qtcatbox

[qtcatbox]

[Important] Catbox Needs Your Help

Heyooo. It hasn't been too long since the last blog post, but this one's going to be a lot more important... and quite a bit longer.

tl;dr - Patreon deleted my page, refused to elaborate, and Catbox is now short $1,300~ in reoccurring income to pay the bill. Support Catbox Here

What Happened

In the early morning of May 20th, I received two email notifications from Patreon and Ko-fi, informing me that both of my accounts were suspended for "material that falls outside the bounds of [their] Community Guidelines" and "a violation of [their]Terms Of Service or Content Guidelines", respectively.

Naturally, after submitting appeals to both of them, and waiting 24 hours, I received two different results, both with unsatisfying amounts of answers:

Okay, cool, so Patreon is telling me to go fuck myself, and Ko-fi is at least willing to play ball. I responded to Ko-Fi with a bit more in depth of the systems Catbox uses to monitor uploads for malicious content, and they reinstated my Ko-fi account on Thursday, May 22nd.

Unfortunately, there is only $20 of monthly support coming through Ko-fi. Patreon was Catbox's primary source of income, at around $1,300 per month. I have not updated Catbox's cost breakdown since 2022, and there have been slight changes. Below is the new breakdown, including agreements I have with other services that provide some small funding towards Catbox:

COSTS

Datacenter Colocation: $1,528/month

Upgrades/Hardware Maintenance: $100/month

Offsite Storage: $200/month

Cloud Server Providers: $40/month

Administrative Costs: $60/month

INCOME

Hardware Sharing Contracts: $440/month

Ko-fi: $20/month

One-time support (incl. merch) (avg last 6 months): $80/mo

For those not keeping track, that means without Patreon, Catbox is running at a deficit of about $1,388/month. Hardware Sharing Contracts are typically deducted from the Datacenter Colo cost, which is why it has always appeared lower on the breakdowns.

I've received many emails over the years regarding the cost of datacenter colocation, including things like "why is it so high", "why don't use you [insert cloud provider here]". The reason I colocate my own hardware is for multiple reasons, including the reason for this post. I can manage my own hardware (I'm actually smart sometimes!), upgrade it with 1-off costs (instead of needing to change plans, increasing monthly costs, etc), purchase new hardware when needed, and plan accordingly. I also don't have to worry about getting my service suspended by providers like Cloudflare or other shitty dedicated server providers who balk at the first abuse report. I have been colocating Catbox's hardware in a full size cabinet in downtown LA for the last 7 years. A majority of that time has been on dedicated 10gbps service, and running at full power. To both host 130+ TB of data, and push 1 petabyte of traffic per month on any cloud provider would be, quite frankly, impossible.

What Happens Now

That being said, I have finished the replacement to Patreon - I'm cutting out the middlemen, and now you can support Catbox monthly, directly! As well as get some new, better bonuses than what was previously offered on Patreon!

Supporting Catbox Directly

You can now visit the Catbox Store and find 3 options for supporting Catbox directly. Each support tier has different bonuses for support, stacking upon the previous.

Tier 1: Add 2 "QTs" to the image rotation (the images in the bottom right corner of the screen).

Tier 2: In addition to Tier 1, your max upload size is now 500 MB, and your max duration on Litterbox can be 7 days, as well as tracking uploads/deleting early.

Tier 3: In addition to Tier 2, your max upload size is now 1 GB.

Catbox has enough float to cover the server bill that was due on the 1st of June, however does not have the money to float for another 2 months. I need to recoup the $1,300 in monthly income from Patreon, and if all of the previous $7 and $15 Patrons re-pledged at Tier 2, that would be enough to make it there!

I hope that you can help me reach this goal, not just for the future of Catbox, but for the future of the free Internet. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me directly.

[qtcatbox]

Happy 10th Birthday Catbox!

I'm pretty bad at keeping to posting on Catbox's actual birthday (April 6th), however, fear not! I am here!

Once again I am not the best at posting about updates or changes, however there have been quite a few updates and upgrades in the last year! We moved cabinets again to higher voltage service (to support the massive amounts of hard drives needed). Catbox's primary server was upgraded to have way more processing power, as well as storage. Speaking of storage, here's the current breakdown!

Storage used on Catbox Prime: 123 TB

Storage offloaded to Lain: 46 TB

Total Storage Used: 169 TB (wow!)

I also launched a new service (paid), Catbox Spaces! You can read more about it here.

Thank you to all of my supporters who have not only pledged on Patreon but also Ko-fi, as well as those who've purchased merch! Catbox has been almost entirely self sufficient this year (with the exception of some administrative stuff like domain renewals and taxes)!

This year's art was done by 1Her0!

[qtcatbox]

Introducing Catbox Spaces! + Server Upgrades!

Hi there!

As we approach Catbox's 10th birthday (jeez I've been at this for a while.), I wanted to share something I've been working on in sort-of secret last year - Catbox Spaces!

Catbox Spaces

Catbox Spaces is a new, paid service I've been developing to help content creators share their content with their followers. It's designed to be a content publishing platform separated from social media sites and payment/subscription processors (as Catbox generally has a more… sensible Terms of Service/Acceptable Use Policy). A content creator who owns a Space can create content packs that can be viewed on the site, with measures taken to restrict downloading/hotlinking of the images. You can also create password protected content packs. This can be taken even further by tying your space in with your Patreon or SubscribeStar account to have access based on pledge tier. The Space is highly customizable too, letting you style it how you want. You can also see view statistics for not just your Space, but individual content packs too. Further planned features include automatic Glaze anti-AI protection, custom CSS (for those that want to get really in-depth with their customization), and more!

Note that the funding and expenses that I incur from this new endeavor is completely separate from Catbox's. Catbox will remain user funded, and user expense driven. Don't worry, I'm not going to become some big corpo. I've just seen what's been happening recently with sites like Imgur, Tumblr, and others heavily restricting NSFW content. I've even been seeing sporadic reports that Mega has been purging folders of NSFW content. That's one of the great things about Catbox Spaces - I'm not a corporation (well, technically Catbox LLC is, but it's just me!), plus, I actually care! Did you know I read about 4 abuse/content reports a day for Catbox? And I handle each one individually. Bet you Mega doesn't do that.

If you have any questions, please reach out to me via email! I am more than willing to answer any questions. Thank you all again for your support!

Server Upgrades

I've been a little quiet on here regarding upgrades, but I assure you that Catbox continues to grow - both physically and logically! As we've increased in size, so has the need to add additional storage. Some of you may have noticed the brief downtime back on the 26th of January - that was me putting in a new, larger, and much more powerful server for Catbox! Unfortunately I wasn't able to put it into production, but I am aiming to do so either this weekend or next! The new server brings with it new, redundant SSD storage for critical files, as well as a dedicated 87 TB of disk space for user files. Combined with the storage array that's currently attached to the old server, that brings Catbox's total on-premise storage capacity to 162 TB!

[qtcatbox]

Happy 9th Birthday Catbox!!

Back at it again with another year!

I know there have been no blog posts or updates, but don't think that there's no development happening behind the scenes! We recently moved from our half-cabinet colocation into a full cabinet colocation! Also, we passed over 100 TB of hosted content! That's nearly double since August 2 years ago.

That being said, I wanted to thank everyone for not giving up on Catbox despite some setbacks regarding access. I won't lie, it's a little tough juggling a full time job and Catbox solo, but I make do! Here's to another year, and be on the lookout for more cool stuff on the horizon!

Also, here's 9 amazing pieces of art from 9 amazing artists!

Artist: Elodie

Artist: Lobolua

Artist: Pettankon

Artist: Beetlesprite

Artist: Phii

Artist: Taioni

Artist: Toobese (NSFW)

Artist: Tuyuri

Artist: winged.bunny

Thank you again everyone!!!

[qtcatbox]

Happy 8th Birthday Catbox!

Back at it again with another year!

I feel like I say it almost every year, but yes, the "development" of Catbox has been relatively stagnant. That isn't to say that the maintenance/advancement of it is as well. This year we upgraded one of the servers, as well as purchased a new SAN with an additional 50TB of storage, which should put us into a longer stability frame.

I've also looked at the results of the poll I put out a few months ago, and I'm very pleased with the results. Turns out a lot of people actually do like Catbox! Your suggestions were also very valuable, and I look forward to trying to implement some of them.

Finally, I'm looking into launching a new product sometime late this year that will help content creators and people alike with Catbox's goal of limitless filesharing. Stay tuned!

Art by Sauryanon

[qtcatbox]

Financial Status

Update 8/17 - THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH. In just 8 days we've nearly reached the Patreon goal, and purchases of merchandise and cryptocurrency gifts have put us past the required funding for not just this month, but the next 3 months as well! The amount of generosity you guys have shown me has honestly touched my heart, and I am forever thankful. Catbox forever!

Heyoooo. It's been a while again.

tl;dr - Catbox needs additional funding. Keep reading.

This post is going to have a more somber attitude than posts in the past, and it's not one I've ever really wanted to make, but as Catbox has expanded, so has its costs. The operational costs for running Catbox per month for the last year have looked like this:

Datacenter Colocation: $971/month

Offsite Storage: $140/month

Cloud Server Providers: $40/month

Administrative Costs: $60/month

The large datacenter colocation bill is due to the fact that Catbox pushes an extreme amount of traffic. On average, Catbox pushes about 4 gbps, spiking up to 6 gbps.

This means I've had to acquire a 10gig internet uplink, which is not the cheapest thing to get. Additionally, Catbox is now hosting approximately 54 TB of content. As I'm sure many of you have encountered Lain, which is a project to basically offload inactive files to offsite storage, which can then be pulled back when a user requests. Catbox also utilizes various Cloud Server Providers (CSPs) to host external monitoring services and other servers. Finally, there are various administrative costs related to running Catbox, including email, legal paperwork, legal residences, and other small fees.

All of this has totaled into Catbox's monthly expenses to come out to $1,211. As of posting this blog post, Catbox is bringing in $696 per month. This means I am personally footing the remaining $515. Additionally, all server/firewall upgrades and purchases have also come out of my pocket. When I totaled up all expenses for 2021, Catbox was $7,070 in the negative. This means I put $7000+ dollars of my own money to prop Catbox up. This is not tenable for the future of Catbox.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that Catbox needs additional funding to survive long term. Our patrons on Patreon have been wonderful, and without them there is no doubt that Catbox would have been forced to close. However, it is clear that Patreon by itself is not capable of supporting the current or future growth of Catbox. This leaves me with 4 options:

Monetize Catbox using traditional avenues (advertisements and sponsorships). This is not my first choice, and not something I'm entirely keen on. It would destroy the purpose and soul of Catbox.

Scale back on costs (primarily bandwidth). This would directly impact user experience, as cutting back to (for example) 5gbps would create a bottleneck and reduce speeds to a snail's pace.

Open alternative avenues of income (paid accounts). This would involve a monthly plan that would give you additional features (existing features of Catbox would NOT change or be restricted). I am somewhat open to this.

Open alternative avenues of gift giving (cryptocurrencies). As of today, I have begun accepting gifts using Cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, and Ravencoin. I have had quite a few people request this, and I see that now would be the time to offer this as an option.

You will of course notice that "Closing Catbox" is not an option on that list, and that's because it isn't. I would rather exhaust all other avenues of incoming before doing that, including traditional monetization. There are many people who have been using Catbox for the whole 7 years it's been around, and I know what it would mean to them to lose their files.

So this is my public begging post - I know the current economic climate isn't the greatest, and that many people have had to cut back on various things, including Patreon subscriptions, but given the traffic Catbox receives, if just 10% of users gave $5, we would be funded until the end of the year. So please, gift via Patreon, crypto, or if you want something more tangible, buy some stickers! I've created a new "Supporting" page to track Catbox's monthly expenses and income, as well as new ways to contribute. I look forward to another great year, and again, thank you not just to Patrons, but to everyone who has continued using Catbox.

[qtcatbox]

Happy 7th Birthday Catbox

Hi all,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted/made any news updates. Life’s been pretty busy for me, as I’ve been enjoying (read: dying) a full time job. Unfortunately this leaves me very little time to develop new features on Catbox.

None the less, Catbox remains. Thank you to all of my Patrons on Patreon for supporting Catbox despite this drought of development. There have been some background upgrades, including a firewall upgrade I did about 2 months ago, but nothing too interesting in the last 2 years :(

Thank you again to everyone who has supported Catbox throughout the years, whether that be through Patreon, stickers, or even just using it.

[qtcatbox]

Comcast Xfinity blocking

Hi there.

It’s come to my attention that Comcast’s man-in-the-middle “Advanced Security” attack has been enabled by default for a large majority of their customers, and as such has blocked connections to files.catbox.moe.

You will need to disable their MITM attack by following the instructions here (obviously disable instead of enable): https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-xfinity-xfi-advanced-security 

Thanks,

-cats

[qtcatbox]

Regarding the recent slowness/500 Errors

Hey there,

I just wanted to make a post about the recent errors some people may have been experiencing on Catbox when uploading a file. You may receive various errors, including a 504 Timeout, 500 Internal Server Error, or ID A:FF:FFFFFF. The root cause of these issues is primarily traffic and throughput.

What's been done recently

Catbox has moved inside it's datacenter to a half cabinet colocation. You may or may not have noticed the downtime, but the perks of this new location is it is has 10 Gbit/s fiber. The downside is that the current server for Catbox is only ethernet at 1 gbit/s. For perspective, here's what Catbox's average traffic graph looks like:

On average, Catbox pushes it's 1gbit pretty consistently. In response to that, I've purchased a new server capable of 10gbit/s, with additional storage, as Catbox is also having issues with disk space. I expect this server to be ready for production by the end of the year, after which these types of errors should be less common.

Additonally, I just wanted to thank everyone who has been a patron with me on Patreon. The bills are no longer inconsequential to me, so even taking 50% of the bill will help massively. You the real MVP.

[qtcatbox]

Happy 5th Birthday Catbox

Helloooo~.

First and foremost, wow I'm over 2 weeks late for the post. I'm actually pretty ashamed.

More importantly, the earth has completed another revolution around the sun, and Catbox grows another year older. This year was pretty sleepy. I know in the previous birthday post I abandoned the redesign, but that wasn't true. I've actually been working on it here and there. Unfortunately progress on it has been slow since I've lost interest in the general design of it (the hard parts are done really, it's just menial copying and formatting that's getting to me).

As some of you may have noticed, the server costs have increased. This is an unfortunate side affect of gaining popularity/traction as a file host. You just keep growing and growing - it's not like you can just dump stuff. Here are some current statistics as of April

Bandwidth used: 198.76 TiB (approx. 217 TB)

Storage used: 10.5 TB on Catbox, 4 TB on Lain (idle file offload)

Total files uploaded:  3,670,000+

Unique Uploaders: 215,000+

Registered Users: 8,000+

Top 50,000 websites according to alexa.com

I recently got a full time job as well, which has really been cutting into my freetime (read: catbox time). Working from 8 to 5 kills a nocturnal person like me, so I pretty much come home after work and pass out.

I promise I have stuff in the works right now. I've started to work on the redesign again, in addition to some back end fixes. I'm also planning on deploying new hardware to handle the increase in files/processing power. Hopefully I can get this done within a month or two (no promises on that :[ ).

Thanks again to everyone who has stuck with me on this long journey. I know a lot of you have come from other pomf.se-style file hosts, and we've all seen a lot of them come and go. Here's to another year of Catbox, the first (believe it or not) and the last large pomf "clone".

[qtcatbox]

Happy 4th Birthday Catbox!

As always, thanks to the wonderful Pettankon for the art!

Another rotation around the sun, and another year for Catbox! 2018 was kind of crazy! Being forced from my original VPS provider into owning my own hardware in a datacenter, going to Japan, and Mixtape kicking the bucket (i guess that’s 2019 but close enough), and all the small stuff I’m sure i’m missing in between, It’s been a blast!

However, it is with sadness that I do have some bad news: I’m scrapping the total redesign I had planned. Trust me, it hurts me just as much as it hurts you. I have a couple reasons for this - mainly that I was encountering technological problems that would have required either a total do-over with a different framework, or leaving certain pages without basic functionalities. In addition, I’ve talked with multiple people close to me and they felt that the redesign wasn’t necessarily an improvement. I’ve taken their constructive criticisms to heart, and realized that it would make more sense to make the current iconic design of Catbox better. 

Hopefully I’ll be able to work on Catbox a bit more now that I have more free time as well. A lot of improvements lately have been on the back-end/management side. 

And as always, I want to thank my Patreon supporters for covering nearly all of the server costs now! I also want to thank everyone who has been with me for this ride. Here’s to 4 years, and hopefully many more!

[qtcatbox]

TLS/SSL Updates

Updated Catbox’s encryption. Catbox now will only accept connections with TLS 1.2. Most users won’t notice a difference (besides your data being super more encrypted!). To see if you’re affected, check “Handshake Simulation” at the bottom of this webpage.

I have also enabled HSTS and OSCP Stapling. This means two things:

1. Catbox will now only accept connections via HTTPS. This was the case before, but I was doing nginx redirects. Now it’s done at a browser level.

2. OSCP stapling basically reduces the time it takes for your computer to make sure your connection to Catbox is legit, and makes the process of certificate verification more secure. If you want the finer details, you can read more here.

If you have any problems, be sure to send me an email and I’ll see if we can work out a solution. 

[qtcatbox]

Two Factor Authentication

I added two factor authentication using TOTP. That means you can now secure your account with your favorite authenticator app, like Google Authenticator or Duo Mobile! Make sure you keep your secret provided at the time of activation, in case you lose the app or your phone.

[qtcatbox]

Colocation - It’s finally happening!

After many months in development, hopefully it's worth the wait!

I've finally purchased all the necessary hardware and found myself a colocation company in LA with reasonable prices, and have sufficient support (from you guys!) to move forward with it. While the initial cost is high, I'm confident that this will put Catbox on the right path for long term stability. Since I feel like I didn't really explain what colocation is, check out this article about it. Basically, it frees me from being tied to X amount of disk space and X amount of processing power. Disk space being the big thing!

So, how much WILL the new cost be? Here's the breakdown of Catbox's newly projected monthly costs:

$80/month - Base for colocation

$100/month - Extra for bandwidth

$40/month - Project Lain (this may vary, depending on some technical factors. I need to do the math.)

$20/year - Catbox.moe domain

$11/year - kotori.rocks domain

To come together for a new projected monthly cost of $222/month. It's definitely a larger number than what I'm paying right now, but it's worth it for not having to pull my hair out when I dip to 20 GB of disk space remaining.  Plus, I own the hardware, so it's easier for me to expand should the need arise. PLUS, expanding with another front-end server/storage server would be a snap. Catbox is really turning out to be something!

I'm not finalizing any deals yet, as I'm still fishing around for quotes, but the $180/month is the best quote I've got right now. I'll keep Patreon and the blog updated with any finalized details, and any planned downtime regarding the move.

Thanks again to all my patrons, and everyone who's stuck with me! Without your help, I'd probably still be on shared web-hosting!

[qtcatbox]

Happy 3rd Birthday Catbox! + Catbox LTS!

もう一回！

Thanks again to Pettankon for the art. This one is gonna be long, so skip to the important part if you want.

What another year! While not a whole lot changed with Catbox, a lot of stuff has been brewing in the background.

I should first address the silence as far as statistics and updates to the site. I'll come out and say it outright - I fucked the statistics up. During a server migration I didn't configure Apache correctly, and now I'm reeling in it with a log file that's absolute garbage. I also started my first year of college last year, and between that full time, a part time job, and sleeping, my schedule was pretty full. HOWEVER, I have still managed to make smaller changes, like the ability to check every file on your view page, so you can delete or add them to an album. You can also sort by oldest/newest. There's been a whole host of optimizations to the backend code as well (reminder i made catbox 3 years ago, and it was my first website). I also enjoyed all of your End of Year 2017 Poll responses. Sifting out the meme responses, I got some actually valuable insight into how people feel about Catbox and it's current standing.

But where are the big changes?! They're coming soon! I have a lot of things I'm not satisfied with about Catbox. Some of the things I plan on changing/reworking (while maintaining the API as it is) are:

Albums - They look horrible right now tbh, and I can tell a lot of users are confused on how to add/remove files from them.

Overall UI Redesign - Not incredibly high on my list of things to do, but the UI as it is right now feels dated. Using the dark theme is better, but things are still a little weird to use (why did i use bubble borders?)

Thumbnails - I've been combating disk space issues for the longest time, but soon(tm) I'll be able to overlook them. That means I'll be able to thumbnail images, saving both bandwidth and load times for albums and the view page.

Temporary File Storage - This is a VERY big maybe. I've always kind of disliked temporal file storage, but the amount of files I've seen that are simply "upload to share with friend, then forget about" are immeasurable.

The Important Part

And the biggest announcement I have - Catbox LTS (Long Term Support)! I've decided to take the plunge and personally invest in Catbox (as if i wasn't already ;v). I've bought a 12 core, 24 GB RAM 16 TB Dell R420 to be used as Catbox's primary server. As such, Catbox will be colocated! What does this mean? That means I get to drive down to LA to give someone my (very) expensive piece of equipment, and they'll give it power and an internet connection! How will this affect the costs of running Catbox? In the long term, it will actually be cheaper than my current plan of hosting. You can see how much I'm currently paying on Patreon, but after moving to a colocation plan, the cost of Project Lain will go down, but the price of actual hosting will go up. The real winner here is my sanity. I won't have to worry about disk space issues (by my calculations) for 3 years. Which by then I should be making 6 figures, and if i'm not i'll pretty much kms. Jokes aside, the Catbox LTS will ensure your current files, and everything you upload in the future, will be safe and reliable.

As always, I want to thank not just my Patreon supporters, but users who have used Catbox despite the hiccups I've had. Catbox is my baby, and it's my ultimate goal to see it through as a successful, simple file hosting platform.

[qtcatbox]

New Patreon Stretch Goals

A little explanation on my new stretch goals for Patreon:

Reaching $200 would offset both the current monthly cost of running Catbox ($100~), and allow me to purchase new server hardware, which I can then colocate at an Internap datacenter for $100/month, effectively matching my current costs, while giving me greater flexibility and power. I could roll Project Lain back a couple months, or maybe even fold it altogether.

God forbid I ever reach $400, but if we do, we'd be eclipsing even Mixtape. I really have no idea what I'd do at that point. I unfortunately don't have any new rewards for higher donation amounts yet, because I'm still trying to feel out my options. Bigger uploads? Custom sub-domains? Folders? idk man.

I also just want to thank my current patrons for their continued support, and for anyone considering becoming a patron, do it! Just a dollar from every active registered user would catapult us to new heights!

[qtcatbox]

October 2017 Statistics

Yeah so I fucked up the awstats thing and i’m really not interested in fixing it (it’s so fucking old) so I’m just gonna give overall site statistics from now on until i find a better log analyzer software (taking recommendations).

*.catbox.moe

Total Visitors: 113,674

Unique Visitors: 66,530

Pages Served: 322,201

Hits: 5,180,665

Bandwidth Usage: 19,734 GB