The Madness Day 2013 page is now live, with prize information and examples from previous years. Madness Day is Sunday, September 22nd and you can submit movies, games, art or music!
With the announcement of Madness Day 2013 I'll address the same elephant in the room that came up last year - the prize money keeps getting smaller. Here is some good news though:
1) We replaced our load balancer this year, one of our more expensive pieces of hardware.
2) We are about to replace our eight year old storage system, our most expensive piece of hardware.
3) Both of these are being replaced with solutions that don't come with expensive annual service contracts.
4) The cost of our healthcare is going down for the first time in years.
5) We've negotiated a reduced rate for our bandwidth.
6) Thanks to more efficient hardware, we're consolidating our colocation rental from three to two racks.
Special thanks to Brendon for 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6.
In addition to these big things, we've done lots of small cost cutting - switching SSL certification providers, moving domain name registers, etc. The cost cutting will continue through the coming months.
Not only that, but Newgrounds is running great! A lot of things have been tightened up over the spring/summer and even our midnight housekeeping lag is gone.
Supporters can browse NG without page ads and the site should be pretty darn snappy. Our last big speed issue is the Cogent vs Verizon peering dispute which is still ongoing.
Things are looking much more positive for 2014. No big hardware expenses, no big service contracts, lower bills, less expenses overall. KNOCK ON WOOD.
Of course lower expenses don't mean much if NG doesn't continue to improve and grow, so that's in the works too! More on that later though.
Next up: The Best of August!
