Some of you may have noticed that our site went down once again due to bandwidth usage. We have been forced to upgrade our website to yet another web server and tonight we will be upgraded to an even bigger one.

Right now this site has double in costs from yesterday. The good news is we should be able to stay at this level for a while and it should allow for more growth. At this price range I can keep the site up and running without too much strain.

The bad news is if we go up to a higher level server I am not sure if I am going to be able to keep this site going. I am taking steps to try and set us for that point and plan for the future. I am hoping with the redesign (which I am going to have to kick into high gear) and with other changes planned I can get us to a more manageable level.

Question:
Can you make a downloadable file of all the tabs on the site. My idea is that members can purchase a download of this file and update it periodically for free.

Another question:
With the new server, will we be able to download useable files onto the site?

While you're here:
Spam by "minyoifs" under the "General" forum.

I can do a downloadable file but something like that would be would be quite large. I don't know if a program could handle reading a file that large. In the past many members have expressed that they were not happy with the idea of their tabs being sold in any format.

Would they be happier if all was lost?

I would not like losing Harptabs. People are getting all the content for free now. I don't see why any one would have a problem wit their tabs being sold. We could all consider it as doing our part to keep the site going.
And that's all I have to say about that.

To keep the site going...
And to preserve the tabs in our computers if the site goes down.

My idea is to keep the site free, but have the tabs available for optional purchase of download.

It seems that the site going down even temporarily makes people nervous about losing all that valuable content. I suppose it is a bit like being reminded of your own mortality! Since I have said my piece on the topic of an offline version of Harptabs in answer to previous post, I won't repeat it here. But the matter hitting the bandwidth limitation needs some attention.
(1) The actual content is mainly small pieces of plain text for the tabs (with a few small graphics for decoration which once loaded into the browsers cache won't be downloaded again). If people had the option to download multi magabyte files, then a hitting a bandwidth limit would be no surprise. But this is not the case here.
(2) There are some service providers who claim to offer "unlimited bandwidth" in their plan e.g. [www.godaddy.com]
(3) I guess a lot of bandwidth is being eaten up by web crawlers which feed search engines (google etc.) which may also incidentally inflate the number of song "views" . Anyway, this activity should be visible in the Log files on the web server.

If it is a case of costing only, how much per active member would it take to secure the site on a yearly basis? $1, $5, $10, more?

Right now we are fine, if we went up to the higher server it would be less then a penny a member a month to keep the site up but I don't really know how many active members we have and how many would be willing to pay. I have blocked some content downloading robots now which I hope will help stop bandwidth usage but we are using 500 gigs a month right now and that is past the mark on many of those "unlimited" companies. Quite honestly the site should be making a lot more money then it is through the ads but I believe many people use ad blocking apps (me included) and people just not interested in the products being advertised.

If it wasn’t for the ads on websites, I wouldn’t have bought my first harp. Bring on the ads.

Regarding the advertising: I have no objections to advertising. Just please don't enable any pop-ups. They are exceedingly annoying. Not to mention that they just, plain, get in the way!

But the banners along the top and bottom of each page, and along the sidebars? They're fine! I say keep em, for the exact same reason that Chris stated. It's nice to know at a glance "what's out there", and be able to get there with one easy "click".

It's never been suggested that the ads would go. That would be suicidal.

I originally was running this site ad free, but had to add them to try and offset costs. Right now they are covering the costs so we are all good. We just may need additional funding in the future if the site continues to grow while ad revenue doesn't.

The reason I believe ad revenue has not continued to increase is due to the ad blockers easily obtained in all web browsers.

All very well selling tabs and lyrics of people who put them up for free but dont forget the original songs are copyrighted and I think Harptabs would be in trouble if they tried this.

My suggestion to address the issues of financing the site without upsetting current members is:
1. Have a "Subscribing Member's Area" on Harptabs which is only accessible to members who pay a nominal subscription (it works for www.harpsoft.com)
2. Under this "Subscribing Member's Area" have some goodies like a zip archive of the tabs in harptabs.com with a few indexes (by title, by author, by "tabber" etc.)
3. Why not go further and add say "Bendometer" (or a clone) in this
"Subscribing Member's Area".

Other sites don't have any scruples about selling tabs (e.g. www.1000harmonicatabs.com)