TEXTFILES.COM needs (in the next couple of weeks) to move the main archive site from Jason Scott's machine (which is going away) to another machine. The traffic is currently between 500mb-1200mb a day, and the disk space is about 800mb. Mail Jason Scott if you can help.

The Long Form:

It's been a great year. TEXTFILES.COM has become really popular, getting thousands of different sites every month, all browsing and downloading these historic texts that I've grabbed from tons of different sources and sorted by general topics. I'm planning the second phase of the site, where there'll be more historical writing and essays from people who were there, to get a real feeling for the 1980's and the forces and culture that were active then.

Naturally, people are curious about the subject matter on this site, and some people like to download tons of the files at once. To facilitate this, I've created .zip and .tar.gz files of the main topic directories, so people can just download the whole directory as it stands, without worrying about missing files or trying to remember what subdirectory and topic the file they remember was. For those who are of a more paranoid ilk, it's also a way to get a copy of everything for yourself before the Big Bad Men come and shoot me and make it look like an accident.

Right now, people are downloading the files at the rate of about .5 to 1.5 gigabytes of data a day. That's a lot, although not as much as it used to be, in these days of .mp3 files and real-time-streaming hoo-hah. The current site where all these archives are stored can take this amount of traffic and usage without blinking, but unfortunately, the site's going away.

I intend to end my employment at my current job as soon as is feasible (which also means I'm for hire and if you want to Hire Me you're more than welcome to). With it will go the machine that has all the archive files. I mean, the machine's not being DESTROYED or anything, but it will not be on the Internet in the same capacity, and it is very likely that I will be hosting the machine out of my own pocket with some co-location service, which will no doubt be charging me for bandwidth, and at ~20gb a month, that will run me hundreds of dollars I can't quite afford to throw that way.

So, I'm asking you, people who cared enough to read this far, if you know of a server that you or someone you know runs, that can become the new archives.textfiles.com, and recieve a CDR every month or so from me that you can throw the files into on the site and have people keep downloading stuff, then please, please take the time to write me and we can discuss it.

I should note at this time that I have really great people, all over the country, who are being absolutely fantastic mirrors, and I appreciate all they're doing. All of what I'm talking about now only affects whether the users will be able to download entire directories as .zip and .tar.gz files, not whether those directories will be available at all. TEXTFILES.COM is here to stay; I just need help in making it as easy to use and download as it has been. I look forward to correspondence.

Jason Scott
TEXTFILES.COM