with it....
BTW, took over 2 minutes just to get to this comment box.
Seems extraordinarily unlikely to anyone who’s been paying attention and has any sort of a clue about infrastructure.
Well, I'm taking Jim at his word and the symptoms do suggest a DDoS attack, but I guess it could be more. And yes, you are correct, just updating the software would not prevent this issue from happening, but it would be part of a comprehensive upgrade which it does need.
As I said before; it can be made to work with this classic style or a new and improved format. The choice would be the end users.
You mean the one where you called humblegunner a worthless POS? Ever heard of the of the doctrine of no clean hands? Doesn’t matter and impossible to tell who started it when it’s a years long running feud. Best if you two just avoid each other—either that or maybe get a room somewhere.
Full disclosure: I throttled back on the contributions to FreeRepublic during the past year. I appreciate some of the things that President Trump has done (such as the Justice Gorsuch nomination), but I am not overly thrilled with him. (I was a Santorum supporter in 2012 and 2016.) When FreeRepublic started verging on all-out Trump worship, I decided to hold off on contributions for now.
However, the whiners on these vanity threads threatening to leave if the site doesn’t speed up right now have struck a nerve. I just sent in my first contribution in a while, modest that it may be. I’m sure that JimRob and John will get the site fixed before I get my site fixed. Oh, yeah. I don’t have a site...and neither do the whiners.
Best wishes, JimRob.
It’s time for FR to start taking firearm advertizing and get some real money to upgrade all the systems.
Free Republic operates on an approximate $360,000 annual budget (click for breakdown).
I found this (sorry the link is not hot) on the welcome page.
Free Republic Monthly Budget
Once we get our monthly donations to the point where they will cover all of our expenses, we will not need to have fundraisers.
Est. Recurring Monthly Contributions $12,251
Monthly Expenses
Bandwidth and Colocation $2,430
Systems and Programming 7,000
Management and Admin + Taxes 13,500
Legal and Accounting 1,000
Bank Fees, Credit Card Fees, Processing Fees 900
Equip, Maintenance and Repairs 600
Office Expenses, Rents, Insurance, Telephone, ISP, Supplies, Allowance for Declines/Cancels 2,500
Travel Expenses 1,200 29,130
Est. Monthly Shortfall ($16,879)
Est. Recurring Monthly Contributions
This is the amount contributed by the monthly donors only. It does not include one-time donations.
Est. Monthly Shortfall
Amount needed in one-time donations per month or additional monthlies need to meet budget needs.
(from the paragraph with the “click here”...this follows:
Free Republic operates on an approximate $360,000 annual budget (click for breakdown) which includes all equipment costs, bandwidth fees, consulting and labor costs, administrative costs, license fees, insurance, rents, communications costs, office expenses, advertising, travel, professional fees, banking and credit card fees, taxes, etc. Like most labor intensive organizations, the bulk of our costs are personnel related. We have one general manager and webmaster, one systems, programming and computer guru, one programming and management assistant and one bookkeeper/business administrator. The four of us are all members (partners) of the LLC. We own and operate our own servers and our proprietary software was developed and is maintained inhouse.
Free Republic is not a charity or IRS non-profit organization. We do not raise funds for charitable purposes or causes. We raise funds solely to cover our operating costs, labor, and all applicable state and federal income and payroll taxes.
I am posting the financials for everyone who has questions about them. Since I assume most of us use bookmarks to access the site, it does take a bit of searching to find it. Really, if you’ve been to the welcome page once, there’s not much point in going back, right?
And this is this year’s 3rd quarterly summary: (and it’s taken me about 10 minutes to post these 3 threads)
2017 Q3 Summary
Q-t-D Receipts
$25,831.69
(includes monthlies to-date)
Monthlies
$12,250.67
(pledged, not actual receipts)
Thanks. Found the info. Wow!! I wish I had that kind of income at any point in my life. They are very lucky. I wish I had been smart enough back then or now to start a new site for something that would earn me that kind of monthly income. Oh well; it is what it is.
I also contributed tonight. FR is very important to me. It is a powerful and far reaching tool. As long as it is, it will be a prime target of those who want to attack and disable it in all manners of ways. Hang in there Jim and all who make Free Republic great. Very glad you are here and for what you do. You are greatly appreciated by far more than you know.
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