MacRumors - revenues generated and cost of running?

[Allotriophagy]

Feeling nosey, bored and curious. Couldn't find a thread on this in this forum.

How much does MR cost to run? And how much revenue does it generate?

 

[arn]

Feeling nosey, bored and curious. Couldn't find a thread on this in this forum.

How much does MR cost to run? And how much revenue does it generate?

Sorry, we don't give out those numbers. Best I can tell you is the site runs on 4 dedicated servers and is making a profit.

arn

 

[Sdashiki]

X Serves!?

 

[Allotriophagy]

X Serves!?

Yes...what kind of machines?

 

[Allotriophagy]

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=https://www.macrumors.com

Oh. Looks like Linux.

Still, Linux running on Apple hardware perhaps! Ooooooooh.

Yeah.

 

[liketom]

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=https://www.macrumors.com

Oh. Looks like Linux.

Still, Linux running on Apple hardware perhaps! Ooooooooh.

Yeah.

i think your in for a shock

 

[Queso]

So Knox looks after the DNS then

 

[arn]

Sorry, no Xserve... just Linux x86 Servers.

arn

 

[liketom]

Sorry, no Xserve... just Linux x86 Servers.

arn

and a fine job they do too this is more then a website ... it's a online home for me

 

[Eraserhead]

Sorry, no Xserve... just Linux x86 Servers.

arn

Is there a reason? Cost? Software? I'm just curious as I'd kinda expect a Mac site to run on XServe not that there's anything wrong with Linux.

 

[arn]

Is there a reason? Cost? Software? I'm just curious as I'd kinda expect a Mac site to run on XServe not that there's anything wrong with Linux.

Well, the Xserve didn't really exist when MacRumors started (2000). Beyond that, Xserve's just aren't used for web hosting as much. Harder to get reasonable deals on Xserve hosting.

Switching providers isn't a minor task, so there's no real incentive to move hosts. In fact, due to the hassle, my current provider would have to screw up pretty badly for me to ever move.

arn

 

[Queso]

Is there a reason? Cost? Software? I'm just curious as I'd kinda expect a Mac site to run on XServe not that there's anything wrong with Linux.

OSX Server, like its desktop equivalent, is an all-purpose OS, good at a variety of things but more generic in nature. Linux can be easily customised to do one thing extremely quickly, so for a high-performance web server it's the best option.

Most of the Web is hosted using Apache on Linux these days.

 

[davidjearly]

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=https://www.macrumors.com

Oh. Looks like Linux.

Still, Linux running on Apple hardware perhaps! Ooooooooh.

Yeah.

What does the info in the picture mean where the Glasgow address is? What does the hosting of MR have to do with the area I am from? I feel connected to the site more than ever now!

In otherwords, what is the nameserver organisation?

David

 

[Eraserhead]

What does the info in the picture mean where the Glasgow address is? What does the hosting of MR have to do with the area I am from? I feel connected to the site more than ever now!

In otherwords, what is the nameserver organisation?

David

Knox one of the mods, lives in Glasgow.

 

[Knox]

Feeling nosey, bored and curious. Couldn't find a thread on this in this forum.

How much does MR cost to run? And how much revenue does it generate?

In general terms, by far the greatest cost in running a website of a reasonable size is time - both writing it in the first place and even more significantly, maintaining it. How you value that time is another matter but if you had to pay a company to create & maintain a large site it could easily add up to thousands a month.

What does the info in the picture mean where the Glasgow address is? What does the hosting of MR have to do with the area I am from? I feel connected to the site more than ever now!

In otherwords, what is the nameserver organisation?

The nameservers translate www.macrumors.com into the IP address of the server that runs it. As others have said, I run those servers and live in Glasgow (although not at that particular address I should point out ). The actual nameservers are in the US however.

 

[jeremy.king]

Sorry, we don't give out those numbers.

Well...at least...not until the IPO

 

[Counterfit]

(although not at that particular address I should point out ).

And here I was, planning a special trip to see you. I was gonna bring beer!

 

[Peace]

Linux Servers are some of the best around!! And Apache rocks.

I used to run a couple.

 

[MacNut]

And here I was, planning a special trip to see you. I was gonna bring beer!

Ya great get him drunk and then we are going to have to run the servers ourselves.

 

[WildPalms]

Linux Servers are some of the best around!! And Apache rocks.

I used to run a couple.

Right on brother!

 

[BigPrince]

Could we get numbers only for the Macrumors Live event coverage? Thats all I am really interested in.

 

[MacNut]

Could we get numbers only for the Macrumors Live event coverage? Thats all I am really interested in.

What kind of numbers? Im sure the stats are available if you do a search for them.

 

[BigPrince]

What kind of numbers? Im sure the stats are available if you do a search for them.

Cost

 

[MacNut]

Cost

Fairly certain you are not going to get those numbers.

 

[Knox]

Again, the real cost is very difficult to determine because of the value of the time spend preparing for the events, and MacRumorsLive in particular takes a lot of time. It's an extreme example because the visitor numbers are so huge; this in turn means that a lot of time needs to be taken to ensure every possible eventuality is thought of and prepared for. We started planning for January's keynote in September (and early discussions about how photos might be included happened way back in March) so there's a long lead-time up to an event where it's being worked on.

Getting someone to implement and run it it on a commercial basis, the hosting cost would be insignificiant compared to the cost of labour.