how much does compsci cost?

[Homer_simpson]

just curious, you dont have to answer this if you dont want to...

how much does compsci cost? and who pays for it?

[wtd]

You need a cheap computer running Linux and high-speed internet access. Shouldn't have to spend more than $500 for the computer, and $50 a month should more than cover the access.

Oh, and you need a willingness to learn, but you can't buy that.

[jeffgreco13]

i take it you're talking about this forum...

wtd's response is ideally a lesser-of-the-best option.. there's always the option of purchasing hosting from say host-gator or somthing for no more than $40/month or so which could very well run a forum...

but the limitations of running under restricted servers becomes a huge pain..

[wtd]

Ah... compsci.ca. Nevermind.

[md]

IIRC compsci.ca runs as part of a broader collection of services dan hosts. There are (currently) two servers, and the monthly cost is slightly less then $100. I could of course be wrong though, as I am not entirely familar with the actual setup

[Tony]

~$50/month for a dedicated server. We recently added a second server. md wins!

Dan & I pay for it. Though the costs are offset by the ads we display.

[BigBear]

The ads just for guests pay $100 a month? What if you were to expose registered users would you a profit.

Are the ads per click so we could all click on them to help compsci out?

[saltpro15]

there's ads on here? I've never noticed any

[Insectoid]

Only to guests; ie log out and look around, you'll see them.

[Tony]

The bulk of pageviews actually comes from logged out users, so bothering you guys with ads wouldn't significantly change anything. The current setup covers the costs, as we _just_ got that second server, so we'll be fine for quite some time.

[Dan]

BigBear @ 20th April 2009, 3:20 pm wrote:

The ads just for guests pay $100 a month? What if you were to expose registered users would you a profit.

Are the ads per click so we could all click on them to help compsci out?

Don't click on the ads unless you aucatatly are interested in them. Google is touchy about false clicks or telling people to click.

We try to minimize the ads to our users as we all hate ads. Also guests are more likely to click ads any way.

Also the second server was payed out of my own pocket (for a year), at least in till it is more useful to compsci.ca.

There are other costs then just the server too, we have to pay for the domain names (dwite.org too) and any prizes for dwite and surveys we run. Over all tho most of it is payed for threw ads and i try to keep a reserve amount so if the ads ever went away we would have several months worth of revenue to use to pay the server bill.

To date Tony and myself have not made anything from the site or taken any of the ad revenue for our self and our only real befit from running this is free use of the compsci.ca server for hosting our personal files and projects.

[BigBear]

So it is just if you click on the ads?

Can't you say x amount of users were exposed to them.

Don't they check?

Sort of like tv you pay so you ads is seen by all those people they don't have to call the phone number or visit the website.

If this is the case I wouldn't mind having a few banner ads if I knew it would make compsci and dwite better seeing as you guys are not doing it for profit.

How does ad block programs like Ad Block Plus then the user isn't exposed to it and the advertising thinks they are?

[Insectoid]

It's done electronically (I assume). Every time the add is clicked, it sends a signal to the host server to add to a tally. I think.

[SNIPERDUDE]

How would programs like NoScript affect ad revenue?

[Tony]

AdSense serves redirect links, so every click hits Google servers first, recording the click.

NoScript makes JavaScript ads not appear -- no clicks == no revenue. Though the kind of people running NoScript will likely not be clicking on ads anyway, so I doubt there's any significant impact.