Battlestar Wiki talk:Site support/Proposals

Good idea/bad idea[edit]

Just thought I'd get the ball rolling. --Steelviper 12:01, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

What would be the needed specs on a server? --FrankieG 13:00, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Good question. I'm thinking we'd need at least a two hamster-wheel model. Joe might have an idea what the hosting company is currently running it on? I've built PC's, but I lack experience with "industrial strength" hardware.--Steelviper 13:28, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

Building a server wouldn't be such an issue... I think that'd be the easiest part. However, my expertise in running a webserver is limited, since computers are more of a hobby for me at this point in my life. However, a server would have to run Linux or some form of Unix capable of running MediaWiki. Also, we would need somewhere about 100 GB in storage, if not more. (Depending on how the wiki grows.) The difficult part would be bandwidth and making sure we have a 99% uptime. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 18:31, 12 July 2006 (CDT)

That's something that the staff we'll lay off should have been able to do (had we not layed them off). Pretty short-sighted of us... --Steelviper 06:48, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

I'll thorw this in.. I used to administrator a webhosting company off Linux using C-Panel. I also know Linux pretty well as in "commands" and stuff. So any help I can offer in these departments is able to be use. Joe is correct in the bandwidth problem. Finding a server, even a basic server setup with miniuml specs, is easy to find, but the place to find good bandwidth is another. So.. that's my two cents. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 06:52, 13 July 2006 (CDT)

Finance Committee[edit]

I just thought I'd get on-wiki what I proposed on the blog. Perhaps we need a formal "Finance Comittee" to actively identify and pursue potential revenue sources. While I know Joe is perfectly capable of such tasks, it'd be nice if we could help do some of the grunt work in terms of calling/emailing/otherwise contacting places to inquire about particular solutions. One member I'd suggest right away would be Mercifull, who has already had several good ideas and recently suggested another idea (shameless affiliate link copied). It doesn't need to be anything big or really formal, but just make semi-regular reports about progress and hopefully get the finance ball rolling. --Steelviper 09:02, 8 November 2006 (CST)

Adbrite Thoughts[edit]

Mercifull and I were bouncing some ideas about advertising, and here is a summary of some of the points that came up:

Wikia and some other major players use AdBrite.
Ads that take up content space are annoying (see wikia's right side ads).
Maybe we could look at putting the ads in the left bar (below everything else), on the bottom (around the copyright stuff), or after all other content.
AdBrite displays contextual ads, so you could have advertising that's relevant to a given article.
You have editorial control over ads that you place/sell using AdBrite, and people can buy ads for our particular site to target a BSG/Scifi audience.
AdBrite appears to be one of the major AdSense alternatives, but it may bring in less revenue than AdSense (with the gain of not being cutoff without appeal and more control over the ads).
We could sign up for an account and test the look/feel in the hangarbay before deploying anything on a "live" site.

Pipe in any other thoughts I missed, Merc, or anything else. --Steelviper 10:44, 8 November 2006 (CST)

Not really much else to add. Sign up and try it out on the hangar bay really is all I can say. You can change all the colours to match the site themeand if you were clever with the CSS would could make it different colours depending on the theme loaded so it always looked right. I had a few other idea about places to affiliate with for the target audience (eg. online computer parts stores, music and dvd shops, amazon, digital television) Ive got tomorrow off work so i'll probably come online and do a bit of research then --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 11:54, 8 November 2006 (CST)

This might be important (taken from AB site)

You can choose to review each ad before it appears on your site. You can set the price for ads bought directly on your site. You can even have AdBrite show another ad network (your Google AdSense ads, Burst, etc.) if we can’t meet your minimum revenue requirement

--Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 12:01, 8 November 2006 (CST)

I've signed up for AdBrite. The results are posted at the bottom of each page at ze bloug. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 19:51, 8 November 2006 (CST)

Not bad (once I turned off a certain Firefox extension). It stands out against the white, but it blends with the overall scheme. I guess I'm eager to see a test run on the hangarbay (once it is up and running). But in general, the text is better than images and it's pretty unobtrusive. What where your thoughts on placement in the page scheme? --Steelviper 20:05, 8 November 2006 (CST)

Either below the footer, just in the area above the footer between the article text. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 20:09, 8 November 2006 (CST)

I like it. Once that's up and running, are there any organizations/entities that we can think of that'd be interested in advertising to our audience? Obviously once the pagehits start accumulating they'll be a lot more attractive, but I was wondering if there might be any particular sites that would have a natural "symbiotic" advertising relationship with us. I'd suggest NBC/Universal, but in a way this entire site is a gigantic (free) advertisement for them, so I'm not sure if they'd really care to pay extra (and also I don't want them to squish us). However, if the powers that be can afford covert internet PR campaigns (as some of the more paranoid believe), they can surely spare some change for a helpful little wiki. --Steelviper 20:30, 8 November 2006 (CST)