RF Cafe Now on a VPS - RF Cafe Forums

Greetings:

Thanks to all of you who visit RF Cafe on a regular basis (as well as to those who happen upon an RF Cafe page as the result of a search engine result), the bandwidth requirements have grown beyond what a standard shared Internet server can reasonably be expected to handle. As a result, I have had to move the entire website over to a Virtual Private Server (VPS), which, rather than sharing an Internet backbone connection with 40 to 50 other domains, now shares it with only 4 or 5. That should translate into faster page delivery. The cost is about a factor of 5 higher, but it is long past time for the move.

Over the past year, I have practically lived in front of my computer reworking the HTML code to conform to the most recent Web standard (HTML4.01), and to clean up code for overall efficiency. There is still a lot of work to be done. Side note: HTML 5.0 is set for release in 2022. At the same time, I have been adding hundreds of pages of technical content, which helps draw even more people to RF Cafe because the search engines pick up the pages. All the major search engines spider RF Cafe a few times each day; usually if something is placed on the homepage in the morning, it will show up in Google by evening.

Advertisers continue to report that RF Cafe provides excellent exposure to potential customers as a result of the prominence in professional realms and search engine hits. This is especially important to companies in the poor economy. Print advertising in the magazines is tremendously expensive, and often does not result in nearly the number of leads as RF Cafe supplies (according to many of my advertisers). You folks are responsible for rewarding supporting advertisers, so thanks also for that.

Believe it or not, I have to reject requests for advertising space - particularly in the banner ad locations. Restrictions on the number of ads are done to try to balance quality of exposure for paying customers with the need to keep RF Cafe as efficient as possible.

The page load speed is admittedly slower than most websites, and that is primarily due to the ad graphics having to load. Limits are placed on ad graphic sizes, and I use graphics software to reduce other graphics sizes as much as possible while retaining high enough quality to be easy on the eyes. HTML code is kept to a minimum by through the use of CSS and by not using large JavaScript or DHTML code sections for drop-down menus and fancy effects that normally just annoy people because even in 2010, there is too much inconsistency between browser types and versions to guarantee equal results.

Since I do not send out uninvited e-mails (nor have I ever sold or given e-mails to anyone), and do not advertise anywhere, RF Cafe is entirely dependent upon you. If the opportunity arises, please recommend RF Cafe.com to your friends and colleagues. You are encouraged to send me recommendations for website links, articles you have written (I can publish elsewhere unpublished articles and provide links to published ones), photos of your professional/personal or electronics projects, humorous stories, or just about anything else. If you do not want to send them to me, then how about posting your information on the RF Cafe Forums?

As always, I greatly appreciate your visitorship, and hope you continue to return on a regular basis. Take care.


Sincerely,
Kirt Blattenberger

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- Kirt Blattenberger
RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster

Hi Kirt. I haven't really noticed a difference in anything but hopefully RF Cafe is more robust now. I have had to deal with idiot web service providers in the past. Keep up the good work.

I know this is an old post but what VS host do you currently use as I am in serious need of a change due to consistent downtime!

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Brittain Media|Laboratory Encyclopedia|Stefan Brittain

Greetings Akribis:

I have been with InMotionHosting.com for over a year and this has been, without a doubt, the most reliable, trouble-free hosting I have ever had. There was one instance of an outage for a couple hours last summer, but that's it as far as I know. The cost is $40/month if you do a year contract. Since I also host my AirplanesAndRockets.com website on the same VPS server (at no additional cost), the effective price is even less because it would cost at least $5/mo. for a cheap host for that. Two dedicated IP addresses are provided for the $40/mo.

I can definitely recommend their services. The VPS plans are not available with a Windows server, but other than case sensitivity of file names, everything runs the same as far as I have been able to tell. According to IMH folks, they do not use Windows servers because security is nowhere near as good, which I can believe.

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- Kirt Blattenberger
RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster

Thanks for your reply Kirt!

The host you use looks unbelievable! For the price I pay, the service I get... Is astonishingly dire!

Other than your host being In the US (slow speeds for me in the UK) it looks to be a lot more cost effective! As for them only doing Linux/CentOS that isn't a problem as it is a lot more versatile!

Cheers for the info!

Stefan

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Brittain Media|Laboratory Encyclopedia|Stefan Brittain