When it rains, it pours
As you might have noticed, our server is pretty much down for last couple days. It’s actually not down, but it’s unreliable enough that it’s might as well be. The reason being is that with the influx of new viewers, the server was unable to handle all requests. This problem compounds with the previous one made the site highly unusable.
This started out as a fun little project, but 2 1/2 years later, this turns into a big network that requires lots of time and effort to maintain. Not to mention the monetary requirement for the upkeep. The staffs and I are currently debating whether it’s worthwhile to go on operating these sites or to close up shop permanently. If you’d like to join the conversation and make your voice heard, just leave your comments, suggestions, etc … here, on facebook, myspace … etc (anywhere you feel comfortable with) … and we’ll take them into consideration. Whatever will happen, we’d like to thank all our loyal and generous members who have supported us over the years, you’re the ones that make it all possible. THANK YOU!
Update 7/27/09: So far, the consensus is that the majority of the effort should not be concentrating to OP/OD upkeep since it’s requiring more and more work just to keep the sites going. It means that the sites will continue to run their natural courses without any major upgrade in the foreseeable future.
P.S. On a side note, we’ve worked out plans for a simpler, more streamlined project that enable higher quality viewing. It’s actually an older project that meant to be OP version 2, but later split into a different path because it uses a different underlining architecture. The forthcoming website will most likely geared toward contributors at first with invitations to other loyal members coming right after. Unlike the openness that we currently adopted, the closed system enable us to better management of resources.
Update 7/31/09: Some viewers have contacted us asking for the possibility of making older videos available again. As you might have known that since we don’t own/have access to a big network of servers, chances for videos older than a month being alive when you wanted to watch them is pretty slim. One possible solution is renting a cheaper, albeit slower, secondary server to use as auxiliary host. So if you need to finish up a few episodes for an interesting series that you have to watch, someone can move the files there for you to view. To be fair, only contributors will have access to this server as not to burn up all the system resources. Let us know if this something you’ll like us to proceed with.
