esctoday.com would like to thank Interlize.net, our webhosting company, for managing to arrange for five servers to be donated to us for use over the next 48 hours as we attempt to stay online for the first time without crashing due to high demand on Eurovision day. We still don't know if it will be enough to prevent a crash at the height of the peak times, but we are doing our best!

Interlize.net have provided the servers free of charge and implemented a complicated load balancing system to give us the best possible chance of staying online throughout the day and tonight. We are still working to ensure that we have the capacity to cope with all readers.We would also like to make a special mention of Arnoud Vermeer who has been working through the night and all day to implement the systems in time.

In answer to a couple of comments that we have received, esctoday.com do not set advertising costs. Our advertising is done through google and with one advertising agency, for which we receive a market rate set by forces of supply and demand.

As demand reaches critical levels, we have two emergency systems in place. The reactions section will temporarily shut down and the images on the site will temporarily disappear. This will reduce the amount of stress on the servers and allow as many readers as possible to access the site during the high peak periods.

After the Eurovision Song Contest, we will be doing all we can to arrange site sponsorship and advertising deals in order to purchase enough servers to avoid this problem in the future. The problem with a site such as ours is that it is only attractive to advertisers for 2 weeks of the year due to the peak levels of readers.

You can help esctoday.com to remain online and improve for next year by donating here.