Outside the Beltway

“Blogging Research Wordle” by Kristina B is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

BLEGGING

James Joyner
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Daily Kos is asking for cash, too:

This site is too large, and sucks up way too much bandwidth. So I have to go solo.

I asked for help yesterday to pay for a new server, and the response has been spectacular. I’ve raised nearly $1,000. The server will cost about $1,000 (maybe a few hundred more if I decide to buy something with a bit more oomph), my rackspace and bandwidth costs for the first month will push the costs closer to around $1,600. This stuff ain’t cheap…

Wowie. Kos is #2 on TTLB at the moment; I’ve never been higher than #58. It costs me about $10 a month. Amazing what a few slots can do!

(Hat tip: PoliBlog)

Update: Kos responds to a querry in PoliBlog comments that it is his massive comments threads that eat up much of his bandwidth. Weird.

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6 responses to “BLEGGING”

  1. joy Avatar
    joy

    No, it’s not really comparable, since he’s doing it all himself. What he’s doing is purchasing his own server, managing it himself and then renting out space (the rackspace) in a building that’s already connected (that $1600 figure).

    I don’t know what his exact traffic stats are, but it seems like overkill.

  2. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    As PoliBlog points out in an e-mail, InstaPundit seems to be able to get along fine using HostingMatters. I’m a little perplexed.

  3. Dave Wissing Avatar
    Dave Wissing

    My guess is the large number of comments Kos gets boosts his bandwidth. He usually gets over 100 comments per post. In addition, when people post comments, chances are they will reload the comment page over and over again to read other’ss comments.

    Instapundit doesn’t have comments, which is why his bandwidth may be lower than Kos, although his number of visitors is higher.

  4. joy Avatar
    joy

    Ok, then. As for the comments causing the bandwidth problems, I can see that. Because when you have a comment system, you’re basically running two tables, one for the post and one for the comments associated with that post.

    After a while, no matter what package you’re using, the lookups on your tables are going to kill performance. Also, figure that every time someone looks at your post, they also have to load the comments. Ugh.

    It seems that Kos might want to think about going from weblog software to community software like what runs the big community sites like metafilter, slashdot, etc.

  5. Kevin Drum Avatar
    Kevin Drum

    When I moved from Blogspot I discovered that pictures use a lot of bandwidth. Doh!

    Yep, cat blogging Friday actually costs me a fair amount of money….

  6. James Joyner Avatar
    James Joyner

    Heh. Well, so far, my OTB Caption ContestsTM are still within the parameters of my account. I may have to rethink it I make the Big Time. 🙂

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