Affiliate Banner and Infrastructure Changes

Status
Not open for further replies.
is a Reindeer
VIP
Joined
Jan 24, 2018
Messages
3,231
Hallo hallo,

I hope you all enjoyed the Lunar New Year and Valentine's day. We have two things to announce this time, our follow-up on the affiliate plan mentioned in the third anniversary announcement and our future server infrastructure plans.

Affiliate Banners and User-Submitted Banners

As was discussed in the Christmas thread and the Anniversary announcement, we've been exploring our alternative options to fund the site besides donations. This time, we'll be running a banner on the top of the site, clicking the banner will just lead to our affiliates page, which was always available through the info section of the navbar.

We currently have five affiliates, representing services we like or have helped us in the past:

[ul]sdbx.moe: helped us out with infrastructure when the site first began and we benefit from all purchases made on their site. [/ul]
[ul]Path Network: provides enterprise-grade security and DDoS mitigation and our image servers have never been taken down due to an attack on them. We don't get any benefit from mentioning them, but we're grateful for the service they provide to us.[/ul]
[ul]DDoS-Guard: provides DDoS mitigation to our webserver and they have some pretty responsive support staff, we get a bit back if you use our affiliate link with them.[/ul]
[ul]SauceNAO: They have our entire image archives indexed so you can reverse image search a page to find any series or chapter on the site, we just think they're cool and use their service a lot.[/ul]
[ul]Immortal Taoists: As you all know from the previous ad run, they're a Wuxia-inspired cultivation idle game that a few of us on staff play and like. They were happy with the ad run and accepted the offer to be on our affiliates page. We benefit from people installing the game via the affiliate link just like last time.[/ul]
We'll be accepting and reviewing submissions for new banners if anyone from the community would like to participate! You can choose whether or not you'd like to have your username credited under the banner you design if you submit one. The goal of the designs are to be humorous, similar to the banners we run during april fools' day. Parodies of memes or series using our mascot is encouraged! The first banner was drawn by Teasday, parodying one of the Wikipedia banners from 2010:


Hhmt1LZ.png


To submit a design, feel free to DM it to me directly on MangaDex, or through our Discord.

If you don't want to see the banner, the banner itself can be hidden by closing it as it'll add a "hide_banner" cookie that will persist until you wipe your browser history/cookies.

Infrastructure Changes

We've just recently ordered and are in the process of setting up a significantly beefier server with the intention of replacing the webserver, master database server, and API server with it. The new server will cost us $250 a month, while the webserver is $100/mo, master db server is $90/mo, and API server is $100/mo. Overall, this swap will save us $40 a month while making the site feel noticeably snappier. Currently the new server has only replaced the master db server but the webserver and API are up next. Once the API is on the new server, the cache issues that have been plaguing it will be fixed and Tachiyomi users will suffer no longer.

Following the trend of throwing more expensive servers at stuff, we plan on getting rid of the rest of our database slave servers and replacing it with another beefy $250/mo server. This will add a bit to our monthly server costs but will hopefully solve our database desync problems for good.

MangaDex@​Home will soon be used for all image traffic on the site, no longer will the webserver be used to serve recent chapters to users. The MD@​H network was already serving over 8 Gbps (that is inaccurately reported, actual number is much higher) on a regular day, after the change traffic to the network should basically double. If you want an easy way to contribute bandwidth to the network you can get a VPS from our affiliate sdbx.moe for this purpose by following the instructions at the bottom of the MangaDex@​Home page. No knowledge of server management and/or running java programs is required. Alternatively, you can also run a client on your home computer, or get a VPS or server from another provider. Some knowledge of server management and/or running java programs is required. The more clients on the network, the better the reading experience for everyone!

The data-saver server and image cache server are no longer with us as we've figured out a way to offload even more stuff onto MangaDex@​Home. Unfortunately, the data-saver to MD@​H fix will take until next weekend to implement and our contract with the data-saver server ran out today. So for now, data-saver is broken and disabled by default until the change is complete. Getting rid of the data-saver server and the image cache server will save us $190 a month.

In the end, our server costs will look something like

[ul]1 API, master db, webserver - $250
1 slave database server - $250
1 slave database/image archive servers - $140
MangaDex@​Home backend - $30
MangaDex@​Home metrics - $30
CDN for site assets/DDoS Protection - $180
Reverse proxy - covered by Path
CDN for uploads - covered by MangaDex Network

Total cost: $880/mo (Prev. 920)[/ul]
Quite impressive that our server costs are going to go down during an upgrade. We greatly appreciate anyone who's donated to the site over the past three years, we couldn't have made it this far without you.

P.S. For anyone who's been donating BTC/ETC in the past few months, we're aware that the donation claim process isn't working at the moment (we've received the donations, no worries). Once we finally get through all of the current infrastructure changes and get the site stable, we'll fix the donation claim process. Thank you for your patience!
 
Joined
Jun 29, 2019
Messages
5
As always, thanks for the transparency. I'm glad things seem to be going well. Thanks for all the hard work, not to mention the awesome website! I feel like a a lot of other, less-reputable manga websites are content to let things be and let performance/quality suffer as long as they're recuperating operating costs and maybe making a profit on the side. You guys are awesome! <(^_^)>
 
Most powerful member of the GFG
Staff
Super Moderator
Joined
Feb 16, 2020
Messages
8,154
Cool banner! (might be my connection though)
cool-banner.jpg

If you don't want to see the banner, the banner itself can be hidden by closing it as it'll add a "hide_banner" cookie that will persist until you wipe your browser history/cookies.
Ah fuck, I shouldn't have hidden it.
 
Active member
Joined
Nov 26, 2018
Messages
1,156
Sorry but I don't see this annoucement on my account (after closing the recent previousannoucements). I can see the banner though. Clearing cache and cookies does not help, is this intended?
 
Fed-Kun's army
Joined
Mar 31, 2018
Messages
333
It's nice seeing you guys be open about the costs. Since I work in IT I figured running the site wasn't cheap, and thus understood why you needed ads/donations, I know many others didn't. Even then I definitely underestimated the monthly costs involved. Glad these numbers are out there so that we can point to them when people start complaining about the MD staff being "greedy" or saying that you guys shouldn't be asking for donations or running any adds.

Keep up the great work. Everytime I have had to use, basically any other site (even official/legal ones), I am reminded just how badass of a site you guys have setup and kept running. More than once I have started reading something and wondered if there was an Official English version or to see where the RAWs are at only to remember that MD is the only site I know of that links to the sources. So many little QOL bells and whistles are provided here that are easily missed or forgotten. Can't wait to see what happens during your 4th year! Once again, everyone on the team has my deepest thanks and respect for providing such a great site/service.

@Richman If you delete the cookie, helpfully named "hide_banner" and refresh the page it will show again.
 
Joined
Aug 4, 2018
Messages
34
Damn, you're great people, doing great work running best manga site on the internet. Once I get out from my own financial troubles I'll donate something here for sure
 
Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2018
Messages
14
@Richman most likely the banner is locked by default adblocker rule which blocks anything with the word "ads" in its filepath.
 
Joined
Jan 1, 2020
Messages
46
I dont know anything about this and such.. But why dont you guys throw a big project or one time big time ad... Justif evwr u guys run out of money..
 
Most powerful member of the GFG
Staff
Super Moderator
Joined
Feb 16, 2020
Messages
8,154
@taior
It was that, thanks. Since MD is mega chad and doesn't have any ads, i forgot i had it on for the site.
 
Staff
Super Moderator
Joined
Jan 27, 2018
Messages
295
@Richman @taior Both things are fixed!
Also, if you clicked on the x to close it but wanna see it again, you can bring it up by deleting the hide_banner cookie.
 
Fed-Kun's army
Joined
May 9, 2019
Messages
396
Just downloaded the game! I'll be playing to support you guys. Maybe some day directly too
 
Member
Joined
Apr 2, 2019
Messages
585
No worries about the ads(if you can call it that).
Thanks for your hard work in maintaining this site. You all are amazing!
 
Joined
Aug 26, 2019
Messages
20
I just want to say thank you to everyone involved. And I type this while tearing up and ugly sobs, I love MD community ❤️😭
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users who are viewing this thread

Top