The GOSSAMER Archive News

[Vincent V. Juodvalkis]

Howdy all. Two big items.

Firstus:

I've made some big changes to the archive (though it should _look_ like
small changes). If you have any new problems, please let me know. Though
I won't be working tomorrow, as I prepare for Saturday's 8th Annual April
First Party... and yes I know that Saturday isn't the first... I will look
into things first thing Monday morning.

The one change that you should notice right away is that I have done
away with the 8 range pages (title and author) and replaced them with
pages for each individual letter. This should significantly decrease
index download time for those of you who are looking for a specific story.
The full author and title pages still exist. These big pages may be a
little slower than they used to be, and I do recommend use of the smaller
pages.

If you have links to any of the internal pages of the archive, that is,
anything other than:

http://gossamer.eng.ohio-state.edu/ -or-
http://gossamer.eng.ohio-state.edu/x-files/

they may no longer work. Poke around and you should figure out the
replacement.

Secondus:

It may come to pass that the archive will be moved to a commercial server.
I am now getting over 100 THOUSAND hits a week, and I am going to have to
look into just what kind of load this is placing on my local network. If
it is too much, I will have to shut down the .eng. site.

The first problem with moving to a commercial site is that the archive is
now over 235 Meg in size (and growing rapidly). Needless to say, I cannot
afford to pay for the disk space out of my own pocket.

As I see it, I have two options. The first, and the one that I will _not_
do, is charge for use of the archive. As my colleague put it, if everyone
gave me 1 penny for each access to the archive, I'd pull in over a grand a
week. A nice thought, but one I am _not_ going to pursue. I started the
archive out as free and I intend to keep it that way for as long as I run
it.

The second option would be to sell advertising space on the archive. The
front page of the X-Files archive alone got hit over 8 thousand times last
week. Given that stat, I think I could sell enough advertising on the
indexes to cover the expense of the server. The only problem would be that
all of you would have to download the ads each time you hit the indexes.

The second problem with moving to a commercial site is that I'm not sure
that I could keep the ftp side of things open. I don't know for sure about
that.

Now, let me reiterate that this is not a sure thing. The archive may be
kept exactly where it is. If so, you needn't worry about any of these
things.

However, as I contemplate a move, I need to hear back from all of you.
Let me know if you can think of a better way for me to do this than
selling advertising space. Just because I cannot think of a better way
doesn't mean that there isn't one. For that matter, if ads aren't going
to bother you, let me know that too. And especialy let me know if you are
an author, and would not want your works on a site that had advertisements.

Now, let me head off two possible lines of thought right away. First, if
the ads bring in more money that needed to cover the cost of the archive,
I will not keep it. I'll probably donate it to some charity (my mother is
severely arthritic, so I'd probably throw it to the Arthritis Foundation).
Second, if you are concerned about the ftp site... so am I. If I can keep
it I will. The only reason I would get rid of it is if I had to. So
please don't just write to beg me to keep it open. I will _if_ I can.

Please respond through email. This is a creative board, and I'd rather
keep most of this discussion off of it. As I know more about the local
situation, I will post the information.

-- Vincent

juod...@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu
http://eewww.eng.ohio-state.edu/~juodvalk/