In addition to being able to relieve a bunch of you of the pleasure of seeing advertsing, the donations received to date have given me enough leeway to invest in improving site performance. The current plan with the Canadian-based hosting company, Canspace, is the "pro" shared hosting package. Under this plan, 6-8 shares resources, network bandwidth, etc, with a random grouping of other similar web sites. I suspect 6-8 has long been hogging up those resources, especially in the busy summer months.
For roughly double the price, I've now upgraded to a VPS (virtual private server) plan. The plan is nicknamed "Erie", so I figured it must be the right plan for this web site. With this plan, the server, albeit virtual, is dedicated solely to the 6-8 site. In theory, response time should improve. Any bottlenecks can be attributed solely to the operation of this site. Having control over the server also gives me more flexibility to add other features. The folks at Canspace aren't sure when they can deliver on the new hardware, as COVID has created demand for such upgrades and a corresponding backlog. I'll let you know when the upgrade is due to happen.
For roughly double the price, I've now upgraded to a VPS (virtual private server) plan. The plan is nicknamed "Erie", so I figured it must be the right plan for this web site. With this plan, the server, albeit virtual, is dedicated solely to the 6-8 site. In theory, response time should improve. Any bottlenecks can be attributed solely to the operation of this site. Having control over the server also gives me more flexibility to add other features. The folks at Canspace aren't sure when they can deliver on the new hardware, as COVID has created demand for such upgrades and a corresponding backlog. I'll let you know when the upgrade is due to happen.