Howdy. I've been a casual user here on Avsim since ... forever? What an awesome site - the forums, file libraries, the reviews - all of it has greatly enhanced my experience in using flight sims since the PC AT / 286 days. I am truly thankful that so many people have donated their time to making it great... Which is why I'm posting this question...

 

Isn't the "we are heavily loaded / registered users only" message self-defeating? Without seeing all of the awesome, awesome content, a new user has little reason to spend the time to register, and that page doesn't make a good first impression. I can't imagine it's good for SEO either.

 

In the age of ultra high performance cloud servers and oodles of nearly free (or totally free) bandwidth, it shouldn't take much ad revenue to offset hosting expenses - and more traffic should equal more ad revenue. If you limit traffic, doesn't that limit ad revenue and therefore make things worse?

My intent is not to fan the flames of what is probably a sore subject - but rather offer assistance. I happen to work in the industry and would be happy to assist in moving the site to a better / cheaper / faster home. Free - to any hosting company - maybe I can give something in return for all great content I've enjoyed over the past few decades.

 

John

I think it is some other reason that this is the current state of the website. 

And I don't think economics factors into it

I think it is some other reason that this is the current state of the website. 

And I don't think economics factors into it

 

Ahh - I just read this thread: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/412553-wall-of-shame-is-it-time-to-consider-one/ which explains a bit. I knew there had to be some method behind the madness - didn't think to look in that forum.

However, it still seems like help is needed. There are a ton of tools out there to mitigate a DDOS attack - simply blocking IPs won't help, but there are OS level tools that will proactively monitor and dynamically block traffic, as well as third party services such as CloudFlare that can act as a buffer for traffic spikes (and are pretty cost effective).

 

Bottom line, one or more douche bags should not be able to force the site to do something that causes the site to do something that harms its ability to attract legit new users. The bad guys win when that happens. Happy to help in any way I can.

 

John