New Server

Chinahand · January 08, 2012, 06:59:33 AM

While sponsorship and advertising revenues may sound a good idea we would end up with all sorts of pop-ups and intrusive side-screens which would slow down the web site and detract from the whole user experience. I, for one, would not welcome advertising here.

Tank · January 08, 2012, 10:01:41 AM

There will never be pop-ups on this site. They would put me off coming here, let alone members!

Also, there must be advertising. I cannot afford to keep a forum going with the size it is already. The forum used 1gb of Bandwidth just yesterday, and that's with no members storing photographs on the server.

Most of the advertisers that you can see on here will be gone by the end of the month, as they were the ones who offered raffle prizes. There are 3 regular advertisers on here to whom I'm very grateful for their business. I don't ask for much compared to other places, but I do need more.

If I didn't have advertising, then I'd have to begin a paid membership. Whilst I will never rule this out (in case I start an NGF Club or such), I don't want to start asking for money, as membership will drop.

Avis1434 · January 08, 2012, 12:32:47 PM

I think the situation of advertising on the site - probably by N gauge related businesses - especially if it assists Tank and the team to run the site without the need for a subscription is fully acceptable. :computersmile:

This allows everyone to join our merry band of N gauge followers and allows them to air their thoughts, experiences and advice not to mention their jokes etc free of charge.

Some modellers - especially in the coming months, will no doubt "feel the pinch" and if we can avoid extra costs/subscriptions by offering advertising space on the site then I for one would agree.

Well done Tank and the team for providing this first class site and now expanding the system with a new server.

Chinahand · January 08, 2012, 12:41:05 PM

I take back what I said. If there are no pop-ups and they help Tank to keep the forum 'liquid' then it must be to the good of the forum. I just had visions of pop-ups and tracker cookies intruding on the general activities here.

Tank · January 08, 2012, 01:17:54 PM

Thanks Avis1434 and Chinahand.

I can honestly say that I will never let this site be overrun with advertisements, and I will only accept Ads that are relevant to N gauge modelling. You must remember that I'm just a normal guy, with a mortgage and family, with no financial backing from a model shop (like some forums), no spare money to pump into the forum, and no known lottery wins on the way!!!

Newportnobby · January 08, 2012, 01:18:31 PM

Advertising on the forum, without stating the obvious, is beneficial to both parties (or they wouldn't do it).
Personally I keep an eye on the advertisers websites as there are always things I need unavailable from the box shifters.
Thanks to this forum and County Rolling Stock I got a rake of weathered Dapol hoppers

Anthony Lloyd · January 10, 2012, 11:09:22 AM

Tank

While I do like the random image header (and I in no way want it to go away), at the moment the images are 100k(ish) each and because of the way its loaded it does download every time the page is loaded (so every page is at least 100k).

I had this exact same issue when I created the Compass Tours website last year and was confused when my host cut me off without warning. While 100k isn't a lot, that 1MB for every 10 page views. I know I look at more than 20 pages a day on the NGF.

The most users online in a day is 212 ... 212 users x 20 page views x 100k = 424MB (based on 1000k not 1024k). Thats half a gig on the header image alone A DAY (or 12.4 GB a month).

The header file size can be reduced in half by saving it as a JPG with 75% compression rather than a PNG and there is very little noticeable difference in image quality (considering most people don't look at it for more than a second before reading the text below).

Must my thoughts on the subject, I can also share the random image PHP script I use if its useful to you.

Regards, Tony

Tank · January 10, 2012, 11:23:07 AM

I won't use jpg's, as I think the quality is awful, but I understand what you're saying.

Please PM me the script that you suggest and I'll take a look. I must admit, it is annoying that the forum downloads the pictures every time.

Thanks for the suggestion.
Cheers,
Tank.

EtchedPixels · January 10, 2012, 12:01:30 PM

Quote from: Tank on January 10, 2012, 11:23:07 AM
I won't use jpg's, as I think the quality is awful, but I understand what you're saying.

You should be able to get a decent quality using something like gimp with previous mode to adjust the various settings and get a good trade off. For some reason the rotating banners are also not getting cached that well.

I have to confess it got so annoying when I was using the mobile network I stuck your rotator in the advert filter !

Illori · January 10, 2012, 12:41:51 PM

the image size really is not that much of an issue, we have plenty of bandwidth. but if the loading time can be decreased some [either by another script or image size] it would not hurt to test it out.

also i will say it again the images in the rotator will NOT be cached at all ever.

EtchedPixels · January 10, 2012, 02:27:25 PM

Quote from: Illori on January 10, 2012, 12:41:51 PM
also i will say it again the images in the rotator will NOT be cached at all ever.

Then your web site design is rather broken. That would do much to explain why its so unusable on a smartphone and why the bandwidth usage is so high.

You should be caching the rotator images, because they have different names so it'll happily cache them all browser side and whenever you add a new rotator item it'll get a new name so it won't cause problems.

Quote
we have plenty of bandwidth

Yeah but how about your users ?

Alan

Tank · January 10, 2012, 02:45:33 PM

Quote from: EtchedPixels on January 10, 2012, 02:27:25 PM
Then your web site design is rather broken. That would do much to explain why its so unusable on a smartphone and why the bandwidth usage is so high.

The web site is not broken, hence people posting!

I can see what you mean though, and we'll work on something. I may just make it a .gif file. There's been a lot of work involved with the server, and a backlog of messages and emails that I've been trying to get through.

Griffo · January 10, 2012, 02:50:18 PM

Got to side with EP on this one although I don't claim to be an expert I do have some experience with website traffic. I like the alternating header but the overhead must be chewing into your traffic allowance without the images being cached.

Illori · January 10, 2012, 02:53:22 PM

we have PLENTY of bandwidth so right now that is not an issue, if it is we will consider other options.

Lawrence · January 10, 2012, 03:00:09 PM

Okay folks, lets take a step back here please.

We have just moved to this new server, there has been a lot of work done already and much still to do, and we owe a great deal of thanks to our NGF Technician for the hours put in to get us to this stage.

So as far as things go, for the meantime we will make this the last word on the headers until we have the opportunity to fully assess where we are with data, image formats etc etc.

Rome wasn't built in a day so please be patient, thank you