How much computer space does Fluther occupy?

I’m giving you a GQ for your awesome topics.

<lurks> waiting for an answer.

a lot?
I seriously have no idea what I’m supppose to say.

Also, why do they do it? There aren’t even any ads on the site??

@bagelface Try logging out and browsing a couple of questions. Then you’ll see the ads.

Text is small and that is cheap and easy to store. The real cost is reading the database to assemble the stored text.

I doubt the site is that big in terms of storage. But it probably beats the shit out of a few servers.

@Harp Ah, ok. I will take your word for it. Can’t,..bring myself,..to log,.. out,...

We could make an educated guess:

average avatar image: 2kb?
average question: 350 characters?
average answer: 250 characters?

Any official answer? I would really love to know the truth.

My picture collection of high quality raw files is about 288GB, so i would be curios to compare that to a collection of zillions of txt and tiny avatar files.

its hard to say really, i just did a check on fluther.com but it has been registered privately. so there are not much details to work with.

however, it looks like they have 3 sites on one server.

fluther.org and fluther.net redirect you to fluther.com, so chances are they have a dedicated server just for this site. this could be one of two reasons. they either need the bandwith. or they need the storage. if it is the later then i would guess it currently takes up between 300 and 600 gigs.

however, it is possible that they have the dedicated server just for bandwith.

but… they have been running for 3 years by the looks of it. and seeing as the text for an average question takes up 16 to 34k. if we say 50 questions a day over 3 years, thats about 400 to 500 megs used up so far.

its all just speculation though.

@bagelface they do this because they’re visionary and they want to create a place where everybody speaks his mind,share ideas,talks free about anything he wants and at the same time their identity is protected(this can give to some people the power to say things that they would never say in real world).
This site creates an unique and very powerful environment where ideas and knowledge spread like a virus. Also the absence of ads is very good because I hate very bad that stupid ads which promote very idiot things.(like the big which flies)

About the space Fluther occupies I have no idea but I don’t think is bigger than a normal hard disk(512 Gb)because Ben and Andrew don’t have any company or something like this. They’re just ordinary people which had a very good idea.

@Christian95 Yes, of course that’s all wonderful, but who would honestly pay to host such a busy site without any help?

what makes you think this site is busy?
this site has about 11k users and not all of them are active.

Er because I’ve been here for the past week or so watching,...

OK, I’m getting down on my knees and petitioning the Fluther trinity, the almighty Bimdrew, for a revelation.

Our Founders, who art in Frisco, you who hold the flutherverse in the sectors of your hard drive and shower your awards upon us, we now ask you to draw back the celestial curtain and let us gaze upon our very essence. If it be your will, tell us, oh Founders, when you gathered the 1’s and 0’s together and breathed life into them, over how much of the sacred disc did our watery expanse extend?

Don’t forget client spaces. My Firefox process requires 138 MB right now.

Hmm…maybe there isn’t a Bimdrew. Maybe Fluther just…just happened. What if it doesn’t live on a hard drive at all? What if… No! No! Mustn’t think like this!

Currently the database is nearing 1GB. Avatars currently take up about 1.1GB.

Also, the corpus is full of 10 billion lurve-joules.

Oh my god, we’d fit on a thumb drive!!!

Forgive me for doubting you, Bimdrew!

@andrew I just realized I actually don’t know where our servers are…St. Louis I think?

Uh oh, faith shaken again…

@Harp Haha, don’t worry. We’re using Slicehost but I wasn’t sure about where their datacenters are…not that it would matter either way. They’re way more on top of it they we would be if we had our own servers. Reasons why taken directly from their site:

1. Cagespace in multiple facilities including a new $7-million dollar datacenter
2. Redundant power, UPS, cooling and fiber
3. Biometric authentication, key card access and video surveillance
4. 24×7 staffed NOC (Network Operation Center) and customer support
5. 24×7 custom monitoring tools with email/SMS timed escalations

(On top of that we use a separate service that texts us the second something goes wrong.)