Faster Load Time

[CheGregory]

this site is honestly great, but sometimes the server is randomly down or is crazily slow.....

no complains honestly, just a mild suggestion!

[Fox]

Bandwith = Money.

[Violator]

If you want to donate some money towards site improvements, drop Wallace or Locutus a message.

[Enoch247]

So are the problems due to just too many people browsing the sit at once? Is there a limit of bytes-per-hour, or is it more of a physical connection problem (i.e. A fiber optic connection is needed). I could be up for like a dollar a month type membership, or something. If enough people did this that might help, but to get people to do this I think you would have to have some perks to being a member. I don't think that is too much to ask though.

Edit: I have an idea for memberships. Software permitting you could give priority page loading to members.

[Locutus]

It's because the webhost has about a million customers crammed on to each server. This site really receives enough traffic to warrant a dedicated server, however, thats about $80-$100 a month instead of the $10 we pay now.

Most hosts would kick us off their server for using too much server resources, so really we are lucky the current host doesn't seem to care.

[Armyguy]

Would deleting the old post on here and lowering the ammount of messages aloud in a inbox help free up some space? Or is it just a server issue?

[gmaximus]

I'd consider a membership. There's a ton of things you could do as benefits to members.. aside from things like bigger avatars or loading priority as mentioned above, you might be able to convince your sponsors to offer % off coupons to members or something.

[Agent Spencer]

Monthly Raffles for Members, GBB's, etc.

Would it reduce the banwidth used if old non-posting/unactive members were deleted?

Just a thought.

Spencer

[output01x]

1) i would be willing to spend a little ($5-$10) if
a) it was easy - through paypal preferably
b) it gave me useful benefits

2) i think deleting old non-using members couldnt hurt. as long as the admins were safe about it by
a) deleting those that never posted and have the longest time of not visiting first
b) emailing those about to be deleted a week or two in advance

[Texx]

Originally posted by output01x

2) i think deleting old non-using members couldnt hurt. as long as the admins were safe about it by

The "non-used" accounts do not take up that much bandwidth. Secondly, not all of the members here feel the need to post. Some simply use their account to keep track of events in their area. Some may simply need a means to PM other team members.

a) deleting those that never posted and have the longest time of not visiting first
b) emailing those about to be deleted a week or two in advance

Deleting membership accounts ends up causing more trouble than its worth. In order to insure the accounts are being used/unused, you have to contact them via email. If users fail to enable that option, do not update their email, or simply don't check their email, you would have to wait indefinitely for a reply. Then when they do finally come back, you get complaints that their accounts are inactive.

Believe me, I cleaned out the inactive/"non-used" members on the old AO and ended up getting quite a few complaints about it. The bandwidth issues have more to do with basic site traffic, the gallery, and the number of posts than with membership accounts.

Your AO account is basically a short list of options enabled/disabled and a few text fields, and a few hyperlinks - they don't really do much to contribute to site consumption. If that information was accessed on a much higher level, I could see it as being more responsible for being a drain. But members don't update their accounts on a daily basis and many don't even enter all of the information to begin with.

You use more forum resources posting pictures than anything else. Text in posts take up minimal resources. The largest body of text I have ever posted on AO, 15 pages from a Word Document, still only took up less than 15k.

Pictures take up to 1MB of storage each. And with roughly 2000 pics in the gallery, you can see where alot of forum resources can go. That doesn't count the pictures/files uploaded in posts on the forum, using the "attach file" feature.

[output01x]

so basically what you are saying is that this thread is defeating its own purpose :p

[Texx]

Originally posted by output01x
so basically what you are saying is that this thread is defeating its own purpose :p

no, just wanted to let you know that member acounts don't use up that much resources.

[CheGregory]

you could make an account at Photobucket.com (or some other photo site), make a gallery there... and simply put a link in the current gallery section.

saves bandwidth, is absolutely free (at photobucket at least) and retains all the current features.

i would be willing to do this if time would be an issue with any of the mods, just PM me about it.

[Locutus]

Guys, as I stated before, it really has nothing to do with THIS site, it's all the other sites that are crammed onto the same server.

It's not the pictures, they take up harddrive space, not bandwidth. The ONLY thing that takes up bandwidth is the transferring of data (text, images) from the server to your browser. So the only way to decrease bandwidth is to decrease the use of the site. However, like I jsut said, its not the bandwidth of this site that is the problem, its combination of this site and all of the other sites that are sharing the server.

[CheGregory]

alright, my bad, i thought you meant that we have our own server, and that it really sucked.

in that case...i like the yearly membership price (15?) with a couple thousand members, it would be that hard to get enough for a dedicated server