View Full Version : Dev.Mag update
Chippit
15-01-2009, 01:46 PM
News update time.
It seems we've finally been levelling out with regular readership/downloads and site visits, but, on average, we're receiving more and more interest than ever. This, together with unavoidable change unfortunately means we're going to have to more Dev.Mag over to a different host soon.
We're not going to be able to skive off the free-hosting we were using before, so that means Dev.Mag's going to have to incur a fairly reasonable monthly fee (or quarterly/bi-annual/annual depending on how much we can get together initially) to use the new German-based host. Now, because we don't actually have an income, we're going to set up a donation system on the site soonish so that we can ask readers to contribute whatever they feel the magazine is worth to them, if they so wish. This (and perhaps on-site google ads, and maybe even advertisements in the magazine itself) should probably cover the R99 monthly fee the host currently charges. Can't really say for now how well this will work out, but having more than a thousand regular readers gives us a fairly good chance of covering at least some of the cost.
Also, before long, we'll probably change Dev.Mag's format rather drastically, to use something more like traditional online magazines like The Escapist. This will generally lighten the workload on design (perhaps becoming almost completely obsolete), as well as letting us get articles online far more rapidly than we can right now. We'll also be able to link to individual articles, and track interest in each one individually. And we'll still be able to collate articles posted on the site into a larger pdf collection (although perhaps less frequently), that can be distributed offline.
So some change is pretty inevitable right now. Thoughts/ideas?
FuzzYspo0N
15-01-2009, 02:01 PM
i love the online idea. where it might come out monthly or bi monthly like it is now (where uses can still get the whole bunches of content since the last one in a bunch) and not miss out, while keeping it less chunky almost.
some ideas : it will be cool to be able to design our articles ourselves... in terms of layout and graphics... where a certain style might suite better... and also that will lighten the workload on the designer, where his major concerns will be proofing the self made ones to not look like pie baked garbage.
ill be able to contribute to the hosting... ill get in touch with you in terms of that on chat , and
change is good, and i think this will help us move forward into better things.
keep it up guys
Theyre called Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com), and with decent traffic you should make the payout mark fairly easily.
Its good to know that Dev.Mag is getting enough steam to expand, and it will be great to see how far it goes. :)
Korax
15-01-2009, 03:38 PM
I can provide a few tips on things you could try to optimize your bandwidth usage before considering moving hosts.
The very first thing you should consider is how sure are you that each and every download is DEFENITELY a human and not a web crawler. You get all sorts of bots/crawlers that kills your bandwidth for any kind of reason you can think of. Not all of them are search engine bots, thus not a positive impact on your site. They could be image downloaders, file downloaders right down to spam bots and bots that verify that sudents at versity didnt copy their thesis from the internet.
Crazy I tell you. :)
Now, a few things you could try:
PS. You should translate some of the ideas into a method that would best suit the tech the site is built on. I'm speaking here in ASP.NET/C# terms. Also the possible solutions below can also be combined if the need is there.
Solution 1
----------
The first thing you can do is use a "captcha" image to verify a visitor as a user before you send them to the download page. This solution would work if:
1. You don't have the target page indexable somewhere.
2. Nobody add this as a favourite on their machine or even worse, reference the page directly from another site/forum.
You could also opt to save the "captcha" response of the user to a "session" variable if its entered correctly.
Then you can use the session's value to determine if the page containing your download link should render or not.
Solution 2
----------
Building on the first solution you could opt to rather than working on a direct link, response the data through an "aspx" file. In this "aspx" you can again check the value stored in the "session" variable then decide to pass along the magazine data through the file or not. The cool bit is that where you store the magazine doesn't really need to be stored on the portion of the server exposed to the internet via http. :)
This solution blocks an exploit where somebody can post a direct download link on a forum or wherever you syndicate the mag, since they will only have the "aspx" link to the file.
Solution 3
----------
Its probably not worthit to explore this solution as you'll be writing bucketloads of code doing heuristics testing on visitors to determine if its possible human behaviour or not. For this you'll need to store each incoming visitors' "UserAgent" and "IP/Host Address" as well as initial "session" date stamp. If you can find a pattern on "UserAgent" where this user agent is exactly the same string and the "session" times form some form of pattern for example 5 second apart, ten times in a row, its then likely a crawler.. you can also use the IP as indication of some kind. Then if you can pin one, record the "UserAgent" and "Ip/Host Address" for future use, possibly an unblocking screen.
The thing that makes a crawler visit different from a human visit is at the "session".
When a person uses a browser and visits a site normally, the "session" (initial connection) gets executed once. Even opening more tabs or new browsers (by right clicking) doesn't affect another "session". Your existing session gets "transferred". (Well, IE at least, havent checked others)
A crawler generates a new session everytime it hits a link on your site, hence recording the session timestamp. ;)
Its as if they are opening a complete new browser each time they hit you.
----------
I wouldn't recommend Solution 3 though, getting it working perfectly might become a counter-productive affair.
Heres some results on the SAGD's detection system (similar to what I've explained at Solution 3)
We first recorded starting 5th May 2008.
So far the system have detected 670 unique bot signatures.
So far the system have detected 5245 unique IP addresses linked to the number of bots above.
Some bots are blocked and others not, I still allow major search engines to crawl and index the site, while blocking unknown, spam or seemingly useless crawlers. We were able to slash our bandwidth use from 15GB per month down to around 5GB. (thats compressed traffic as well)
We have little downloadable content so these are all mostly page/image related traffic.
I'm estimating 5% or less could be persons trapped and not unblocking themselves.
What you could do is implement Solution 1 and 2, which should be highly effective.
Further you can look at re-thinking the magazine's design, trying to conserve the look as far as you can (not upsetting anyone too much) and get its size reduced. That reduction would then reflect directly on your bandwidth totals, even if you don't implement any code.
Although I'm sure implementing Solution 1 and 2 might sound a tad "draconian" it will do two things:
1. It will kill-off most download bots/crawlers.
2. It will stop humans that are just downloading for the sakes of downloading and not fully interested in reading and appreciating the content from wasting your bandwidth. Yes, people that can't do the small effort of entering the "captcha" will likely also not be all that much interested in reading the mag actually.. so that just a waste; You're actually "paying" your bandwidth to them.
This type of coding is common practise on quite a few high-volume free download sites.
Hope some of this helps. ;)
AndrewJ
15-01-2009, 04:04 PM
I really like the monthly edition of the mag. Hope the bandwidth issues (pardon the pun) get sorted out properly!
Q-Man
15-01-2009, 05:20 PM
The online idea is excellent. In it's current format, it plays out far too much like a print magazine - which it's not.
Tr00jg
15-01-2009, 05:53 PM
Yes... Online magazine style please. Google AdSense ++
AndrewJ
16-01-2009, 09:11 AM
In it's current format, it plays out far too much like a print magazine - which it's not.
I, for one, really, REALLY like it's current printed-magazine-like format.
Google AdSense ++
Maybe even on the NAG forum?
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.4 Copyright © 2019 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.