Comic Genesis Forums

I have my site at (http://twokinds.keenspace.com) and all my comics are full page, full color and shading, three times a week. My comics are generally about 300-400kb each. So I've been getting these warnings alot, and now I'm really worried. I don't store anything like sound or music files, and I've been trying to clear up any loose ends, but I'm still getting a caution. I'm not really sure what to do, I really like the quality of color in my comics.

Okay .... first of all i dont even know what an illegal warez is ..... secondly the warning is on the site administration where you log onto get your webalizer information and where the pageload is listed it reads CAUTION....
EXCEEDING RECOMMENDED 75 KB PAGE LOAD .... (my pages are about 85-110kb) and thats what confuses me because if the pageload is not to exceed 75 kb and i could upload daily but i only upload biweekly what is the total amount of space allowed ..... i am in the same boat as spellcaster2 since i only use my site for my comics and nothing else but i do like how they come out all colored ..... i have missed three post days because i dont want to get cancelled .... thanks a lot for your help ....... jen

Unfortunately, we're thinking that webcomics are just one flat strip a-la Schlock Mercenary. I'll have to poke Kisai about it.

However, if your page load is under 500kb, and you don't have any ZIP, RAR, etc files of programs on your account, you should be ok.

SpellCaster2 wrote:I have my site at (http://twokinds.keenspace.com) and all my comics are full page, full color and shading, three times a week. My comics are generally about 300-400kb each. So I've been getting these warnings alot, and now I'm really worried. I don't store anything like sound or music files, and I've been trying to clear up any loose ends, but I'm still getting a caution. I'm not really sure what to do, I really like the quality of color in my comics.

They don't need to be anywhere near that big. You must be using 100% quality JPGs. You'll notice little difference in quality if you use a 70% quality JPG, gif or 8bit PNG and it'll halve your filesize.
Big comics aren't just bad for bandwidth, people are less likely to read your comic if it takes a long time to load. Your comic will take a minute and a half to load each time on a 56k, potential readers will have wandered off and found something else to do by that point.

yes .... my files are way under 500 kb and i dont have any kind of files except gif .... i just don't want to get kicked off .... thanks a lot !!!!!
jen

Remember, it's not just your comic size it's everything on the page that gets added together. You can usually shave off a couple k by using css layouts instead of tables and using background colors instead of background images. Pretty things like rounded corners on the edges of your layout only add to the size and can usually be left out.

Basically, if you have a large comic, keep your page size as small as possible. If you have a smaller comic you can probably afford to be more extravagant.

good gravy, there arw some massive comics. I'd also suggest..

not for bandwidth but for loading... you might want to look in slicing your full pages into pieces cause I bet thats a nightmare for someone with a low connection.

I think my 60k strips are safe.

Okay... Just so I know, what is the official position on this?

You know my site is really graphic intense. Together with the fact that I'll be starting to run infinite canvas strips soon, I believe I won't be able to make my pages with less than 500kb (altogether, site + panels).

I'm fine with the fact that dial up users won't read my comic. It's not designed for the weak of bandwidth. But what about the KS policy? Should I start to pack things and move my ass from here?

Use flash?
Supposedly it would make the files really small...

I suppose yes. But they give really extra trouble and are not worth it.

I have a comic based on my RPG Maker game. Therefore, my site contains my comic and my RPG Maker game, along with other things that kind of go along with them (help file, screenshots, etc).

But all my non-html files that aren't part of the comic keep disappearing without my deleting them. This is beginning to piss me off. I have the courtesy of keeping everything else on my website over at Angelfire, since 90% of my site is unrelated to my game or comic. But the game file is 11 MB, which isn't much since it only gets downloaded a couple times a month, but it means that if someone downloads it from my Angelfire page, the whole site goes down for three hours. Since it's certainly related to the comic, I thought I'd keep the file at Keenspace instead.

But it keeps getting deleted. Not just that, but the screenshots of my game get deleted, the help file gets deleted, the menu buttons from the top of the page get deleted, and almost any non-html file I decide to store in the public_html folder gets deleted within a week. Is there some script that does this automatically, and I should be using a different folder? Or is someone just out to get me, angered that I have the audacity to make a webpage that isn't centered around my comic?

MY Official stance:

1. The average pageload should be 75KB, if it exceeds it, then you are more likely to be pissing off readers than anything else
2. Storage of anything not related to the comic is a BAD IDEA, I've been actively monitoring bandwidth spikes, and as of today am turning off wildcard DNS for a while to hopefully get the stupid people at neopets to stop hotlinking. This means that people have to wait for their site to propagate again. There should be NO reason why a site that DOES NOT exist anymore generates larger log files than the most popular comics on keenspace, that's freaking absurd.
3. If the pageload exceeds 500KB, you are doing something wrong, Period. Please check http://members.keenspace.com to see what the system averages are.
4. Hosting of software, legal or not. RPG MAKER is not legal software to have in the first place.
5. There is a script that runs periodicly that moves all images out of the main public_html, you should NEVER upload anything directly to /public_html . This script also DELETES *.exe files, since these are not safe to host. Try hosting exe's on download.com

To give you an idea, if your site uses 1GB of bandwidth in a month, you site probably costs a 1$ to host per month, however if your site uses 100GB, then it costs 100$, and is probably more than you want to pay to have your site hosted. You can get hosting that includes like 6GB of transfer for like 10$ amonth, but if your site gets popular, you get bills.

Got members.keenspace.com , click Kbytes
If your site is in the top 10, those sites are the 10 most expensive sites to host
Note how Ghastly is #1, but ghastlys page load is less than 75KB, he only updates once a week.
Venusenvy is #2, a pageload of 170.

Both of these sites have used just over 25GB's, so therefor in 6 days probably cost 25$, there are 30 days per month, so X 5, These sites cost 125$ to host per month by themselves.

Now go click on pageload.

mediumrare has a pageload of 1800KB, that is absurd, check the site out
He hasn't updated since janurary it looks like.
Checking out why it has a high pageload ... oh look he has an mp3. He has just violated the TOS, because by definition he is now using his site as a dump site, since the comic hasn't been updated since Janurary.
(The mp3 was uploaded Jul 27th 2004)

This same type of pattern usually shows up when the pageload exceeds 500KB, Which is the only reason I will remove a site. Using the site as ANY kind of dump site will have it removed (technically backed up first)

Going back to the person complaing about RPG Maker being removed... Well YES, you are uploading warez, I should remove the site entirely. 11MB download, ABSURD.

Keenspace is meant to be fair to everyone, and in order to keep the server accessable to everyone, I do not want content hotlinked, or bandwidth-sucking content posted. EVER. The server can take the occassional bit of being linked from penny acade and mega tokyo, but if everyone starts pulling the comics,images,mp3,etc directly, it's wasting OUR bandwidth, and causing unnecessary stress on the server that could be used for people actually wanting to see the comics.

Ghastly and hard (when he was still on keenspace) wanted the anti-hotlinking, and by implementing it, the bandwidth was cut in half. This translates into being able to have twice as many people view the sites.

The higher the pageload, the longer it takes for someone to view the comic, and thus denying others from viewing the comics as well.

IF someone gets hotlinked by penny arcade, and has a 100KB pageload, the site should be fine, but if they have a 500KB pageload, then it takes 5 times longer for everyone to get it, and then you experience systemwide slowdowns for everyone.

If someone wants to pay 3500$ a month to have a dedicated server on a 100Mbit connection, be my guest, you can hotlink all you want. However Keenspace seems to be on a 10Mbit connection that gets saturated between 8am and midnight Pacific time.


*** The color coding on members.keenspace.com is Green for 50% LESS than average, Black for Average, and Red for over Twice the average pageload.

1) Since when is an 11 MB file absurd? You can put up to 20 MB on a single Angelfire account. 11 MB is a really small file. It's not like I have dozens of 45 min long mpeg movies or something. Honestly. The comics are only 20 kb png files. A single 11 MB download isn't a huge deal. Let's say five people download it per month (which is actually higher than the real number). By your own calculation of bandwidth to dollar, that's FIVE CENTS.
2) Whatever your stance is on the RPG Maker translation, the games made with it certainly aren't warez. That's like saying it's illegal to keep a saved game file from Starcraft if it was created while playing a cracked version of the game.
3) When I go to http://www.keenspace.com, I don't see a list of rules anywhere. I can't seem to find a list of rules stickied in the help forum either, although it's possible I missed it. So I figured it was pretty lax. I mean, my site is well within Angelfire's or Geocities's rules. If there are real rules somewhere, I'd like to know where I can find them, cause they sure aren't anywhere I could find. The terms of service when creating a new account don't say anything useful either.


If one little ameteur game means that much to you, I'll start up a second Angelfire account to host the file or something. It's just that their 1 GB bandwidth limit gets enforced in a stupid way: 1 GB / 31 days / 24 hours = 1.3 MB, so if you go over 1.3 MB in one hour, they shut you down until you catch back up. Never mind that that you'd had a total of 800 kb of downloads over the last two weeks and that really ought to not disappear at the end of each hour. I figured that if I'm using less than 60 MB of bandwidth a month, I could host the files somewhere where people have brains and can do arithmetic, and they'd see that I clearly wasn't a bandwidth hog. If you just can't deal with it, I'll take my site elsewhere.

I have one 14 MB flash video uploaded; it took a lot of time and effort on my part, and when it came up last Sunday as part of the comic it got a lot of positive feedback. I'm not planning on making this a regular practice, either; it was a special occasion. However, now I'm getting a 403 "Unauthorized Access" error when I try to load it, and I rather suspect it's related to this.

My comic updates daily, and its pageload is currently listed as 284 KB. Can I have my video back up, or should I try to find somewhere else to put it?

ANY large file is absurd, Not everyone is on broadband.

Ever wonder why a site full of images gets slashdotted and stops working? because the page load is too dammed high and it's denying service to others.

NO large files, no zip files, no mp3s, no mpegs, no avis.

FLASH is the special exception, IF you can make a proper flash movie (say under 4MB) I might ignore it if the rest of your site compensates for the pageload.

If your pageload is >1MB, you site gets messed with, it doesn't matter if you only burned through 60MB of bandwidth.

hellsing, you site got messed with because of the scanlations, which I belive you may have been advised to stop hosting once before.

I do this stuff to keep the site accessable, it's not like I go "OH MY GOD AN MP3, TOS VIOLATION, SITE GONE" ... If that persons site pageload goes up to 900KB, I'm going to investigate.

Here's my rules for keeping the system stable:
1. Check bandwidth daily
a) check sites over 512KB bandwidth
i) check their webalizer to see which file is being hit the most
ii) check their referrers to see if they are hotlinking or being hotlinked from
b) check sites that have high pageloads >512KB AND older than 30 days
i) if site is updating other content (zip files, mp3s etc), and not their comic for 30 days. REMOVED, NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Violates anti-dump site rule
c) check sites that have disk space usage >50MB
i) check for files >3MB, if mp3's, zip, iso, rar, avi, mov, etc. REMOVE if non-comic data exceeds comic data
d) check sits that have not been updated in 90 days
i) REMOVE any site that has less than 10 comics, less than 700KB, and older than 90 days. Abandoned.

EXE files are deleted without question, since there is no way to scan the things for viruses.


Keenspace is for hosting comics, not hobby games, I'm sorry, but do not host this kind of thing on keenspace. Keenspace is for webcomics. Try sourceforge if you are developing any kind of software. Sourceforge has bandwidth for doing so. Not keenspace.

(Disk space used to be an issue before moving to Butch BTW, I stopped checking disk usage once the drives were 5 times as large)

Kisai wrote:hellsing, you site got messed with because of the scanlations, which I belive you may have been advised to stop hosting once before.

And I stopped hosting 'em when I got that advice. A friend generously volunteered to host them on his own site; I just link to them ^_^ Only exceptions: the two that I haven't had a chance to send him.

Do you mean that my site got messed with just now for the scanlations, or are you only referring to that time a while ago? (I'm assuming the one flash movie needs to be moved, so I'm working on that.)

SailorPtah wrote:

Kisai wrote:hellsing, you site got messed with because of the scanlations, which I belive you may have been advised to stop hosting once before.

And I stopped hosting 'em when I got that advice. A friend generously volunteered to host them on his own site; I just link to them ^_^ Only exceptions: the two that I haven't had a chance to send him.

Do you mean that my site got messed with just now for the scanlations, or are you only referring to that time a while ago? (I'm assuming the one flash movie needs to be moved, so I'm working on that.)

The flash file was probably moved to /images

however, a properly done flash file shouldn't be large either. There is a lot of stuff on newgrounds that is under 4MB.

The only reason peoples flash files wind up huge is because they don't pre-edit their sound. Typically the images compress okay, but they don't edit the mp3's to the lenght used in the animation. I removed one persons site a long time ago because the flash file was 45 freaking megs, and the person used 15 seconds of 4 minute long mp3s, and used like 10 of them. Also, downgrade audio quality if it's not necessary to be high, like audio narration doesn't need to be stereo if it's only coming from the center channel, doesn't need to be 44khz unless it's music, and doesn't need to be in 256kbps mode. talking is a lot of dead air, so 96kbps works fine. Music is okay at 128kbps.

I probably annoy people with the technical reasons and some people are going to scream "then my site doesn't look pretty", but you all need to compromise. There is no reason why a newbie with a 45MB flash file should outstrip ghastlys site for bandwidth on any day.

Say Kisai, the sites http://paladinchronicles.keenspace.com and http://radiozee.keenspace.com/d/20040414.html are using the sample indextemplates I provide for newbies from my site.

This is fine, but somehow they're hotlinking to my navigation buttons. This is not fine.

As they haven't left any contact information on their sites, is there any way I can contact them and get them to stop?

LockeZ wrote:Let's say five people download it per month (which is actually higher than the real number). By your own calculation of bandwidth to dollar, that's FIVE CENTS.

Wow, if it's so cheap, why don't you try buying your own space? I hear bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper now. Five cents certainly isn't that much when you put it that way.

I could host the files somewhere where people have brains and can do arithmetic, and they'd see that I clearly wasn't a bandwidth hog. If you just can't deal with it, I'll take my site elsewhere.

Sweetie, for your own safety, please don't be rude to the Admin. Thank you.

Also, if you can't deal with the rules, they maybe you should take your site elsewhere. Don't worry about Keenspace. There's a few thousand comics here. I'm sure we'll somehow find some way to survive without your comic.

Phalanx wrote:Say Kisai, the sites http://paladinchronicles.keenspace.com and http://radiozee.keenspace.com/d/20040414.html are using the sample indextemplates I provide for newbies from my site.

This is fine, but somehow they're hotlinking to my navigation buttons. This is not fine.

They might have just copied it verbaitum, change the templates to not have your site in it and just use the relative links. I'll goto the sites and check the templates in a second...

I see it in the first one, but the second just has a link to you site.

Phalanx wrote: As they haven't left any contact information on their sites, is there any way I can contact them and get them to stop?

LockeZ wrote:Let's say five people download it per month (which is actually higher than the real number). By your own calculation of bandwidth to dollar, that's FIVE CENTS.

Wow, if it's so cheap, why don't you try buying your own space? I hear bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper now. Five cents certainly isn't that much when you put it that way.

I could host the files somewhere where people have brains and can do arithmetic, and they'd see that I clearly wasn't a bandwidth hog. If you just can't deal with it, I'll take my site elsewhere.

Sweetie, for your own safety, please don't be rude to the Admin. Thank you.

Also, if you can't deal with the rules, they maybe you should take your site elsewhere. Don't worry about Keenspace. There's a few thousand comics here. I'm sure we'll somehow find some way to survive without your comic.

I'm a lot more blunt about abuse problems on keenspace, I'm not going to sugar-coat them unlike the call center I work at. I get dinged on quality for being tactless and sounding uninterested. Well yeah. I'm not going to freaking coddle them and say it's not their fault if it's their fault.

LockeZ wrote: By your own calculation of bandwidth to dollar, that's FIVE CENTS.

Okay, so your site costs the keenspace 5 cents to host.
Since you're not popular you probably don't bring more than 1c of revenue, so keenspace loses 4 cents every month by hosting you.

That's a poor deal for keenspace.
Of course, you can, and you do say "It's freakin 4 cents! What's the problem???"
What are the odds your site will become 10 times as popular in a couple of months? Especially after it gets listed on websearch engines, RPG maker fansites, ect. ect.? I'd say the chances are big.
Then your site would cost 40-50 cents.
Beginning to see the problem?

Now, multiply it by thousands of people that sign up and think that stealing a couple of cents here and there will not hurt keenspace...

It's the same deal as with that park that had petrified trees, if each tourist taken take a small piece as a souvenir, the park would be ruined.