Cost of building the site.

Discussion regarding the making of b-games.org a BOINC competition site.
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Skillz
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Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

I've been quoted $3499 to $3999 to build the site. We'll be setting up a gofundme or kickstarter page as well as direct PayPal donations if anyone would be interested in helping.

So far;
$340 for the server + 6 months of co-location.
$340 will be due in another 6 months for the remaining balance on the server + another 6 months of hosting.
$30 per month for hosting. (After the first year)
$11 per month for Plesk Control Panel.
$3499 to $3999 for web site design and build.
$10 for the domain registration, yearly.

Future;
PCIe SSD for database storage
Additional DDR3 ECC registered RAM
crashtech
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by crashtech »

Looks like a little over $220/month if amortized out over 2 years. I'm willing to sign up for a monthly payment of a percentage of that, if we can get enough others to help.
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biodoc
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by biodoc »

I can help out too.
Skillz
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

Today I will be paying 50% of the cost for them to start work on it. Then the remaining balance will be due when the site is finished.
Icecold
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Icecold »

Are there ongoing development costs anticipated if features need added or parameters changed in how the competition works, or you're expecting to be able to control anything needing changed from whatever admin portal you'll have available?

I can throw in some money as well.
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

I've asked for the ability to control everything within the control panel. From the sprint project list, being able to cancel sprints, set dates for sprints, automation of the sprints, adding/removing projects, etc...

My personal paypal is leroy @ leroyblanchard.com if anyone wants to help with costs sooner rather than later.

Going to be a little while before I get accounts setup specifically for the site.

Added in 58 minutes 23 seconds:
Icecold donated $500. Thank you for the support.

Added in 1 hour 46 minutes 12 seconds:
Biodoc donated $250. Thank you for your contribution.
Skillz
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

Crashtech donated $250. Thanks for helping out.

I made a payment of $2080 so they can begin building the site. The remaining ~$2000 will be due upon completion. They estimated about 2 months to build it.
Icecold
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Icecold »

Bearing in mind this is a public portion of the forum, can you post an update on expenses so far vs donations? I know there's been a ton of server upgrades needing to happen and paying for development and stuff, so I figured it was a good time to see where you're at as far needing donations, etc.
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

So far what I have paid;

04/21/21 - $2,080.00 - 50% of the site development costs to get started
04/04/21 - $360.00 - 6 months hosting/server cost
04/12/21 - $340.00 - 6 months hosting/server cost
04/14/21 - $9.06 - boincgames.com domain purchase
05/26/21 - $193.75 - Plesk Pro Edition for 12 months
08/19/21 - $2,079.00 - Remaining balance for the site development
08/19/21 - $384.30 - 192GB DDR3 ECC Server RAM (Maxes out what the server can support)
08/19/21 - $74.70 - 2x Intel Xeon X5680 Processor @ 3.33GHz 12MB Cache 6-Core SLBV5
08/20/21 - $22.00 - Cost of shipping CPUs and RAM to datacenter + UPS to package them

Total: $5542.81

Don't think I've forgotten anything.

So far I have received donations from:
$250 - Crashtech
$250 - Biodoc
$500 - Icecold

Total donations: $1000

Total cost I've spent: $4542.81

Added in 11 hours 10 minutes 10 seconds:
I will also point out the recurring costs of the site.

Paid annually.

Plex License - $200
Server Hosting (Co-location at a datacenter) - $360.00
Domain renewal - $10

So roughly $570 a year to keep the site hosted and running.
crashtech
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by crashtech »

I can cough up something in September. Also I'm willing to set up a recurring donation. Seems like all this might be tough if it's just you plus the three of us, though.
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

crashtech wrote: Sat Aug 21, 2021 11:31 am I can cough up something in September. Also I'm willing to set up a recurring donation. Seems like all this might be tough if it's just you plus the three of us, though.
Once I get the site hosted on the server and everything is running smoothly, I will setup some recurring donation as well as one-time methods on the site so people can donate if they choose to.

Realistically, though the initial setup costs is really digging into my wallet a good bit, but from here on out ~$600 a year wouldn't be something that I couldn't easily handle on my own. I've been renting dedicated servers for nearly 20 years now; granted it's only been one that I've been hosting www.ut-files.com on for eons, but adding a second wouldn't kill me.

That's not including if anything breaks that needs to be replaced or the cost of hosting and Plesk's yearly costs don't go up.

The only thing I foresee int he near future is upgrading/adding SSDs to the server. I am still not 100% sure on how I plan to do that. Next time I call the datacenter I am gonna ask them more details about how many hdd slots I actually have on that particular server, and what size add-on pcie card they can install inside it. Then decide if I wanna get a PCI-e RAID controller card, PCI-e NVME card or just populate the onboard SAS/SATA controller with regular SSDs.
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Icecold »

I should be able to put more towards it fairly soon as well which is why I asked for the current breakdown. I'm assuming a fair amount of donations from people from other teams etc. will happen after it's live but they're likely to be more like $10-$100 donations here and there to help with operating costs, but they may end up helping with some of the startup costs as well.
crashtech
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by crashtech »

Part of the reason I would do a recurring donation would not just be to help with the ongoing cost, but to pay you back over time for what you have put out. It may look like I make a lot of money by my output, but actually I am just crazy and spend waaaaay more than I should on DC.
Skillz
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

$250 from @biodoc thanks for helping with the costs.
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

$80 for 1 hour of remote hands at the datacenter to do the hardware upgrades.

8/24/21
Skillz
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

Some edits on the costs.

I was billed twice, back in April when I got the new server. One was for $340 while the other bill was for $360. I was in talks with the datacenter at that time about switching my billing from semi annually to the full year. So when the second invoice arrived on the 12th, I assumed it was for the rest half of the year for the new server.

I was mistaken. They hadn't switched to annually on the new server and the old server* yearly bill was due. Wasn't paying attention, so this whole time I assumed the new server was paid for throughout the year and I owned the server outright. They do a Rent-to-own on some of their servers where after you pay xx amount over a 12 month period you'll own the hardware and only have to pay for the co-location fee. This is what I thought I did.

So, when I had the new (used) parts delivered to the datacenter to upgrade the new server their was only one co-location server on my account which was my old server. So they assumed that was the server that was getting upgraded. Luckily, none of the hardware was compatible with the old server so they didn't install anything.

That's when we went back and forth until we figured out what the issue was.

Now, I have paid the remaining year on the new server and the hardware as been upgraded.

The remaining year was not $360 as I initially thought, but rather $308. So it was $52 cheaper than I had originally thought.


8/26/21 - $308 second half of yearly hosting
8/26/21 - $-360 wrong server costs, subtraction of above costs



*The old server was where this site was originally hosted. Now the only thing hosted on that server is www.ut-files.com and a few gaming servers. I intend to completely redo that server with a latest Linux install (probably Debian Buster) and use it to host ut-files.com as it's been doing, hosting my game servers as it's been doing and serve as a backup for the boincgames.com and teamanandtech.org sites. While the backup will most likely only consist of hosting backups and not an actual fail-over should the primary server go down, but that's only because I believe that sort of setup might be a bit beyond my knowledge. That's not to say that I wont look into attempting it in the near future though.
crashtech
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by crashtech »

Thanks, Skillz.
Skillz
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

Just received $250 from crashtech. Thank you.
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

Upgraded the CPUs, again. Didn't realize their were x5690 CPUs in the lineup. I thought the x5680 was the fastest CPU for that generation, but the Intel Ark shows the x5690 in the middle of the list, while the x5680 was at the top of the same list.

Paid $104 for two x5690 Xeons.
Paid $30 to ship them to the DC plus return shipping on the x5680 CPUs.

X5680 CPUs will go in the backup server which currently has x5650 CPUs.

Added in 4 hours 36 minutes 33 seconds:
$104 - Paid the developers additional money for making the stats update in real-time instead of once daily*.


*Basically, I asked them to update the stats each time the stats file is updated on the project sites. This required them to completely re-write the update scripts and asked to be paid for additional features.
Hi LeRoy,

Regarding run the marathon update more than once in a day - The scheduled task was done in a such a way that each project's stat url will be processed only once in a day. So change in the cronjob to run every hour to check the update time in tables.xml file and update the stat accordingly can be considered as an additional. It will take approximately 2 days to do the task and the cost for the additional task is 100 USD. Please confirm so that we could schedule and get going

Kind Regards
Shabeena Hazeef | Team Leader
Added in 3 hours 8 minutes 52 seconds:
$500 donation from @Icecold
Skillz
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

04/12/22 - $432 - 12 months hosting from 04/22 until 04/23
crashtech
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by crashtech »

I'm not sure how much I will be able to help. Hopefully things pick up.
Skillz
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

$250 donation from Biodoc
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

5/31/22 - $217.24 Plesk pro Edition for 12 months
Skillz
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

$500 donation from Icecold
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

List of new features I want on the site.

CPID confirmation reminder: To remind users they need to verify their CPID.
-Reminder email at 1 week to confirm CPID
-Reminder email at 1 month to confirm CPID
-Delete account from no activity at 2 months. (If CPID is not verified)
-The email should contain steps on how to verify their CPID. https://www.boincgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13

Individual stats tracking for all members participating.
-For Sprints, an overall list of all users who have returned points. This page should list the total points they've contributed during the Sprint as well as the last hourly update. The team they are a member of. (if no team, leave blank) (project points)
-For marathons a list of all participating members for each project. This page should list the total points they've contributed for that quarter (similar to the team page) but should also display what team they are affiliated with. (project points)
-Individual standings pag; this should show total points they've earned individually for Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and total combined. (BOINC Games Points)
-The team members list page should show rank within' teammembers, rank across all individuals, total BG points, join date, CPID, CPID link to Free-DC and CPID link to BOINCStats (BOINC Games ranking) (The CPID currently links to free-dc, but lets take that link away and just make it regular text.) (Make two new links Free-DC and BOINCStats each linking to their page at those sites)

The "NEWS" page makes it appear that the users are logged out when visiting it. The logout button (when logged in) switches to login making the users think they have to login again.

Opt out button;
Ability for users to opt out of the competition manually at any time. Two ways:
1. By just opting out so their stats are no longer calculated for Marathon or Sprints.
2. Deleting account completely. Will require them to register again and go through CPID confirmation again if they choose to come back.

Remove "Test Sprints" for the time being.
I've already removed the links on the header/footer of most locations, but some I can't figure out what file to edit. The back end can stay, but until I figure out a better name and method for this all public links removed.

I can not figure out how to add RSS Feeds from the different projects to the News page.

Paypal/donation/subscription page that shows total amount of donations and monthly subscriptions. With the ability to state monthly costs vs donations received.

Allow me to name each Sprint. I want to base the sprints around real sporting events such as the Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup, etc... So I want to be able to name them based on that.
I want to be able to set a sprint date at the beginning of the year and give that Sprint a name. Then on the day the sprint is selected it will randomly choose a project (just like it does now)

A count down timer for the next Sprint. Timer starts when the previous Sprint is finished. (So only 1 count down timer going at a time on the page)
When the sprint starts, the timer changes to "time to end" and when the sprint ends it switches to "time to next sprint"
This should be displayed in a DDD:HH:MM format.

The previous year listings shows teams that didn't participate in that year. For example, 2021 shows all the teams that joined in 2022. Only teams that participated in that year should be shown for that year.

The standings page should have a break down by the quarter. Total points earned during each past quarter and current quarter along with the total points for the whole year.

Better navigation: https://www.boincgames.com/forum/viewto ... 4&p=60#p60 (Ive done some of this already)

Time stamps each time the individual project stats are updated. So users know when it was updated. Not when the stats was pinged to see if thier is an update, but when the backend downloads a stats file and the values have changed since the last time it was checked.

They quoted me $1299 for this.
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Re: Cost of building the site.

Post by Skillz »

Received two donations:

$250 - biodoc
$510 - anonymous
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