The end of Headwize?

[raymondlin]

I still don't know how you've downloaded the site!

 

[Duncan]

all these people downloading the whole of Headwize...

Chu definetly won't be able to afford the bandwidth at this rate

 

[KR...]

oh.... the irony of it all

 

[tanfenton]

Quote:

Originally posted by MacDEF I'm still looking for an example of a forum community that has extremely heavy traffic and is viable without accepting any sponsorship, donations, or "membership" dues.

A List Apart and Zeldman.com to name two. (Yes, Jeffrey does have a book, but his site is foremost a blog.) Through them you will find innumerable design-related sites that operate in complete autonomy. The Furthur Network, another completely non-for-profit project, sees hundreds of terabytes of activity each day. DeviantART, while not the best example, ran for over a year (?) consuming otherworldy amounts of bandwidth. It only recently found other means of support.

NGF

 

[Toddathan]

Does anyone know how to download the Headwize site to a Mac? The web crawler sites mentioned in the thread only work on Windows machines.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Quote:

Originally posted by Duncan all these people downloading the whole of Headwize... Chu definetly won't be able to afford the bandwidth at this rate

Has Chu made a statement about these downloads? It would be really nice if I could download a zip file or two instead of having to hit his site again, just for the sake of making sure I could read some of this at some point.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Originally posted by tanfenton A List Apart and Zeldman.com to name two. (Yes, Jeffrey does have a book, but his site is foremost a blog.) Through them you will find innumerable design-related sites that operate in complete autonomy. The Furthur Network, another completely non-for-profit project, sees hundreds of terabytes of activity each day. DeviantART, while not the best example, ran for over a year (?) consuming otherworldy amounts of bandwidth. It only recently found other means of support.

Tafenton, thanks for those sites; they were actually very interesting

However, both kind of proved the point I was making earlier -- FurtherNET operates via the support of members of various music-sharing communities (and the huge transfers do not go through their servers -- they use individual's own bandwidth), and, as you mentioned, DeviantART appears to be supported by advertisements, selling DeviantART-logo products, and subscriptions.

This is not to criticize these sites at all -- I'm simply saying that you can't operate a high-traffic site without some source of income. Chu was operating under ideal circumstances -- his bandwidth was donated, the hardware was donated, etc. -- and he still couldn't make it.

 

[thomas]

Quote:

Chu was operating under ideal circumstances -- his bandwidth was donated, the hardware was donated, etc. -- and he still couldn't make it.

The area of headwize that runs on donated equipment is the forums, which will continue to run indefinately.

 

[tanfenton]

Quote:

Originally posted by MacDEF I'm simply saying that you can't operate a high-traffic site without some source of income.

How else would you pay for one

? FurtherNET is an even better ideal when you consider that once files are seeded the program can operate independent of costly servers through distributed computing. No money changes hands, so I don't see why that's not just as valid an example as the previous two (according to your original model). DeviantART, well, you just had to be there.

You asked for sites "that have as much traffic as Head-Fi and are not receiving funding from some source besides the people who run the site." All of these sites, with the exception of DevART, do not rely on direct monetary contributions by their userbases.

I won't belabor this any more; however, I do still feel that three of those four are perfect examples of projects that have "made it" completely out-of-pocket.

NGF