|
Forums
|
|
Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
|
|
Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 9:52 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
I have a list of indie music sites which I consider competition. But - if they are also run by one person like what I do here at Artistserver, I also consider them a 'sister' site. It's not easy running a large media serving site like this, and when I see that a fellow administrator/site owner has run into troubles, or even worse, completely crashed, I can't help but feel some of that pain.
If you click over to http://funender.com/ - you'll read a short passage where the site admin explains the whole site vanished on a dead hard drive on the server and had no complete backups to bring the site back.
I wish the site admin at Funender luck in his task to resurrect the site, and that the members of the site continue to support it.
Now if you excuse me... I need to check the backups!
|
|
|
A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 10:46 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Not backing up important files like these is...well, pretty stupid...
|
|
|
Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 11:38 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
A Bit Crusher wrote:Not backing up important files like these is...well, pretty stupid...
well yes, there's a huge error on the admin's part, but backing up large numbers of files and data without a backup service/solution is not easy.
|
|
|
A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 10:54 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Hmmm, but what's so hard about backing up a large amount of data nowadays?
|
|
|
Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 11:27 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
backing up a collection of files from 1 location to another drive on a server is not difficult - but when you have multiple servers with multiple locations on each server that contains data, and you are backing up over the Web using FTP, yeah it's kinda difficult.
Last night it took a few hours to backup 3 different servers, and that's not even taking a complete snapshot of all the data. For mp3s, I only backup new files, everything else I pull a complete collection down (database, general files, the site itself, photos).
I'll be a happy man the day I no longer have to worry about doing backups and simply know that it's being taken care of. 
|
|
|
A Bit Crusher
Joined: 01/26/02
Location: Tilburg
Posts: 1794
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 12:29 PM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Sonic Wallpaper wrote:...I'll be a happy man the day I no longer have to worry about doing backups and simply know that it's being taken care of.
When you have enough money to let others take care of that, you mean?
|
|
|
Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 12:56 PM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
yes indeed! Having some staff or at least a dependable service will bring great relief. 
|
|
|
Subtronik
Joined: 01/14/03
Posts: 1193
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 7:08 PM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
I've known 'Fun' for years now. He's always been an amazing supporter of indie artists. He was a big fan of the mp3.com "I'll stream you if you stream me" craze, and always had a positive word for ams and pros alike.
The weird thing was that I had just uploaded some old banners that I made for him years ago the very night his site imploded  ...and that was after not posting on his forum for over a year. I was pretty bummed about the whole situation because I know he was truly heart broken.
He's a good guy and I'll never forget his kindness.
|
|
|
(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 7:03 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Sorry to hear another one bites the dust. To be honest I've never heard of the place.
Too bad about the circumstances. That's really gotta suck.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
|
|
|
(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 7:16 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Sonic Wallpaper wrote:Last night it took a few hours to backup 3 different servers, and that's not even taking a complete snapshot of all the data. For mp3s, I only backup new files, everything else I pull a complete collection down (database, general files, the site itself, photos).
Can you do a full backup once a week (or even once a month) and stick to doing incrementals daily...??
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
|
|
|
Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 8:01 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Subtronik - I recall you mentioning the site before. Yes, it's quite sad and the loss is something that can't be described. Running a community site where people you REALLY like come to use it, becomes a part of you. To have all that energy and focus suddenly vanish would be quite hard to handle. While it's just code, computers and data, it all represents something deeply human, our desire to reach our, share, learn and communicate.
==========
stereofect - doing a complete backup in a single run isn't really necessary - that's just way too much data and files for me to pull down over an FTP connection. If you are concerned ....
* database - backed up on server every day, backed up to my local once per week
* mp3s - a complete set of mp3s is on a local drive at my house, and I pull down new mp3s each week
* photos - I back up the whole photos section of the site every 2 weeks, if it grew faster, I'd download it faster
* files - this is actually the hard part, as the files are numerous and each user has a dir - so with 20,500 directories with even more files... whew! So this doesn't get backed up more than once per month. The issue with downloading all that, is that it uses up resources on the server, takes hours, and the FTP connection always times out, so it can't be set and left alone.
We're nearing the point where we have to buy more hardware or find a more affordable storage solution that doesn't require a lot of work to change over to. I keep looking at Amazon's S3 service, I'd just have to rebuild portions of the site to work with it. This will add to the monthly expenses though, and we still don't generate enough revenue to pay for the hosting we currently use. I'm also not sure about managing the files on Amazon's service, I think we'd loose the ability to 'hide' the mp3s like we have now. By 'hide' I mean that there is no direct linking to mp3s, they are all served via the application - which allows you to control if your files are available or not. With Amazon's service, we could keep scaling into eternity, as long as the number of upgraded accounts scales up too.
Have no fear guys - even in a worst case scenario (my ISP and my servers blowing up), within 1-2 weeks, I could have the whole thing rebuilt and online with very little missing. Granted, if that happened, I'd probably have to run a donation drive to get the new servers, but we could do it
|
|
|
(((stereofect)))
Joined: 09/02/01
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 1333
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 8:54 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Sonic Wallpaper wrote:stereofect - doing a complete backup in a single run isn't really necessary - that's just way too much data and files for me to pull down over an FTP connection. If you are concerned ....
Oh, heavens no. I'm not worried. I just slipped into data jockey mode and thought I'd toss out my $0.02 worth....
Too bad the only way to connect is via FTP.
Tally ho....
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” Albert Einstein
|
|
|
Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 10:13 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
>> Too bad the only way to connect is via FTP.
indeed, but in the realm of free, this is the only way I know how to get it done. It's worked this way since 2001 when the site launched, so it's not really a problem.
|
|
|
Brillman
Joined: 10/08/02
Location: Norway
Posts: 136
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 5:13 AM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Sad that another site is down, remember going there a few times, i recall they had a very active forum with loads of members
Having said that, all credit to you Gideon for keeping this place alive and managing to mantain it on your own while keeping a back up of most files. 
Places like this are becoming extinct it would seem?
Great job! 
|
|
|
Northcape
Joined: 08/07/05
Location: Brighton UK
Posts: 9
|
|
RE: Another Indie Music site gone: funender.com
Monday, June 23, 2008 at 1:34 PM
|
Quote
Top Bottom
|
Its nice to see this post here. I've spent a lot of time on Funender in the past, and really its the place that encouraged me to keep making music and posting it on the internet. It was suffering from competition with social networking sites recently, but a few years ago it was definitely one of the friendliest and most enthusiastic forums around. Its sad its gone and I can imagine how much work it takes to keep a site like this up and running.
|
|
|
|
|
