DarcyF1 Site Migration

admin 3 years
Hi everyone, Back at the start of June we received notification from our webhost that they were going to stop offering the webhosting product that DarcyF1 has been using for the last 15+ years. Firstly, let it be known that our webhost have been fantastic over the years allowing the site to grow far beyond what the hosting product was probably ever supposed to manage, and it makes sense that we need to move away from the way we have been hosting since 2007 as it is not in line with modern hosting offerings. Since receiving this notification, the staff and content uploaders have been discussing and considering options that would allow DarcyF1 to continue operating. Unfortunately, there aren’t many hosting providers that offer the same sort of product to what we have been using, and certainly none that offer it anywhere near the cost we had been paying. We had the option of moving to a similar provider for at least 4x the cost, something that would mean we would need to massive hike the donations target and hit that target regularly to be able to maintain the website’s costs. We have some magnificent generous donators who are collectively funding the majority of the website – and there is not enough thanks that can be given to them, both from the site’s staff and all the users who benefit so greatly from their contributions. But we couldn’t expect our donations to increase so dramatically overnight without the site offering anything additional, nor in the current economic climate. The next consideration was finding a lesser hosting product for around the same price as we currently pay. This of course would mean that we would only be able to service a handful of users at a time, and host only a fraction of the content we host now – rough estimates put this at ~50 days worth of recent content, everything else getting purged. Of course, a site offering far less than it does now would probably not generate as much interest, and in turn not collect as many donations meaning that we would eventually not be able to afford that hosting either – effectively entering a financial death spiral. After two months of testing different solutions, it seemed that DarcyF1 would need to cease operating. For those who are newer to the site, DarcyF1 started in April 2004 meaning it’s a little older that YouTube, and ancient in terms of websites. Nearing 20 years felt like it might be an horribly unfortunate, but perhaps natural end for the website. However, in the recent weeks we have formulated a plan to move forward with the website. It is our expectation that we can get pretty close to what we have now for around the same cost. Instead of hosting every aspect of the site’s infrastructure on one server, we’ll be taking a more modern approach and using a dedicated webhost, object storage, content delivery network, and database server. This should give the site a performance boost and costs should be similar to what they are now – we’ll know more in a couple of months. This does increase the complexity of configuration and DarcyF1 is a completely hand-coded website (no CMS’s here!) which means there could be aspects of the site that don’t work so well in the new environment, or require weeks/months of fixing. Please stay tuned while we work through all those and thank you for your patience. Please remember that DarcyF1 is run by a group of very dedicated volunteers who have day jobs, families and lives outside of the website, a group who have collectively contributed decades of their life to making DarcyF1 what it is today. As of this post going live, the ~6TB of video content is uploading to the new hosts and this process will take some time (~weeks). Several other components have already been moved and are now being provided by the new hosts, such as video thumbnails. The website itself will move to its new host on 20/Sep – expect some downtime on this day. When the website moves, only some videos will be available: Videos have already been moved to the new host. Newly uploaded videos. Embedded videos (YouTube etc.). Videos hosted on external hosts (aka. mirrors). All other aspects of the website should be (almost) running just as they are now. I’d like to take this opportunity, more now than ever, to thank everyone who makes the DarcyF1 website and community what it is today. Our donators – of course we couldn’t pay our ever-increasing costs without the generous donations. Our content contributors – our visitors come to DarcyF1 to watch motorsport multimedia. We have ~200,000 videos online. Watching 400+ categories of motorsport around the world, and clipping action from them takes many hours each weekend for our video contributors. They are tireless, and they are the lifeblood of DarcyF1. Beyond the video content, there are those who create collector card sets that are immensely popular, and those who contribute to the community with their comments and criticisms, their feedback and suggestions – all of whom make the site what it is today. Our staff – we have a dedicated team of users-turned-staff who moderate content that is contributed to the website. Having the team mean a more reliable and timely response to submissions, questions and error reports. These dedicated people contribute a lot of their free time to making sure that the site is running smoothly. Our users – it almost goes without saying that this site wouldn’t have a purpose if it wasn’t for the 2,500 people across the world who visit DarcyF1 on a given day. This site exists to provide a platform for those who have a passion for a sport we all love, and without the growing community, this site would have faded off into the sunset years ago, I’m sure. So, please bear with us while we go through this difficult change and know that there are several people doing a lot of work behind the scenes to make it as seamless as possible. Hi everyone,

Back at the start of June we received notification from our webhost that they were going to stop offering the webhosting product that DarcyF1 has been using for the last 15+ years. Firstly, let it be known that our webhost have been fantastic over the years allowing the site to grow far beyond what the hosting product was probably ever supposed to manage, and it makes sense that we need to move away from the way we have been hosting since 2007 as it is not in line with modern hosting offerings.
Since receiving this notification, the staff and content uploaders have been discussing and considering options that would allow DarcyF1 to continue operating. Unfortunately, there aren’t many hosting providers that offer the same sort of product to what we have been using, and certainly none that offer it anywhere near the cost we had been paying. We had the option of moving to a similar provider for at least 4x the cost, something that would mean we would need to massive hike the donations target and hit that target regularly to be able to maintain the website’s costs. We have some magnificent generous donators who are collectively funding the majority of the website – and there is not enough thanks that can be given to them, both from the site’s staff and all the users who benefit so greatly from their contributions. But we couldn’t expect our donations to increase so dramatically overnight without the site offering anything additional, nor in the current economic climate.
The next consideration was finding a lesser hosting product for around the same price as we currently pay. This of course would mean that we would only be able to service a handful of users at a time, and host only a fraction of the content we host now – rough estimates put this at ~50 days worth of recent content, everything else getting purged. Of course, a site offering far less than it does now would probably not generate as much interest, and in turn not collect as many donations meaning that we would eventually not be able to afford that hosting either – effectively entering a financial death spiral.
After two months of testing different solutions, it seemed that DarcyF1 would need to cease operating. For those who are newer to the site, DarcyF1 started in April 2004 meaning it’s a little older that YouTube, and ancient in terms of websites. Nearing 20 years felt like it might be an horribly unfortunate, but perhaps natural end for the website.

However, in the recent weeks we have formulated a plan to move forward with the website. It is our expectation that we can get pretty close to what we have now for around the same cost. Instead of hosting every aspect of the site’s infrastructure on one server, we’ll be taking a more modern approach and using a dedicated webhost, object storage, content delivery network, and database server. This should give the site a performance boost and costs should be similar to what they are now – we’ll know more in a couple of months. This does increase the complexity of configuration and DarcyF1 is a completely hand-coded website (no CMS’s here!) which means there could be aspects of the site that don’t work so well in the new environment, or require weeks/months of fixing. Please stay tuned while we work through all those and thank you for your patience. Please remember that DarcyF1 is run by a group of very dedicated volunteers who have day jobs, families and lives outside of the website, a group who have collectively contributed decades of their life to making DarcyF1 what it is today.
As of this post going live, the ~6TB of video content is uploading to the new hosts and this process will take some time (~weeks). Several other components have already been moved and are now being provided by the new hosts, such as video thumbnails. The website itself will move to its new host on 20/Sep – expect some downtime on this day. When the website moves, only some videos will be available:
Videos have already been moved to the new host.
Newly uploaded videos.
Embedded videos (YouTube etc.).
Videos hosted on external hosts (aka. mirrors).

All other aspects of the website should be (almost) running just as they are now.

I’d like to take this opportunity, more now than ever, to thank everyone who makes the DarcyF1 website and community what it is today.
Our donators – of course we couldn’t pay our ever-increasing costs without the generous donations.
Our content contributors – our visitors come to DarcyF1 to watch motorsport multimedia. We have ~200,000 videos online. Watching 400+ categories of motorsport around the world, and clipping action from them takes many hours each weekend for our video contributors. They are tireless, and they are the lifeblood of DarcyF1. Beyond the video content, there are those who create collector card sets that are immensely popular, and those who contribute to the community with their comments and criticisms, their feedback and suggestions – all of whom make the site what it is today.
Our staff – we have a dedicated team of users-turned-staff who moderate content that is contributed to the website. Having the team mean a more reliable and timely response to submissions, questions and error reports. These dedicated people contribute a lot of their free time to making sure that the site is running smoothly.
Our users – it almost goes without saying that this site wouldn’t have a purpose if it wasn’t for the 2,500 people across the world who visit DarcyF1 on a given day. This site exists to provide a platform for those who have a passion for a sport we all love, and without the growing community, this site would have faded off into the sunset years ago, I’m sure.

So, please bear with us while we go through this difficult change and know that there are several people doing a lot of work behind the scenes to make it as seamless as possible.