So I have this question. I created the simresults.net website to share race results. I open-sourced the core so other projects could evolve or even be part of simresults in the future. The license is VERY free. No restrictions except preserve my name in the code. The reason I did this is because I believe libraries should be open-sourced and programmers should share their work and knowledge. So community and other projects can benefit from this and see products that would not exist if the creator would have to re-invent the wheel within a same programming language (write a proper parser before even starting a fun idea). Currently I am saving on my expenses. I have some changes in my personal life, which puts me in a different financial position. I make costs for simresults.net domain & VPS (vps because parsing takes a lot of memory). Because I am saving i can't explain to myself that I pay hundred+ euros in a year. Normally I would not really mind. It's the fact that people use my product and code is the best thing to happen to a programmer And it's a investment in myself as I tend to learn new techniques within my projects. I would not start a project unless I have something to learn from it. So it's kind of a small investment Simresults.net receives quite some visitors! On big events and extreme cases it can lead to 120 unique visitors and up to 200 pageviews per day. More than I would have expected. I expect more when Assetto Corsa supports multiplayer, which I already support. So my first goal is to even out the costs. This means I can run a service without making costs myself. Any extra would motivate more to dedicated more time to it, otherwise it feels wrong. As you notice I am not really a business man. I'm a classical programmer who advocates free software and sharing work for FREE. I respect the other people who do the same and I donate from time to time. As I don't receive donations, I was thinking of putting some simple ads on simresults.net and see how that goes. Because I don't want to seem greedy, I was wondering your opinion as a community member. Would you mind ads on simresults.net?
The league I run in uses Simresults.net for a lot of information, It has become quite a valuable tool. So in short a few ads wouldn't make any difference to me. Especially if they were targeted ads like sim racing hardware/software etc.
I only use it to get results, league I'm with uses it. I wouldn't mind. I suggest looking for adblock aware javascript as well, to make people feel bad for having it enabled on your site.
I wouldn't mind at all- I'd much rather see ads than to NOT see the site because it became too expensive.
Note that you can save a lot of bandwidth if you make use of a service like Cloudflare (free). My own site uses 50% less bandwidth as a result. Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
Thanks for your replies I guess i'll consider it then! Don't worry. The site will always stay live regardless of the costs. I need it too If I somehow get abducted by aliens one day and the site goes dead, you'll always have access to most import part, the core parser. Just finding a way to save a little bit in my life @hariseldon, bandwidth isn't an issue. It's fixed costs I like to cover for the VPS (shared hosting wont work as parsing takes 1GB+ memory for endurance results).
Seems like you provide a useful and enjoyed service. What is so wrong with a donate button (as well as relevant unobtrusive ads). There is no obligation, if people like your work and can afford it they can choose to give you something (or just use the service for free) Open source is fantastic, I think it should be normal to have a donate button when things are open source.
Ah fair enough, just figured that might help. Definitely have a donate button, if people want it they should be willing to contribute to it.
CDN like cloudflare will always help for brandwidth, but currently I use 0.3% of bandwidth available It's crazy how much you get for a VPS compared to shared hosting, just because you are in control and they don't have to maintain. More fair So yeah I just pay for the specs, mainly memory and good CPU performance. Still not enough though for some big logs. I must focus on some serious performance improvements on sorting the laps, but not sure if it is possible. I have a donate link on the about page but not really prominent. See what I can do about that