The Strictly Spoiler - The home of the Strictly Spoiler

11th September 201811th September 2018

Who Do You Think Will Be Eliminated First? (Poll)

Ok so this poll was suggested by one of my followers on twitter and I decided that I’d run with it and poll the community. Obviously we don’t have much to go on beyond the launch show but I’ll ask the question

Who do you think will be eliminated first in the 2018 series? Please try and vote for who you THINK will be eliminated rather than who you would like to see eliminated as I’m sure that’s an entirely different question. Make your vote count in this poll as you can only select one option

[poll id=”68″]

Don’t forget you can also still vote in the post launch show poll and tell me who your favourite couples are. You can select up to 3 options in that poll

[poll id=”67″]

Just a reminder that the website will be going down for maintainance on Sunday whilst I migrate the site to its new host ready for when it starts getting busy once the spoilers start rolling in. All polls that are running at the time of maintainance will be frozen whilst the maintainance is ongoing.

The new hosting solution moves this site from costing me £3 to £4 a month to host to more like £300 to £400. This is obviously a lot of money. Many of you have already helped out with my hosting costs and I’m grateful to everyone who has so far this series. If you want to (and can afford to) help out, or just want to buy me a pint or say thanks for all the spoilers you can do so using THIS LINK or the button below. If you can use the link please do as for a number of reasons it is better for me if you use the link than it is if you use the button

8th September 20188th September 2018

Strictly Come Dancing 2018 – Launch Show Discussion/Poll

Whilst the launch show might not contain too many surprises thanks to last week’s pairings spoiler this is our first proper glimpse at the couples who will be taking to the dance floor for our entertainment in the next few weeks.

But which couples look like they will go all the way? And who will be trying to avoid the horror of being out during the first results spoiler in a few weeks time? You can let me know your thoughts on that or anything else to do with tonight’s launch show right here or over on Facebook or over on Twitter (on twitter tag @davejthorp and include the hashtag #StrictlySpoiler). Or vote in the poll below when it opens at the end of the launch show

[poll id=”67″]

I don’t have any prizes quite yet but very soon the biggest competition this site has run kicks off with 4 prizes up for grabs each and every week of the 2018 series. You can find more details HERE. Or why not head on over to Facebook and join in with the celebrations when we reach 10k page likes. There’s a £50 voucher up for grabs on Facebook.

This website will be going down next weekend for maintenance whilst I migrate it over to the clustered hosting solution I used towards the end of the 2017 to keep the site up at peak times. At the same time my hosting costs will increase by a factor of 100 from £3 a month to £300 a month. Many of you have already helped me out so far this series including a very generous £25 donation this morning but I’m as grateful to those who donate £1 as I am to those who donate more. If you want to, and can afford to, help out with my increasing hosting costs, want to buy me a pint or just want to say thanks for all the spoilers you can donate through THIS LINK or using the button below. If you can use the link please do because if you use the button the big corporate bigwigs at PayPal will take all the money but if you use the link it sends it all to me

If you can’t get on the website during the maintenance period don’t panic, I haven’t gone anywhere and the site will be back up before the start of week 1 of the series.

2nd September 2018

Upcoming Site Maintenance

Those of you who were around during the 2017 series will recall that towards the end of the series the site started to experience outages around the time the spoiler was posted due to the volume of traffic the site was receiving.

The last few weeks of the 2017 series I experimented with a number of solutions and the best one was a clustered web hosting solution of multiple servers with the ability to add in more servers if existing ones begin to struggle which kept the site up for the final spoiler weekend (barring a couple of teething glitches as this was a learning experience for me). This solution was expensive and cost me about £170 for the 2 weeks I had it deployed in December 2017 and so the site was migrated back to a cheaper solution for the off season.

It is my intention to move this site over to the clustered solution once again ready for the 2018 series and work to do this will begin on 16th September 2018. It is expected that the site move will take a couple of days during which you may experience problems accessing the site depending on how quick the site move takes and how quick your ISP realises the site has moved.

I will also be making some changes to the software I use to run polls when I make the site move so polls make look a little different once the move is complete. The poll software I currently run has some bugs that can cause incorrect polls to display on posts which have been annoying me for some time and hopefully a move to new poll software will fix these bugs. I attempted a move of polling software last series but reverted once the site started struggling at peak times

The date of the site move has been selected as a time that should be fairly quiet for the website to minimise disruption and a time enough in advance of the new series to allow me to complete the work before the series begins properly.

It goes without saying that the new hosting solution is extremely expensive, and the costs can significantly vary if more power is needed in the cluster of servers to keep them up, but it is necessary for me to provide a good user experience for all who try to view the spoiler especially those who want to view it the second it comes in and who refresh the site in order to do so. It will also allow me to provide spoilers in real time like I attempted to do at some points last series rather than waiting for the full result to come in before posting the spoiler

Quite a few of you have donated towards my hosting costs already this series and I’m grateful to each and every one of you who has donated as the hosting costs are now significant and I sadly can’t plough all the ad revenue the site receives into hosting costs as I have other operating costs and living expenses. If you want to help me out you can donate using THIS LINK which sends all the money to me or you can use the button below but the big corporate bigwigs at PayPal will take a cut if you use the button so please use the link if you can