Ideas For Keeping Costs Down

This is for Editor Bill, but maybe other people would like to comment on it too.

I have some ideas of how to bring the running costs of this site down a bit. Each will not make much of an effect but overall, there may be a 20 to 30% cut down in bandwidth usage. I'm not saying that any of these ideas may be popular, I leave them to Bill and other people to comment, I'm not saying that they're wrong or right.

1) Don't allow smilies. I just checked the rolling eyes smiley and it uses 705 bytes. OK, this may sit in someone's cache but I personally clean mine out a lot to keep the computer running nicely. If you insist on keeping them, use the static ones.

2) Limit the number of conversations in a forum (before clicking onto the next one) to 10, not 20. This will save a little bandwidth, instead of having to list them all the time. I personally don't read the ones further down the list.

3) Do not allow any kind of pictures whatsoever on the site (except for linked to pictures from outside sites)

4) I see that you use Javascript validation for forms. This means that everything is done client side. Can you keep this on server side? Then you don't need to send all the code out with each submissions page. OK, implementation and time are an accepted problem with this.

5) Is it possible to run an HTML optimising routine on the HTML before it's pumped out to the client? I see that there are a lot of carriage returns which can be removed. Plus there's probably other inefficiencies, not that I've checked that much.

6) Remove the concept of signatures. They're a waste of bandwidth, they're frilly and nice but nothing more.

Other ideas that come to mind...

1) Use a cheaper internet provider if possible.

2) I've seen that some sites offer T-shirts for sale. They use the cash from these to buy extra bandwidth.

3) Do I remember you saying (I could be imagining this) a little while ago that you had some kind of RSS system set up. i.e. Automated scripts can check the site for updates? I've heard that this has crippled a lot of sites. If yours uses this, try to look at it carefully. If someone is checking every 20 minutes, this might be at a high cost to you.

I hope those are of help. If I can think of anything more, I will. By the way - my speciality is making extremely efficient 'C' code.

Steve

I just read that you do email updates aswell - remove this option if you like.

Sorry, I correct myself, not RSS but RDF.

Also, do you have some tool available that will monitor different parts of the site and see what areas are used more than others?

if I have to I'll buy a britboard t-shirt (as long as bully isn't on it) but leave the smilies and signatures , they make everything more human ...

And Charltonfan needs all the help he can get as most people thing that Charlton fans are cardboard cutouts

As for me, I'm not bothered about losing anything you have listed. It is just the animated smiles your suggesting right?

hey that will be all i am wearing

Signatures must stay as they do actually have a purpose; they say something about the individual who is posting.
There are so many different signatures, some, are deeper than others; they are interesting. Leave them alone.

Smilies in motion can go, but if we get our own section … the prodigal smiley returns .

The T-shirt idea was something that crossed my mind a while back, it was a short crossing!

do you mean the chat mack yaa mr bill when is that coming

No A-3 that’s not what I mean; you see where the forum is split into different categories on the Forum Home Page? Well my idea is that there would be a new category … a Senior Members category.

Thank you Master :$

I think thats a good idea Mac

Are we getting the chat

Any comments Editor Bob? Some ideas here may be out of the scope technically or time-wise. As we can see, some people want to retain some features. What are your thoughts? I hope this was helpful.

Sorry, Editor Bill! My apologies!

Here's another idea. When you go to submit a message, the last 10 posts are put below the input box. Remove this. This uses extra bandwidth. We can all use the "back" button instead...

is Mr Bill on a holiyday

I've been away for a while. I'll look into the suggestions from Steve when I have some time.

Here's a possibility:
http://meesoft.logicnet.dk/HTMLOptim/

for optimising HTML, not sure if it'll run on your dynamic web pages, but it's a possibility. (Oh, and it's Freeware)

While I have no problems with saving money in principal, I frequent another forum regularly where only the last posting is repeated when you want to post an answer. I find this particularly frustrating, because usually an answer also involves points raised in postings other than the last one and since on this forum if you use the "back" button to go and look at previous postings, your reply posting is erased, it is extremely difficult to post well constructed replies to a complicated thread (okay, we don't have those too often here!) I'm not sure if that applies here, but I would much prefer to be able to simply scroll down to see what various contributors have said.

You (not specifically RMA) could always open the subject with the right click on your mouse and opting to "open in new window", therefore having 2 windows open, one to reply and one as the source of your cut'n'paste.

Thanks for the reminder, don't know why, but I regularly forget what all you can do with right clicking.