We've been experiencing a few performance issues with our current dedicated server as of late, a little downtime, and long load times during peak hours. I've tried to optimize the site as best as possible throughout the past year, but we're starting to hit a wall with the existing setup. I ordered a couple of new dedicated servers earlier in the week, and they're currently being setup. I'll most likely be migrating the site next week to the new servers, so I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. This topic will be updated as more information is known, along with exact dates, and when we'll be experiencing downtime.


  • Hardware Setup: Complete
  • Migrate Files: Complete
  • Migrate Database: Complete
11 years ago*

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Great news

11 years ago
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You dont need new servers, you just need a better database. Try storing all the giveaway in memcache, then your problems are gone.

11 years ago
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We should be able to give away servers on steamgifts.com!

11 years ago
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I don't get it.

11 years ago
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I don't get it.

11 years ago
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Buying a server is the lowest cost of the lifecycle. Running them is a completely different story (Energy costs, Patches, Health monitoring...) - I'd go for service costs but you probably can donate? I am completely broke but I think I would spend a few Euros anyway.

11 years ago
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Unfortunately, we can't do that. Putting a donation button will make this project closed by Valve.

11 years ago
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Epic, I would never complain about a free service but this is great to see. If you need/want help setting up memcached or want someone with many years of PHP w/ various databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, NoSQL and various other DB types via native PDO) and experiences with hardware and software caches, just drop a line on my Steam profile!

11 years ago
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Awesome cg!

11 years ago
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Cool :)

11 years ago
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Great, the only bad thing about this site for me has been the laggy loads :)

11 years ago
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Thank you, cg! I understand all the time and money you put into this and you really don't have to. I appreciate it.

11 years ago
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Woot, very good news, can't wait to see it ^_^

11 years ago
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Great news!

11 years ago
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About time.

11 years ago
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You are an ass.

Server costs can get quite expensive and ad blockers are more popular than ever. It is getting harder and harder to make a website cover its own costs, forget making a profit. I have never seen a request for donations or any other attempt from CG aside from 1 non intrusive ad to help with costs.

To just expect a perfect running site without even caring what it takes to develop and maintain the code base, the server expenses and personal time involved from the owner is just rude. Nothing just happens, it takes effort, money, and time.

What its 'about time' for is people like you to stop expecting everything for nothing.

CG, if you ever need help code wise, I am an experienced coder/web developer and would be happy to contribute.

11 years ago
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Is it the simple displaying of ads that support them? I don't understand.

11 years ago
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Yes, the ads you see on the internet generate money for the owner of the site showing them. Quite often this is the only way a site gets any income (as I am almost positive is the case here) so it is not uncommon for sites to put as many ads up as the users will tolerate. This site has one non-obtrusive ad at the very bottom which is basically the very minimum they can do to hope to help cover costs without effecting the feel and function of the site but the down side is it probably barely covers costs if at all and if it does, upgrading to a more expensive host still costs more money and people seem to expect it to just come from nowhere.

11 years ago
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Agreed, didnt think about it till I seen that other topic that asked to disable ABP, once I did I was really impressed that there were only 2 small ads at the bottom of the page, compared to some other sites these days :o

Long story short: All disable adblockplus, you won't notice it and you'll keep the site alive/fast :p

11 years ago
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I guess they get even more money for clicks so why not click one of the ads every once in a while? It clearly doesn't hurt me to close a popup window or a new tab or even hit the back-button.

11 years ago
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You think I'm stupid! That's rather entertaining! :)

Anyways, this website, at heart, is nothing more than a high traffic text based database. From my IT experience, I'm not exactly sure that more powerful hardware is exactly what's required.

Simply put, a non-mission critical database requires no more than two separate physical servers (one main, one redundant duplicate). And being this is nothing more than a database (or, at least, should be a database setup), a simple RAID array would optimize load times astronomically.

Up until 2005, Wikipedia was hosted on a single server.

My point is simply, quality>quantity.

11 years ago
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This guy....

11 years ago
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This is great news! Thanks ton CG!

11 years ago
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Great news!

11 years ago
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\o/

11 years ago
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Awsome new's cg :) o/

11 years ago
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Can't wait :D

11 years ago
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Glad to hear this ;]

11 years ago
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Thanks cg, you boss you.

11 years ago
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Great! Thank you! :D

11 years ago
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Awesome !

11 years ago
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You're moving? Bye!

11 years ago
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This is great! Thanks cg :D

11 years ago
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Nice, we'll have a faster and smoother SG!

11 years ago
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Yay, people will stop whining about the site being slow. (Or they won't, but whatever...) :D
And... yeah, thank you for the info, cg. :)

11 years ago
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:applauds:

Good to hear :D

11 years ago
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Closed 11 years ago by cg.