FEEDS – use ’em or lose ’em…
Without going into a whole lot of boring details…
My current site, at my current hosting, has pretty much hit the limit of what it can do. Most of the time it works fine, but sooner or later problems show up that wreak havoc. This is a hosting issue. I’m exceeding what my bucket is allowed in CPU processing, and the host silently throttles me… basically – i need to upgrade.
Luckily, it’s Black Friday, and there are some amazing sales on hosting just about everywhere, so finding something is not an issue. The issue is whether or not it should be done.
Without automation (aka all the feeds) the site runs great, especially now that i spent the last few days finally getting it optimized. There is no caching on right now, and the site is zippy, pages load fast, etc. Things are good, and will only get faster and better when caching goes back on. Only thing that’s crapping out is automation, and all the subsequent bugs that happen (pages not rendering properly) happen when and because automation craps out.
Right now there are 8 feeds on the site – Today’s Deals, Schedule, and 2 feeds each for Filament, Printer and Resin. The Parts feeds never made it (lots of results, made the site unstable during import). I am, or at least was, hoping to add a few more feeds for the Maker, Tools and Gadgets categories. Right now, on current setup, this doesn’t look possible, or at least not possible without something constantly breaking.
These feeds are not free. I buy data from a 3’rd party api (actually 3 of them right now) to get these to work. This adds up. My current data bill is already at levels that i can only describe as “uncomfortable”.
This wouldn’t matter if the feeds proved to be popular, but as of now they are getting no traffic, and by that i mean – NO traffic. The two filament feeds got a grand total of 4 unique visitors in the last 24 hours. That’s pretty much the definition of no traffic. And while i’m grateful for the 4 people that visited them, that’s nowhere even near close enough to keep these things going long term.
Which brings me to my point, and the title of this post.
I have about a week before Black Friday sales are over. In that week i’m going to make a decision on whether i want to upgrade, or stay put. That decision depends entirely on whether or not automation is something i plan to actually use in the future. Right now, with numbers being what they are, there is no point to keep it. It’s an open bleeding wound that just gushes money… a pet project for me, and something that seems to maybe possibly interest a few other people at most.
So, use ’em or lose ’em…
PS… Filament, Today’s Deals and Schedule feeds are all running smooth. Printers and Resin were shut off for the last few days while i was getting the site stable. I just turned them back on, and they should update overnight (2 and 4 am). If site becomes unstable again, i’ll shut them off.
When I first found your deals I would have been over the moon to have these filament feeds. Trying all kinds of brands for cheap taught me a lot and I found what I like to use for my purposes.
These days in my 3D printing journey I try and do more with the filament that I have amassed, and mostly stock up on cheap black/white PLA.
Personally I’m not in the market for the other ones. I love the tools and other miscellaneous things you find! Too bad the tools feed didn’t work out.
Thanks for all that you do and try out for us! 💚