WCSMT experiment temporarly closed
Recently i had to partially close down WCSMT. The reason is one of those things that seem like a good thing but on which i am currently unable to capitalize. It just got too damn popular.
I run a dedicated server at Media Temple which was quite the investment for me, but i did it because WCSMT had gotten me booted out of my current shared hosting plan when it hit the homepage of digg.com and i just liked the project too much to let it die at that point. I knew that the sheer size of the generated animated .gifs would pile up and make it break down again,but i figure i would have at least a year to worry about a solution. This need for lots of storage space and bandwidth has always been the aquiles heel of WCSMT.
A couple of weeks ago i did a couple of updates that changed the dynamic of how the mini-site worked. In addition to see a grid of random animations, the site allowed to browse them freely in a time based matter, one page at a time, and it got to a point were it was been used as a kind of graphical chat system. People would “chat” with stop-motion-animation made with animated .gifs. Nice! People were having fun doing animation which was the whole point of the game. I was getting on average 100 new pages a day (sometimes more). Thats 1,600 stop motion animations per day! WOW!
However in less than 2 weeks i received an automated notice from my host telling me how at the current rate of growth i would have an outstanding bandwidth bill of over US$1000 on top of what i had already paid. This is something i cannot afford at the moment and thus i was forced to close down the animation ‘maker’ application and to revert back from the updates i had done.
This WCSMT experiment has proven very successful as a concept but a complete failure from a technical stand point. For this project to continue i must redesign the system to be lighter in disk storage and bandwidth. Most likely i will have to ditch the animated .gif format for something lighter. Most likely a combination of flash player and PNG/JPG images or maybe the animated PNG format . Ill probably have to implement a regulating policy where older animation will be deleted at set periods.
To the followers of the WCSMT , i must thank for their interest on the game and their willingness to participate and share. It has been great having you and i hope to re-open soon.
Cheers
julie, 
kaleelah, 
Adina and 24 others are discussing. 
Tony, 
Nico, 
Vishal Chander and one other person are discussing. 
Rick 2:57 pm on September 13, 2008 Permalink
thanks for the fun while it lasted.
Chad 6:16 pm on September 13, 2008 Permalink
“Ill probably have to implement a regulating policy where older animation will be deleted at set periods.”
bingo. it’s fun to look back a couple pages at older animations, but I doubt anyone (who has a job) will have enough free time to go back several thousand pages. a couple hundred should do.
Charlie 7:20 pm on September 13, 2008 Permalink
Thanks for the fun, surely you could set it up with some advertising to cover the costs? (and make some money?!?!)
I do think I might be suffering from withdrawal from the fun of the stopmotion
SpecialKRJ 4:01 am on September 14, 2008 Permalink
T_T A tragic day indeed. *bows head*
Adrià 4:19 am on September 14, 2008 Permalink
Non-intrusive ads may help.
Good work and good luck.
Matt Mosz 4:31 pm on September 14, 2008 Permalink
I have the worst luck, my computer didn’t have the drivers to get my camera to work, and the day I finally update to xp service pack 2(im using a old laptop) this site goes down!!!
Come back soon!
ian 11:06 pm on September 14, 2008 Permalink
:\
it was fun while it lasted.
ads could possibly help theres just so many people who use the wcsmt.
i miss it already
and deleting the older ones would be nice or asking the user to save it to their computer or a simple alert box i dont know
im supposed to be writing an essay right now
Ail 10:57 am on September 15, 2008 Permalink
hi, mm the browsing by time is not possible anymore too?
lu 6:50 pm on September 15, 2008 Permalink
Why do new .gifs still appear? Is the site still working for some??
I say having ads is a good idea, I don’t think anyone would complain, and you might make money…
radioclambake 7:58 pm on September 17, 2008 Permalink
This thing was a lot of fun, and I’ll miss it. I also think that only archiving, say, the last 200 images is sufficient. Or maybe on a day-by-day basis?
rob 5:47 pm on September 19, 2008 Permalink
dare i say you publish the code/workings for the project, so someone else could do it (maybe me)
i also think the idea of making users download the images would work, and just showing 30 recent ones.
julia 4:21 pm on September 21, 2008 Permalink
and try to work on making sure there’s less nudes!
ian, again. 7:29 pm on September 21, 2008 Permalink
hey i have another idea.
just make it so that we can make the animated gif (or other type) and then be allowed to save it to our computer
and in doing this we dont upload it to your site but we are able to save it to our computer and we can upload the picture if we like by using another website.
this would prevent us from taking up all the space and bandwidth on your site
Fluzzy 12:41 am on September 23, 2008 Permalink
WCSMT is awesome. I hope it comes back soon. Could you maybe put adds on the site (since it’s so popular) to pay for the storage? I’m sure you’d have enough hits to make some booko bucks.
Also, from a legal standpoint you might want to put a warning on the site that there is nudity at times.
Cecilia 1:48 am on September 24, 2008 Permalink
The WCSMT was great while it lasted. Thanks for the memories, hahah. I hope you figure things out soon, it was definitely a fun way to procrastinate and it was interesting to watch people get creative with their animations.
P.S. I agree with Fluzzy, a warning would definitely be helpful! Some nudity was just… not okay.
deluge 12:43 pm on September 26, 2008 Permalink
I miss it so much!!! I hope that it comes back soon.
Hey, even set up a Paypal “tipcup” ! I wouldnt mind dropping in a dollar now and then.
I was so sad that it was shut down when my laptop (the one with the webcam) came back…only for me to not be able to use it. D:
what does soon mean???
and yes I guess i wouldn’t mind ads either
nana-chan and shen-kun 12:35 pm on September 29, 2008 Permalink
D= sad indeed but we understand
(nana) ‘dont we hunny’ …
(shen) ‘ yeah at least you wont talk to no more pervs’ …
(nana) ‘ shut up shen you are a perv’
(both) ‘ WE LOVE YOU NO STOP MOTION THINGY!’
x
kyle 10:09 am on October 5, 2008 Permalink
lmfao i’m so pissed
jo 2:33 pm on October 17, 2008 Permalink
that sucks so bad.
Rush 8:47 am on October 19, 2008 Permalink
Two things that probably should be done, one of course is setting a “expiration” date on saved photos, probably easy enough to do with whatever scripting language you do, or just a chron on the server itself.
Second is NOT using flash/etc alternatives to display the animations. The joy of gif’s is, you can save them and share them as well, unless you provide a “save as gif” there will be some luster missing.
I also think you should make the site itself 18+ only, as children under age in most countries (at least in North America) have to ask a parents permission and verify that on any site the can chat with other people, never mind the problems you could run into with one angry parent seeing her child up on the site. (also there’s no realistic way to moderate the site 24/7 to prevent people from posting perverted photos, which children or underage teens would see). At least when it’s 18+ moderation becomes less of a hassle, and those who are underage that do show up, you are not liable for.
riley 6:21 pm on October 21, 2008 Permalink
Do not restrict the site please. You can just have a mark as spam button under every gif so there will be less nudity.
Radio Clambake 11:34 am on October 23, 2008 Permalink
We just want it back! I’m hopeful!
Danae 3:37 pm on October 24, 2008 Permalink
tragic .__.
ros 10:51 pm on October 26, 2008 Permalink
i think to save space, you should only display the last like 100 stop motion things, so people could still have ‘conversations’. but you should add a way for people to download their creations to their own computers.
i hope you work it out! this thing is fun
Nick D 9:11 pm on October 28, 2008 Permalink
Shame! you’ve got to bring the website back soon!
lol
I had just got a cam, went to go onto the webite and….it was gone/down!!
Adina 10:02 pm on October 28, 2008 Permalink
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
kaleelah 4:43 pm on November 1, 2008 Permalink
THIS: Why do new .gifs still appear? Is the site still working for some??
julie 10:27 pm on November 3, 2008 Permalink
define “temporarily”