Strictly Spoiler 2017 Update

Really thought I’d done the last one of these posts but once again I need to talk about the site outages that have been occurring for the last couple of weeks late on a Saturday Night.

Once again the site is going down at peak times and once again the reasons for this simply boil down to there being tens of thousands of you all trying to get on the site at once many of whom are refreshing the site every few seconds which is overloading it.

And believe me overloading the site is taking quite some work with the current web host I use. The site has a few sophisticated technologies working behind the scenes designed to try and prevent just this. It employs server level caching technology and a content delivery network both of which are designed to speed the site up and cache content which is served from a number of different locations spreading the load so not just one server is hit at times of high traffic. But at one point last night over 37k of you were trying to access the site at the same time and if 37k of you were trying to refresh the site constantly it’s no wonder it fell down.

Unfortunately it’s an issue with high traffic websites such as this that sometimes at times of high demand they will go down. Apple, who are a company with far more resources than me, can’t always keep their website up when a new iPhone goes on sale. My original source for the spoiler which is a popular commercial discussion forum has gone down on occasions. If these huge companies struggle to keep their sites up at moments of high demand you can imagine the struggle that an individual with far more limited resources has.

Those of you who have been around from the start will know that I really don’t like having site outages and have moved the site 3 times already to progressively more expensive hosting solutions to keep up with demand. The site has gone from costing me £3 a month to host to nearer £40 a month and these costs are incurred all year round yet I only make any kind of decent revenue from the site at the times of the year when Strictly is on, and as the children in need spoiler showed I don’t make much during the week when Strictly is on either, just at the weekend.

I try and put as much of the site’s revenue back into the site as I possibly can, both to cover hosting costs and for things like competition prizes, but I have to draw a line somewhere. This site is now the main income I receive and I’m a single parent and a full time postgraduate student and I simply don’t have much money that can be ploughed into this. The next step up in terms of hosting, which would be purchasing a dedicated server just for this site, is going to move from costing me tens of pounds a month to host to hundreds and quite frankly I can’t afford that at the moment especially considering we only have 3 spoiler weekends left this series.

These issues started this series when I started doing real time updates as I’d been learning the bottom two first followed by the result and so my only solution at this time is to stop doing that. The whole point of the real time updates was that you could see the bottom two and then head back to Facebook or Twitter and wait for the full spoiler post to come in. It wasn’t so people could refresh the site multiple times every second causing it to break but all they seem to have done is encourage people to do just that.

The other thing I can do is to ask people to be more considerate of other users. I understand the need to refresh the site, honestly I do because I do it at my sources so I can get the spoiler to you as soon as possible, but really there’s no need. Head to Facebook or Twitter and you’ll be alerted as to when the spoiler comes in without any need for refreshing this site. And if the site does go down or starts running slowly just leave it for a few minutes, go make a brew, walk the dog, nip down the pub for a quick pint and try again later or in the morning. Don’t keep refreshing a site that is struggling because people are refreshing it because that obviously isn’t going to help. I don’t want to start handing bans out but I can check my logs to see how often individual people are refreshing the site and ban those who are repeatedly refreshing it in a way that impacts on the user experience for far more other visitors.

It probably sounds like I’m blaming the site visitors and I’m not. I continue to be amazed just how many of you come to view content I produce each week but I cannot keep ploughing money that I don’t have into the site trying to keep up with the strains you guys are putting on it when a small change in user behaviour would probably help dividends. Beyond that we’d be looking at a paywall which would categorically never happen because paywalls don’t work and you’d just go elsewhere. The other alternative is asking for donations to help towards hosting costs in a similar way to Wikipedia but honestly I don’t know how effective that would be but you know what let’s give it a try and see what happens and maybe, just maybe, I can afford a dedicated server these last few weeks.

Strictly Spoiler 2017 – Note To Editors

Well here we are again. The 2017 series of Strictly has barely begun, I’ve not even posted a results spoiler yet just the pairings one and already I’m getting attention from the media this time not for being a festive grinch and posting the Christmas Special results in November but this time for socking it to the BBC and defying them by continuing to post spoilers to this site ruining the show for millions.

I honestly thought I’d covered why I do what I do and why this site exists in the about section and in my last note to editors but here we are again. The newspapers clearly spotted the about page this time as the Daily Star quoted from it and then The Sun incorrectly assumed that I’d spoken to The Daily Star. I haven’t. The only newspaper I have ever spoken to about this site has been The Daily Mail and there’s a very good reason for that. They asked me for comment last December and were the only media organisation to approach me for comment – well besides TalkRadio. More on that in a moment.

So here are some more frequently asked questions which will hopefully address some of the questions people or journalists have.

Why does this site exist?

Well that’s an easy question. Because there is a user demand for it. Initially I posted the spoiler to my own personal blog as a means of providing the results to a few hundred followers on twitter without the need to send multiple direct messages to avoid spoiling the results publicly. And for 2 years during the 2012 series and the 2013 series thats all the traffic I received.

Then in 2014 something quite unexpected happened. Those few hundred page views over a Strictly weekend turned in to a few thousand and then a few tens of thousands. This new traffic was coming from google searches for a number of keywords which my blog had suddenly become top on the search rankings for. This took me by surprise and at times completely melted the cheap web hosting solution I was using at the time as the site struggled to keep up with demand.

As 99.9% of my blog traffic was coming just to view the Strictly Spoiler results I was posting and also partly due to some competition sites cropping up I made the decision to migrate the content to its own domain name where it has been since late 2014. The site has also continued to grow its user base and over the course of the last series nearly half a million people viewed the site at one time or another.

Put quite simply if there wasn’t a demand for what I do, this site either would not exist or would not exist in its present form.

Why are you spoiling the results for all Strictly viewers?

I’m not! I firmly believe that both groups of viewers, those who like to wait for the results show and those who don’t want to wait for the results can live together in harmony. This site is clearly identified as a spoiler website: the clue is in the name for one. Whenever I post the spoiler to Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else I do so as a link to this site people are free to click on or not. I encourage all discussion of the spoiler on Twitter to be limited to the #StrictlySpoiler hashtag and I provide a Facebook page and a comments system on this site where people can discuss the spoiler without risking spoiling the result for others. I also encourage and incentivise discussion to take place in these places only by providing competition prizes for commenters each week.

There are other people who will plaster the results publicly for all to see. It is these people who are spoiling the results for all strictly viewers and not me.

Why are you anti BBC?

Actually I’m not. I love the BBC and a lot of what they do. I think the license fee provides excellent value for money for the many shows and services the BBC provides.

But the BBC can make stupid decisions from time to time. They commissioned Don’t Scare The Hare for one thing! Strictly Come Dancing is the BBC’s flagship reality show (especially now Bake Off is on Channel 4) and is the main part of their Autumn/Winter schedules and has been for years. I honestly cannot believe the BBC think it is a good idea to pre record the results of Strictly and broadcast them a full day after the event and then wonder why the results leak out on sites like this. We live in a day and age where information can be transmitted globally in a fraction of a second. Indeed when the spoiler comes in it only takes me a few seconds to post it to this site and alert my Facebook and Twitter followers.

I appreciate it may seem like I’m on a one man crusade against the BBC but I’m not. Actually the BBC have had more of a crusade against me than I have them such as when they had Facebook remove my Facebook Page for extremely spurious reasons. Yes I would love for the BBC to do a live results show and that is one of the goals of this site but they will never do that as for some reason they care about ratings even though they’d make no extra money whether 10 people tune in or 10 million. Which leads me on to….

Why are you taking viewers away from the results show?

Again I’m not. Many of this site’s users still watch the results show, myself included. We just prefer watching it knowing the results in advance. It doesn’t take away our enjoyment of the show and as we don’t share the spoiler with people who don’t want to know the results we don’t take away their enjoyment either.

I’ve actually had a number of comments from people who say reading the spoiler enhances their enjoyment of the results show. I’ve also had comments saying that the way the BBC dramatises and drags the results out causes them anxiety and that’s why they view the spoiler as then they aren’t dragged out over 45 minutes. As a sufferer of anxiety too that makes a lot of sense to me and may be why I choose to view, and then disseminate, the spoiler.

As long as we are considerate towards those who like to wait there is no reason why we can’t enjoy the show in any way we see fit.

Don’t you have anything better to do?

Truthfully yes I do. I could actually sit down and watch a show I love and actually get to enjoy it without having to work. But I choose to work because as a single father of two children who I have to provide for and a student frankly I need the additional income that this job provides even though it isn’t much at all especially when you consider it is highly seasonal income and a lot of the revenue I receive gets put back in to the site to pay for ever increasing hosting costs or competition prizes. As of yet I have not recorded a profit on my end of year accounts

And you’ll notice I refer to this as a job and work because it is becoming like that. Throughout the live shows rather than being able to sit down and enjoy the show I’m sat with my laptop posting content to Facebook and Twitter for my followers and getting things on the site ready for various points in the show. And the work isn’t just during the show. During the week I post news such as the Songs/Dances or any other news I can. Before the show I’m pre-typing the content ready to go out during the live show, after the show I’m moderating the many hundreds of comments on here, twitter and facebook and also monitoring my site traffic and making sure the site stays up when traffic spikes around spoiler time. And I’m monitoring various sources for the spoiler so I can get it posted quickly to this site as soon as it comes in.

Put frankly I put a lot of work into doing what I do and operating and maintaining this site and yes there are a ton of better things I could be doing with my time but we all have to work to make a living.

Finally I just want to post a few of the comments that have been posted to the article on The Sun’s facebook page in response to their article. Not that anyone should take too much notice of anything The Sun has to say but still its lovely when people are talking about you like this.

Obviously it’s not worth addressing the comments too much even though I have addressed a lot of what they’ve said in my comments above but I don’t need this kind of stress, abuse and grief for providing a service that is clearly wanted otherwise no one would visit this site. Frankly 2017 has already been a difficult year me what with completing a bachelors degree, dealing with the break up of my relationship and tomorrow I am about to start a masters degree. Add into that I suffer from Anxiety and Depression (and I’ve had to turn down an interview with Paul Ross on TalkRadio tomorrow morning which would have been good exposure for the site because I wouldn’t have been able to cope due to my anxiety) and quite frankly I don’t need this crap making me ill when all I am doing is trying to earn a wage to support my family and provide a service to hundreds of thousands of people who want me to provide this service and actively seek it out.

Complaints to anyone as long as its not me!

Strictly Spoiler 2016 Thanks

It’s that time again! We’re approaching the final spoiler of the series and it’s the point where I like to take a few minutes to say a few words to thank all the people that have contributed to another successful year for The Strictly Spoiler.

The last few years have been completely wild. I won’t bore you all with the same story as previous years but The Strictly Spoiler has once again grown massively in 2016. At its peak this year (at time of posting) The Strictly Spoiler has received almost 350,000 views from 110,000 individual people over the course of the busiest weekends. This whole year (again at time of posting) the site has received almost 2,500,000 views from over 400,000 individuals which is just crazy! I want to thank each and every single one of you who comes to the site and reads the content I produce each week.

One way I’ve been thanking you is through the regular competitions. This series is the first series I’ve been able to afford to run regular weekly competitions thanks to the ad revenue this site receives. I originally budgeted £500 for these competitions but I’ve gone a little crazy and by the end of this series I will have given away nearly £650 worth of prizes. I wish I could reward each and every one of you for your support of this site but that would of course bankrupt me as there is that many of you! There will be more (and possibly even bigger) competitions during the 2017 series (assuming the BBC don’t do something radical like a live results show)

This series has also seen massive growth in the social networking profiles I operate. Twitter followers have quadrupled this series with nearly 7.5k of you following me (at the time of writing) and Facebook likes have almost trebled with over 4k of you liking the Facebook page (again at the time of writing).  More discussion than ever before has taken place on the social networking profiles and right here in the comments section. I do read all the comments I get here, on Twitter and on Facebook and whilst I can’t possibly reply to every one I get I do try and reply to as many as I can. The vast majority of you have been positive in your discussions with each other and in your comments to me and you can count the number of people I have had to moderate and/or block/ban on one hand!

In a bit of a change I would like to thank the BBC. Firstly for making the decision to broadcast the results a whole day after filming them in a day and age where information can be transmitted globally fairly rapidly which is the whole reason this site exists and has had success but I also want to thank them for another reason. Last year we got wrapped up in a brief dispute over trademark (or more accurately, as their response to an email and a freedom of information request showed, about me posting the results before transmission) which resulted in the removal of one of my social networking profiles.

This year I am pleased to report that they have left me alone (touch wood – unless of course they were responsible for last weekend’s media attention which I know a few of you do think is possible) and I would like to thank them for that. I’m a final year degree student with a family and I’ve got enough going on with project work, my dissertation, my family and juggling running this site and its social channels without having to deal with a legal battle as well. I am truly grateful for the BBC leaving me alone this series and it is my hope that this means they have decided to accept what I do and the service I provide for a small percentage (less than 1% actually) of the people who view Strictly.

I’d also like to take a minute to thank everyone for their support during my appearance online on the websites of several newspapers and magazines last week. As most of you will be aware some elements of the media decided to take issue with my posting of the Christmas Special Spoiler and wrote articles describing me and this site as being a “festive grinch” out to ruin Christmas. I’ve spoken at length about this in my response to the media attention but I would like to add that with one or two exceptions comments here, on Facebook and Twitter and even in the comments sections of the articles themselves have been overwhelmingly positive so thank you all for your kind words!

I would also like to thank my host. I moved hosts before the series started to a solution that should have been able to cope with the spikes this site receives. That failed spectacularly! I then moved hosts again and my current host (plus the Content Delivery Network I now use to take some of the load off my host) has coped brilliantly with the spikes. Anyone looking for a hosting solution for a high traffic wordpress site would do well to look at Dreampress by Dreamhost who are the current hosts for this site. They are a US based company but you don’t need to be based in the US to sign up for them and they also give you a free subscription to Cloudflare who I use as my CDN to cache content and take the strain off my servers.

Most importantly I want to thank my sources. I’ve spoken at length about this before but I don’t actually source the spoiler through any inside contacts or any involvement with the show. 99.9% of the time the spoiler you read is sourced from an internet forum I visit which has a spoiler thread and they arrange for moles in the audience to provide them with the spoiler which I then provide to you. My sources are fine with me doing this and appreciate my honesty about where I source the spoiler from when many others take the spoiler without any form of acknowledgement. Previously a user called “abigailsmum” on that forum organised that thread and did sterling job doing so for many years. She also has some inside contacts so was able to deliver a spoiler often when no mole was sourced.

Unfortunately abigailsmum decided to stand down early this series for personal reasons and her role was taken up by a different user “monaogg”. She too has done a fantastic job this series sourcing moles even on some weeks when it was looking dicey at times but zero hour moles came through for us and has proven to be a worthy successor to abigailsmum despite not having the inside contacts that she did.

I should mention that The Strictly Spoiler has this year become the place where most people now view the spoiler and for the last few weeks has received even more views than the site where I source the spoiler. Although this is cause for celebration and I am pleased to be running the number one source of the spoiler I am of course mindful that my site is not the primary source of the spoiler and quite simply this site would not exist without the forum and the hard work that others put in to source moles so we have a spoiler each week.

As a token of my thanks and appreciation not just on behalf of myself but also the many visitors to this site I would like to arrange to send a thank you bouquet of flowers to both abigailsmum for her work the last few years and monaogg for her work this year and I have contacted them both to try and arrange this and will be sending the flowers sometime after Christmas.

Many on that forum were also incredibly supportive during the media attention of last weekend and again I would like to thank all who posted kind words during that either on the forum or in the comments section of the articles themselves.

2016 has been another amazing year for the Strictly Spoiler and here’s hoping that 2017 will bring more success for the site assuming the BBC don’t do something crazy like a live results show. I will see you all then! Merry Christmas to you all and a happy 2017!