-- Due to the number of people who have privately asked me what happened, here’s the story. Grab a cuppa; this might take a while. (Please note: I’m not trying to come out of this looking innocent; I DO have an aggressive way of making my point, and as this very rebuttal will prove, I DON'T seem to know when to just walk away from a debate. I AM opinionated, and I’m not afraid to go against the popular opinion. And believe me, nowhere was this swimming-against-the-stream more evident than on the mutual-admiration-society board that is N/H.)
I think it actually started before the public stuff that happened on the board. It started in early January, when I offered my assistance in re-doing the Mandana Jones.net website. See, for NINE months, the MJ.net site lay virtually untouched and “under construction”. (As did their other two sites, SimoneLahbib.net and NikkiandHelen.co.uk, which is now Helen-nikki.co.uk) Yet it didn’t stop Jayne and Sara from asking for donations. I donated twice I think (once for sure), but when I saw nothing was being done on the sites, I thought 1. why am I donating for something that isn’t even on par with some of the half-decent fan sites and 2. maybe they just don’t have the time to do it anymore. Though that leads to an entirely different line of questioning, which would include- why bother with it? Why not hand it off to someone who can take the time to give it the attention it deserves? Why continue asking for donations? Anyway…
So I volunteered my services. (Please note: I had no desire to actually take over the site- RomanMachine and I had already dedicated our efforts to this site and have no intentions of giving it up!) I thought if I sent them a few pages already done, they might take me up on my offer. Because really, once the pages are done, as time consuming as they are, your site is 99.9% done! All you have to do is update on whatever schedule you set. (For us, we like to update once a week, just to show people we’re interested!)
Here is the home page I submitted:
Page.
(The links for that site no longer work; no sense wasting server space!)
For the record, here is what the old MJ.net site looked like:
Yes, that’s right- FOUR ads and TWO PayPal buttons on one page. TWO photos of the actress this site is supposedly honouring. (Don’t forget, they have the permission (audacity?) to call this an OFFICIAL site.)
So anyway, I submitted a total of 15 pages. (Total time- about 8 hours over three days.) I received a response from, I believe it was Sara, who told me it was too much of a hassle to try and bring someone else in to do the work, and that they were concerned there was script in the code of my template that would make it inaccessible for some computers (even though the template has been tested on Internet Explorer and Mozilla… and despite the fact that you need java script on your computer to load THEIR new site)- but not to worry, because they had a big huge overhaul of MJ.net planned in the next couple of days. Okay, I thought, fair enough. Nice to know things are getting done; that was the concern in the first place. I’m more than willing to help with the costs for something that is taken care of.
Three days later, the site was unveiled!
Eh?? THAT’S what took NINE MONTHS to do? You know, people actually create babies in that amount of time. And without slapping advertisements all over them. (Yes, that IS an ad RIGHT UNDER the photo of the woman to whom this site is dedicated.) They just copied the files they had on their first site and dropped them into a new template! Even the FONTS are the same!! *facepalm*
However, something finally got done, so I figured, better something than nothing, yeah? (My apologies to Simone fans, ‘cause what do you have besides that ugly ass ad smack dab in the MIDDLE of your page, with a small pic of Simone hiding amongst all that blue at the top? And those who visit the N/H.co.uk site, which is now Helen-nikki.co.uk, well, I suppose you could click on all those links on the home page that take you to ad-sponsored shops.) But then I wondered- this is what’s costing (between the three of them) £50/$100 a month?! For three incomplete, under-construction, run-of-the-mill websites? Three websites that have no video? No flash? Nothing but a screencap gallery that would be the sites’ biggest bandwidth user? That didn’t sound right at all.
So I did some investigating. Netcraft.com will tell you what server any site is running. To my very little surprise, the three sites were running THREE DIFFERENT SERVERS. Well, no wonder the costs were so high! They were paying for three different accounts! So publicly, on the N/H message board, I asked if they had considered amalgamating all three servers into one. Here is my first post:
I wish I had prtscn’d their responses, but in a nutshell, I was told they had tried all those providers I listed and never found one that was perfect for their needs, in terms of customer service, price, space and bandwidth. Okay, fair enough; I mean, thousands of people/businesses do it EVERY day, but whatever. So I gave them another list of highly recommended, top-10 reviewed servers and asked them just how much bandwidth did they need? In their second response, I was given a generic comment of, “MJ.net has used up to 12GB of bandwidth a month”. Yeah, okay, but-
1. That doesn’t tell me anything about what you’re looking for.
2. “Has used”… when? How often?
3. I’d bet $100 that MJ.net is the busiest site of the three, so even if they ALL used 12Gb each a month, that’s 36GB.
The EasySpace plan that MJ.net is on RIGHT NOW (my suspicion only, as they’ve never said what plan it’s on, but the price seems to be in the neighbourhood of what they ask for every month) offers 5G of space and 50GB of bandwidth! Shared, to be sure, but still! (Source) I was also told that “one site generated 10,000 hits in a day a few times”. Okay, I’ll assume that’s MJ.net, ‘cause, you know, without any kind of specification, I don’t know for sure. Just as I STILL don’t know how this relates to bandwidth usage (as you’ll see in my explanation below). “One site”, “a few times”.
This is where non-computer people will probably doze off (if you haven’t already!). But as someone who works enough with websites and bandwidth and the like for fun, I think I’ll be able to explain this in simple terms.
Hits: Every time you open a page, that’s one “hit”. But the amount of stuff on the page also tells you how many “hits” there will be. Basically, every photo, every banner, every scroll bar, every Java Script (which the new MJ.net has, to use that new menu) is a “hit”. (Source) Think of it this way- take a look around your space right now. What do you see? For me, I see a monitor, a desk, a file folder, a printer, a coffee cup, a pen, a pile of paper. Pretend that when you close your eyes, all those things are gone, but when you open them, someone has to run to the storage room and put them back for you! That’s essentially what your computer does when you open a page- it goes and “gets” these things. So, I would get one “hit” for the monitor, one for the desk, one for the file folder, blah, blah, blah. Now, check out the original home page for MJ.net again.
I’m going to do a quick count of “hits”. Ready? (Basically, just count the “pieces” that make up the page- it’s like a puzzle.)
-The page itself always counts as one, even if there are no other hits
-The banner
-The menu scroll bar
-The main information scroll bar
-The picture of Mandana
-The other picture of Mandana
-The PayPal button in the menu bar
-The PayPal button in the main information space
-The long ad (QVC?) below the main PayPal button
-The “visit our MJ.net shop” button
-The amazon.co.uk button
-The Chitika ad button
That’s what I see immediately. (There could be java script in the code, perhaps that long banner that gives the name of the site under the big banner is a separate image, etc.) Twelve hits the second you open that page. Now let’s say you check out four other pages, where the average amount of hits is the same. You’ve just logged in 60 hits all by yourself. On FOUR pages. (The new page is slightly better, at an estimated seven hits on the home page. Of course, they took out one PayPal button and two ads, so that’s a start.)
The SL.net site is even worse. The buttons for the menu are images, which means there are SIXTEEN buttons, one ad, a PayPal button, a message board button, the scroll bar, the banner, and then one for the page itself. Total “hits” the second you open the home page? TWENTY-TWO. Not counting anything IN the information window, you will generate 22 hits on every page. Go to the screen cap page where there are 36 thumbnails and you’ve just generated 58 hits on one page. There are at least five pages with those kinds of numbers. (Hell, the Helen Stewart image gallery is 66 images, totaling 88 hits every visit.) So if you visit the home page, and four image pages, you will have accumulated 254 hits. (22+ 58x4) 10,000 doesn’t seem so much now, does it? (That would be 40 visitors a day.)
Hits do NOT tell you how much traffic your site gets! Hits do NOT equal visitors! Hits don’t even tell you how much bandwidth you’re using!
Page loads: This is how many pages you visit while you’re looking at the site. Though a better indicator of bandwidth, it’s not entirely accurate, because it depends how “large” the pages are, not in terms of actual size, but how much disk space they use. A page with just text is much, much smaller than a page filled with graphics. But to give you an idea, that home page I submitted?
... is 7KB.
Bandwidth: Ah, yes, the tricky one. Let’s try this formula to see if it helps. This is the recognized formula used by most people trying to figure out bandwidth-
Average daily visitors x average page loads x average page size x 31 (days of the month)
(Please keep in mind, the following numbers are quite inflated for a fan site, particularly one involving an actress and a storyline that hasn’t been in the spotlight for over four years, regardless of the brief stint on BBCA, and regardless of LOGO now picking up the show.) Let’s say one site gets 200 people EVERY DAY. And those 200 people look at 20 pages EVERY DAY. (That’s 4000 page loads a day- that’s a lot.) And the average page size is 20KB. (As mentioned, 7KB for the home page I submitted.) So we have:
200x20x20x31(days) = 248 0000KB. Which is 2.3651123046875GB… or 3GB to really round it up.
Yep, pages are going to be larger the more photos there are. I don’t deny that at all. However, considering MJ.net had NO screen cap gallery, and NO photo page for NINE months, I’m wondering where the site ate up 10GB of bandwidth a month? Sit back and think of those numbers for a minute. 200 people every day. 20 pages every day. I know from my own experience that when I return to a site, I generally don’t visit as many pages as I did the first time- I go right to what I want. In fact, chances are, you’re only going to look at half the amount of pages on your next visit and so on. Now think of how much you’d have to increase those numbers to use up 10GB. If you DOUBLE the pages viewed and the size of the pages, you’re still not quite there.
So what does all this have to do with the brouhaha over at the N/H board? Am I saying they’re inflating their numbers and/or over-estimating how much bandwidth they need? I do wonder about it, but because the webmasters never gave any exact figures, we’ll never know. Oh, yes, they showed a cap of the latest figure from statcounter.com, which showed somewhere in the vicinity of 1200 “hits” for the day as they claimed (the inference being that that was their traffic/visitors). Statcounter doesn’t monitor hits. (We know, ‘cause we use it ourselves!) That was page loads. Which again, I’ll say, neither gives an indication of how much bandwidth a site uses in a month. In fact, looking at my formula above, I factored in 4000 page loads a day. (200 people x 20 pages)
They also informed me that they were going to gather all three sites under the EasySpace.com provider (which MJ.net is already a member and has been for almost FIVE years)… but they did some speaking with them privately and got a package that isn’t offered on the site. It is a virtual direct package (though not a DIRECT package that can run a fair bit of money), that is £20 cheaper than most other packages. But it’s still going to cost £50 a month to run. Wha?? That topic was then deleted.
Nevertheless, despite my skepticism, I decided to touch upon what I think ended up being a very unappreciated topic. (Please note: with the exception of the ad talk, I actually spoke of this in a private PM to Sara or Jayne… after she told me in no uncertain frigid terms that “we consider this matter closed and will not reply to any further correspondence regarding the matter” (my paraphrasing).)
What I asked on the board was how much money they were making off the ads, if any, and what they were doing with the money. Or if they weren’t making money, then had they considered removing them, as, quite frankly, they’re a bit of an eyesore. (Particularly that godawful one on the Simone site.) I was told in a PM (and after the topic was DELETED) that they make about $10 every quarter (every three months!) and that money goes to the PayPal fees that incur… because people donate! What I asked in private was pretty much the same thing, though I also added questions regarding the PayPal account and the art prints they were selling (with unauthorized copyright material). When someone came to their defense on the board (regarding my clarification of the statcounter “stat” they put up- after deleting my topic and saying the matter was closed!), I wondered, in response, why the webmasters would get defensive about something everyone who donates has the right to know? That topic was also deleted, and that led to me (and RomanMachine, who had also had the temerity to ask a question) getting banned.
A bit more info about the second topic and the banning: I was notified in a PM that the first topic was now closed and that was the end of it… only to see Sara/Jayne start a thread several hours later, posting the generic StatCounter image. When I made a post clarifying what those numbers actually meant, they got all defensive AGAIN, had a mod close the topic while they “were out of town”, and banned both RomanMachine and me within hours. (England isn’t a big country- I’m sure “out of town” doesn’t require the same chunk of time that we North Americans would need /sarcasm) No warning. No removal of posting privileges for a week. Not even an email telling us we were being banned, to let us know they had received "numerous complaints" regarding both of us. I found out when I tried to get on the board. (Oh, my IP isn’t allowed to view the board, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to get around that.) Hence my knowledge of the actual quote they used when explaining to the board how “reluctant” they were to have to use the “last resort”.
I want to make a special note about my thoughts on this situation. No, not the banning, but the stuff prior to it. I asked the questions because I was genuinely curious. As someone who has been involved in web sites either for fun or professionally, I couldn’t get my head around the costs we were being told. The three server answer explained a lot. It was only after I started asking more questions that things started to get defensive in response. And the vaguer the answers were, the more I wanted some concrete answers. As someone who has donated to the sites, I thought it was a valid request on my part, to be told where the money was going and why the costs were what they were. How hard would it have been to say, “This is the bandwidth each site uses in a month. This is the package EasySpace has given us, which we have accepted because we feel it best meets our bandwidth needs. Here is the exact total of how much it will cost us.” Not only that, but I do think it’s our right to know about any additional income these sites are generating. If they’re making money, why isn’t it put towards the sites? And if they’re not (and really $10 counts as “not”), why have them?
At no time did I ever think they were trying to fleece members out of money and I still don't. But I do think they either have poor management skills (in terms of getting the right plan for their needs) and/or poor web design skills (see #8 below; a page that gets 22 hits because you’re using BUTTONS for your menu? Etc.) that suck more bandwidth than needed. And, to be frank, I wonder if they just don’t care so long as people are paying? Rather than investing a fair amount of time to work the sites into a more manageable venture, is it easier to continue running things the way they are, as long as the bills are getting paid? Harsh words, I know, but it’s hard not to think anything else, until Jayne and Sara open their books and make everything that should rightfully be public, public.
Do they have the right to ask for donations? Of course they do! But the standard defensive line is, “They give so much of their time and have often paid out of their own pockets in order to keep these things running for us! Why are we bothering them with these questions?!” Well, first, I’d debate that whole business about “time”. NINE months to update a site? I am in awe of the dedication! And yes, I’m sure there were many lean moments where they had to pay for the costs themselves. But hello- you knew that going into it, didn’t you? Isn’t that the trade-off ANY fan makes when they decide to do a fan site? Knowing they’re going to have to put a lot of time and sometimes money into it in order to do it right? Isn’t that something you accept because you think, “I don’t care- I’m doing this because I WANT to”?
Anyway, there you have it. But I would like to leave you with some questions I asked, either publicly or privately, and I think anyone who donates to them should ask themselves.
----
1. What does Mandana Jones think of having ads plastered all over her “official” site?
2. Was it right to ask for money during the 9 months absolutely NOTHING was done with these sites?
3. Why did it take so long?
4. Why aren’t the Amazon invoices made public?
5. Why isn’t the PayPal page made public? (Any personal information can easily be blacked out in Paint if the page is prtscn'd.)
6. Isn’t it odd that the EXACT same amount is asked for every month? I mean, as people donate, the balance remaining is shown. But when the balance gets down to $10 or $20, there's never been a time where two members have donated the balance at the same time? (Thus giving an overage of the $10 or $20?) There's NEVER been extra money? Publishing the PayPal page would easily answer this.
7. Is there any money being made off the prints being sold? If so, why aren’t those invoices made available, showing how much the material is, and how much of the balance goes back into the websites? (Because if the money isn’t going back into the websites, is it right to continue asking people for donations?)
8. What exactly is the package EasySpace is offering that it costs as much to run three sites under one server as it did to run three sites under three DIFFERENT ones?
9. Has there ever been any thought to streamlining the MJ.net site to less pages? I mean, do we really need a page for “AN INTERVIEW WITH SOMEONE WHO WORKED ON POWERS - CLICK HERE”? (That’s an actual page with a tiny interview of a GRIP). Any chance of amalgamating promo pictures so one page doesn’t have five tiny pics from “Powers”, two of which actually have Mandana in them? (This ALL goes towards bandwidth and streamlining that will keep costs down.)
10. For all the talk about how much research's been done into web hosts and how so many of them have been tried and none have worked thus far, how come MJ.net has been on EasySpace since March 2002 and SL.net on Awardspace since Sept. 2000? Did you test other servers while still paying for EasySpace and Awardspace? Is that fiscally responsible? Or has it JUST been realized, after 6 years, that Awardspace doesn't fit the site's needs?? (I don’t know how long N/H.co.uk was on studentwebhosting before being moved to EasySpace as of a few days ago, but I think it’s a fair to guess five years? The same question then applies.)
11. Why has there been a second SL.net site sitting on the same server that (used to) host nikkiandhelen.co.uk since last JUNE? 2nd SL.net site) What does this mean- “Currently Simone Lahbib Net is offline however we now have sorted out new site hosting. We are now in the process of moving the site and hope it will be online soon.”? Because SL.net, as noted above, has been on AwardSpace since Sept. 2000. This 2nd SL.net site has been on webstudenthosting since June. If server moving had been planned since at least June, why hasn’t it been done? (Though I tip my hat to the fact that even here, there's a working PayPal button!) Why have a dummy SL site sharing a host server with nikkiandhelen.co.uk, while paying for the other SL site on AwardSpace? Now that nikkiandhelen.co.uk has been moved to EasySpace, what does that mean for either SL.net sites?
12. Is it not my right as someone who is donating money to ask where it’s going and why?
