May 2003

I looked at the usage trends on Gothic BC since I first bought the domain in August 1999. With the exception of a couple of hiccups the site has been getting steadily more popular, currently serving roughly 75,000 page views from over 10,000 visitor sessions a month resulting in bandwidth utilization of about 3.5 GB. Problem is this is still running on the same hardware as it was in 1999. I wanted to replace the box as of late 2001. Expenses in 2002 made that impossible, but with the help of donations I was at least able to throw more RAM into the machine and add more hard-drive space. I've been tweaking the software for efficiency, but the fact of the matter is I've pretty much hit the wall with what I can do with this machine. Because I'm still paying off debts incurred in 2002 it is going to be at least November, but more likely January before I can fully replace the machine - two whole years behind what I would have otherwise considered the end of the useful life of a machine I originally purchased in 1998.