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Message started by Ken Kundert on Jan 10^th, 2005, 2:44pm

Title: Designer's Guide Community
Post by Ken Kundert on Jan 10^th, 2005, 2:44pm

The Designer's Guide Community has been growing at a healthy clip in recent months. The Forum has just hit 1000 members and is about to pass 3000 posts. The number of daily visitors is approaching 500 (it was 200 just a year ago). And the daily volume of data served is approaching 1/2 GB.

This growth is very gratifying, but it is also a little worrying. I am afraid that the site will grow to the point that I will no longer be able to host it from my home based server. I like the freedom that comes with having my own server, it gives me the ability to provide features like this forum. But there are limits to how much traffic a DSL line can carry. While we are not currently at those limits, if this rate of growth continues, we will reach them soon enough.

It is for this reason that I have started to try to generate revenue through the site. I hope to generate enough so that I can increase the bandwidth to the server. Ideally I can increase the bandwidth enough so that we do not notice a slow down as the growth continues. Unfortunately, once we grow past the point where a DSL line is sufficient, bandwidth tends to get expensive.

Anyway, some months ago I added The Designer's Guide Bookshelf, allowing you to buy books through Amazon and Barnes and Noble, with The Designer's Guide getting a small commission on each sale without increasing your costs. That has worked pretty well, but it is not sufficient to fund an increase in bandwidth.

So as of yesterday, I have added advertisements to The Designer's Guide for the first time. It is something I have been trying to avoid. But I think it is necessary to support the continued growth of the site. I have chosen to use Google's targeted advertisements so that they will be relavant to our community. I have also decided to limit the ads to one inobtrusive ad per page. I have placed it in the lower left corner in the page. The Designer's Guide gets a small amount each time you click on this ad, regardless of whether you buy anything or not. So I encourage you to give into your curiousity from time to time and click on this box to find out more about the ad.

Thank you for supporting The Designer's Guide Community, both by participating and by cooperating with our attempts to fund our growth.

-Ken

Title: Re: Designer's Guide Community
Post by Paul Geraedts on Jan 14^th, 2005, 1:25pm

Ken,

Aren't you taking into consideration donations? As far as I'm concerned, your site is the best source of information on its subject especially taking into account the broad range of topics. In such a community, voluntary donations to share the cost seems just fair!

Paul