Whatever happened last night?

Cayne, I can't say for sure, but I think I can speak for most of the regs here when I say that I'd have no problem paying $5, or $10 bucks a month if it would get us on a set of servers that can handle the bandwidth/throughput. I know a lot of the guys probably can't swing it, but people forget just how lucky we are to have a forum like this @ our disposal free of charge. I'm no tech guy, so I don't know if it would help or, not. Just a thought, and thank you very much for all the effort O Great One! It is much appreciated.

 

I can't help but wonder if some of the ISPs phun members and visitors use to connect to the web aren't partially to blame for the 'slowness' issues some people are experiencing. I know dial-up users are at the mercy of their archaic technology in the first place - been there, done that, didn't like it - but even with a DSL connection, I've never experienced the terrible slowness some folks are subjected to (60+ sec page loading time) even when the site is slow for me. And I use an old computer with an old O/S (Win 98 ) to surf the web. Plus, I've never encountered a message that says the site is too busy to enter!

Just a thought...

 

I was thinking the same thing scribe, but unfortunately, when it slows down, the "other" sites are loading just as quick as usual. I'm on cable with Time Warner's "Turbo" Roadrunner service.

 

I'm on standard Roadrunner and its been slow here and fast everywhere else. I did install NoScript for Firefox in between visits and the site runs a lot faster with it.

 

Okay. Just throwin' shit at the wall to see what sticks.

 

I usually get it the worst in the mid, to late afternoon (EST). Say, between 3-6 P.M. Don't know if that will help.

 

That's a great offer and I really appreciate it, but the money for ONE new server isn't the problem. The real problem is the fact, that this one server won't be enough in 1-3 months. So then you have to donate already 10-20 bucks each month, and 3 months later already 20-40, because we need an additional server each 3 months. I think it will stop at some point, but the techs couldn't tell me at which...

Right now we got 3 servers for the forum and it's already slow as shit at some hours...the techs told me a 4th server would smooth things for awhile, but he also told me, that we're going to run against the same wall in 3 months again.

Edit: I disabled the "Who's online" function for the guests, which was a long overdue action (thanks goes out to TheRiver, like always ) Let me know if you think this helped to speed up the forum a bit (during the slow times of the day). I don't think it will help a lot, but let's see...

 

i honestly would not mind paying a yearly membership to be registered here if it means the problem goes away. we have TONS of members... it can't be that bad to keep things going if everbody chips in a tiny amount. i paid $10 to be a one-year member of a knife forum once (i collect knives).

may i ask... how much money is one of these servers?

 

Whole story is on page 4:
http://forum.phun.org/showpost.php?p=1736107&postcount=53

One of these servers goes for $225/month. Right now we got 3 only for the forum. Plus 2 others for the frontpage.

 

innocent question:

considering currently 87% of the people on phun are guests, can we do something about "them"? i don't think i have to point out that is an enormous percentage, and frankly i don't like non-members making my beloved phun slow.

 

Just from what I know, they would have to "close" the forum, I believe. That closes off the content itself from the guests, you have to register to see the content. But I may be wrong with that and I have no idea if the admins would want to do that.

 

Hehe, of course we could force them to sign-up (wouldn't change much...) or do other nasty things to them. But you have to keep in mind, that some of these "guests" are the older, bald (not-so-smart) guys who actually click on ads and pay for porn with their credit card. Therefore they already kinda pay for your favorite forum, in an indirect way.

Of course there are also tons of leechers, who're just to lazy to do anything, but since it's impossible to sperate them from the group we have to live with them.

Besides that, more visitors means more traffic, means a bigger e-penis for me and that's THE MOST important thing!

 

in that case, i'm glad i'm not old and bald yet

 

revenue:

• any possibility to increase "interaction" between the forum and the frontpage (which obviously "pays" most for the whole thing?)
• why not a small ad-banner for "everyone", not only guests?
• any chance to make the forum or certain members to "affiliates" of the frontpage? do you have an affiliate-program? can we somehow increase your "income" in any way? could it worth to push the "funny-vids"-section in this context?

traffic:

• avatars cause traffic for phun-servers...
• this "who is online" has been an idea of your techies
  

also had this thought, but whenever phun is slow for me (2pm - 11pm GMT) the rest of the web is as fast as usual.
does the phun-hoster itself has any "prime-times" (means overall-bandwidth-usage) which affects phun at certain times?

in general i see no real difference between now and the situation before the latest server-update. no eye-catching increase in online-count, for example. still the average 3500-4000 people online simultaneously.
the only thing that has changed (and will hopefully keep changing) is the increase of threads, posts and member-count. could a more strict archiving help?

does the hoster have any "detailled" stats about forum-use? which board causes most traffic? vids? model? celebs? useful / possible to "move" the busiest section to an "exclusive" server?

could the return to default min.-4-digit-search decrease server-load?

sigs/hotlinked pics increase page-load, but don´t affect phun-servers. i agree with Bama and Tai that an overuse of sig-file-size or repeatedly quoted pics/gifs causes longer page-load, but i believe it´s "off-topic" when it comes to reduce phun-server-load.

 

I wouldn't start making people pay to see this forum, lots of members will leave and never come back if you did that. :2cent:

They'll go elsewhere to get their porn instead of here.

 

River got like always some good ideas.

Ads for everybody and a better interaction with the frontpage are things that will be done when the new layout is here...but you know me and how much I like things to be changed!

I doubt, the phun-hoster got any "prime-times" which would affect our performance. It's a huge (and not cheap hoster) which got enough Gigabit lines to handle all the traffic...

I changed the "who's online" status for guests.

I doubt the 4 digit search has something to do with the load. And you're also right, with the limitation of the sig-size. That will speed up the page load itself, but not our servers...

 

I was under the impression that sigs didn't change the server load. Once they're loaded into the server it didn't matter they're displayed several times on a page. That is my opinion ... I could be wrong.

Last night at 4:00 AM (CET +1) there were only 2800 on the forum and the pages loaded fast, sigs-avs and gifs load quickly, depending on the posted pics it took a little longer. So in my opinion it all comes down to traffic. When they're about 4500 - 5000 online it slows down remarkably even though I have one of the fastest connections available in Europe (Telenet Turbo Express).

Maybe I'm way off or dead wrong ... but could it help to assign guests to a seperate server and reserve 1 or 2 (or more) servers for members only ?

Anyway if sigs are a real problem, just say so. Thinking of maybe using a small one during traffic and the current one when traffic is low.

 

there is no doubt that people online changes things dramatically. anything over 4000 people, and i always see a difference. when i'm on at off-peak times and there are say 2800 people on, the site is very fast.