I like interfacing with AI from time to time. I asked ChatGPT: “What is a web administrator’s worst nightmare” and it replied by saying: “When they realize they’ve accidentally deleted the backup of the backup!”. Well, I concur. But I know of an even worse one, which curiously links ChatGPT’s response to today’s matter of discussion.
The web administrator’s worst nightmare is running out of space.
Temple Of Goo has been pushing out a lot of content ever since its establishment back in 2022. We are able to release material in a very consistent fashion, to the tune of an average of 5/6 releases on a weekly basis. Each one of them, especially the videos, can take up a considerable amount of space.
What do I mean by space? Every file that is uploaded onto the web takes up virtual space. The latter is not free, and when it is, it comes with limitations, such as restrictions on the amount of total Gigabytes one can use to upload material.
The Temple has already encountered space issues in the recent past, as detailed here. These problems are now more present than ever, due to a huge influx of releases which are shared by our precious contributors.
Of course I’m not complaining about people caring so much about this little project that they decided to get in touch with us so we can share their precious material with the Goo Goo Dolls fans from all over the world. I am actually humbled and honored to be of service. Having a lot of stuff being offered by people for other people is amazing and motivating, both for me and for the entire community interacting with the Temple.
However, it comes at a price: space.
The blog generates zero revenue, and so far it costs around $500/year to run. I am more than happy to yell at my own wallet to spit out the money to keep it alive, however there are other expenses I don’t feel like I should afford (as things stand out currently) to justify my investing in upgrades. One of those upgrades is space implementation, such as more Gigabytes at my disposal to share material. If the situation were different, with higher revenue and a (wayyyyyy) higher amount of daily visitors, I wouldn’t have to write this notice to you all. Yet, here we are.
As of now, virtual space for releases relies only on free accounts (Mega, Google Drive, etc…). Like I said, these accounts come with limitations, unless they get upgraded to a Premium status, with higher bandwidth and, especially in our case, way more space for content. During the past few weeks I have been struggling in terms of where to storage releases, to the point that I now am forced to ask contributors to adhere to the following rule, moving forward:
Contributors are kindly asked to verify whether or not the release they want to provide to the Temple, be it an audio concert, a video clip, or a full video performance of a show, is already present on YouTube. In case the content is already uploaded on the aforementioned platform, please refrain from sending it to the blog.
Hence the Temple, from now on, will only share what is not yet available on YouTube. I decided to impose such limitation in reference to the YouTube platform only, because it is the most popular and utilized one. This means, if what you want to share with us is not present on YouTube but it actually is on a similar website, like Vimeo, we will be happy to process it through our blog.
For the blog itself, you can also consider this a way for the latter to improve its uniqueness: it will only provide stuff that is not available elsewhere.
Contributors are therefore required to search on YouTube for a previously uploaded version of the release they feel like sharing with us, and forward the latter to the Temple only if nothing is found on YouTube. Needless to say, this limitation only applies to audio and video material, but not to pictures. Not sure whether or not a release you have is already on that platform? You can always get in touch with us and we will perform an accurate analysis for you.
I am actually the first one to advocate for what I like to call “backups” of stuff that is already present online, because you never know… If it disappears, at least there is another copy in place. Sadly, unless things change in the future, this approach cannot be taken anymore, at least not by the Temple.
Our amazing contributors have sent some stuff our way in the past, which is currently in a queue and being processed as time goes by. Some of those releases are already available on YouTube. To honor their important efforts and spirit of sharing with other fellow Gooers, I will post all of the queued-up content until the queue runs out. This is a particular case because rules where different back when they kindly forwarded their releases. The new rule is, however, active as of this moment, so any future release from today onward will have to pass the check mark discussed above.
I am sorry to have to impose such limitation, but unfortunately everything in life has limits, including virtual space for our beloved Goo Goo Dolls releases.
–Temple Of Goo staff
Temple of Goo - The rarest Goo Goo Dolls releases, for real Goo fans only 
That would certainly explain why it’s felt like things have slowed down a bit lately.
But In that case, Consider my previous release possibly my last one. Whether it is only for now or not, I don’t know.
Though to be fair i had just about run out of potential releases anyway.
I did have a full video performance of Improv-ice (2009) created, Since there doesn’t seem to be a full performance on YT (just in single clips), But i had to start a backup Drive.
Obviously you wouldn’t be the only one to start getting space issues.
However, I will say: According to Social Blade, The YouTube channel should have gathered enough views and subs to where you should be able to make a little extra money off of it.
If you were to have videos monetized of course.
You could also ask for donations, If you feel like that could take a little pressure off.
Point is, You always have secondary options, Regardless of how likely or unlikely you feel like you are to consider something normally.
Thanks for the insights. I never even tried to ask for the YouTube channel to be monetized because 95% of the videos uploaded there are flagged with a Copyright tag. My understanding is YouTube will never monetize a channel which contents are not genuinely created from scratch, and will redirect the revenue of those who end up being flagged as copyrighted to the owner of the copyright itself even if a video was initially not flagged.
We have a Donation page but no one ever did send any money. I am not the kind of person who likes to pry, especially when money is involved. I know how hard it is to make money nowadays. So I just set up the page and left it there in case people felt like providing some financial support.
I do have some connections and one of those promised me an unlimited storage account from an Elite server kinda thing. I am no tech expert but apparently it was a very costly service which I would have obtained for free and could have used for the blog without any limitations in terms of storage and bandwidth. Unfortunately, the guy said that for now I can’t have it. That would have solved my space issues completely.
Too bad you were already running out of content. Your contributions are greatly appreciated. If you feel like taking a break, I understand. The Temple doors are always open, especially for those who helped us grow this little website. Should you decide to come back with more stuff, feel free to do so. And when you do, hopefully the new sharing rule would be gone and with it, storage problems will have been fixed, one way or the other.
Oh, Alright. Just thought you might have appreciated a few ideas and wanted to make sure you knew you have other options to consider.
Ok, I have actually been seeing things that I’ve seen on YouTube before, so thanks.
do you mind if people share YouTube links? But not to save on your device? I mean, you can always use archive.org, that’s what I use because I have the same problem as you—storage. Everything costs money these days. It’s a sad fact.
Sure, YouTube links can be shared. We can always create posts containing them when something on that platform is worth watching. When it comes to actual releases however, such as audio and video files, that’s when the new restriction comes in. Archive.org would actually solve all of our storage problems, and it is already utilized through the APP initiative, but unfortunately it is very buggy and slow, which makes it quite unreliable especially for those outside of the US.
Ok neat to know. Archive.org is frustratingly slow even for me! But again, the internet is what it is. Ok, for future reference you don’t have to download anything I send you (unless you want to, of course) because I will have either uploaded it to archive.org OR privately stored it.
I just thought of something: I mentioned earlier that i opened a new Drive. I Should easily have 13-14 GB of storage available.
Would it help at all if i shared? Like i could take some of the load, We could work together and still provide releases for a bit longer?
Well, I could easily open up another Drive account and get 15 more GB’s, but the thing is managing all of those storage accounts is becoming a bit hard on me. Right now I have two Mega’s and nine Drive’s active. A couple of months ago four releases already took up an entire Drive account just like that, as they were high-quality videos of 3/4 GB’s each.
I just feel it’s become pointless to open up new accounts all the time just to store stuff that is already present on YouTube, unless it’s something very rare that’s worth backing up. So for now I think the best course of action would be to hold on on those “backup releases” until I’ll get my hands on a unified, unlimited storage service (preferably something like Archive.org but more stable). Like I wrote in the post, that doesn’t mean the blog will not post stuff anymore. It will just focus on stuff that is not already on YouTube until a solution is found.
Alright, Just thought i’d offer. Thought you might like a little extra help. 🙂