Devedander Posted November 27, 2006 Report Share Posted November 27, 2006 (edited) I know I am not a supporter yet but I hope it's still ok to toss in my idea... At some other forums I have been a member at or even modded they did not have the luxury of member support... costs were footed by adds, sponsors and admin pocket book, so obviously they were very $$$ minded as a neccessity... One thing I saw often was avatars must be hosted offsite or at least aggressively size limited (64x64 1000bytes or something) and no animated avatars... With only a cheap $100 a year account you can get a TB a month which can cover rediculous amounts of text... but throw in a few pictures on a constantly refreshed page and you will blow up bandwidth in no time... Hope that idea helps... And for those who are care (not diredcted at Admin, owner is always free to ask what he wants of members, but rather other members), my supporter status will come when it does, guilting me into it won't make me hurry it and I don't believe in buying credibility so don't suggest that to me. Thanks. Edited November 27, 2006 by Devedander Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sssurfer Posted November 27, 2006 Report Share Posted November 27, 2006 Hmmm...wasn't aware of this and unfortunately it's not much I can do about it. They don't have any settings that will take into consideration the country you are based in and then display ads that will ship to your country. Surely Admin, I was not by any means suggesting it's your fault, I was just opening my heart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pugwash Posted November 27, 2006 Report Share Posted November 27, 2006 Just a word about advs. Some time ago I clicked on an Amazon adv, went there, ended up in buying some stuff (winding boxes), and finally Amazon said they were not going to sell those items outside US. This is why I feel no guilt ad-blocking the Amazon ads. Anyway, did the VIP zone idea get knocked on the head? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Posted November 27, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2006 Devander, the hosting setup of RWG has been covered in several threads, but I'll give you the short version here. If this website was legal and everything going on here, legal, it would be no problem using "regular"hosting. Well, it's not. And because of the traffic RWG gets, it's not enough with a cheap shared solution. RWG is running on it's own dedicated, offshore server to be able to handle the 12-15 million hits it gets every month. In addition to this, there is a smaller, dedicated server set up as a reverse proxy to hide the real location of the server. These things cost money and offshore hosting is expensive (don't ask me why...) And ads...well, if members clicked the ads more than they do, parts of the bills could be covered by ads...but this has also been covered earlier in this thread, if I am not wrong....and regarding your logic about pictures...what would a forum like this be without the pictures. Members have a small amount of storage space...when it's used, they can either upgrade their membership and get more storage space or they can use offsite storeage solutions T I know I am not a supporter yet but I hope it's still ok to toss in my idea... At some other forums I have been a member at or even modded they did not have the luxury of member support... costs were footed by adds, sponsors and admin pocket book, so obviously they were very $$$ minded as a neccessity... One thing I saw often was avatars must be hosted offsite or at least aggressively size limited (64x64 1000bytes or something) and no animated avatars... With only a cheap $100 a year account you can get a TB a month which can cover rediculous amounts of text... but throw in a few pictures on a constantly refreshed page and you will blow up bandwidth in no time... Hope that idea helps... And for those who are care (not diredcted at Admin, owner is always free to ask what he wants of members, but rather other members), my supporter status will come when it does, guilting me into it won't make me hurry it and I don't believe in buying credibility so don't suggest that to me. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Posted November 27, 2006 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2006 This is why I feel no guilt ad-blocking the Amazon ads. Anyway, did the VIP zone idea get knocked on the head? Nope....there are many good ideas. But because of a forthcoming software upgrade and forum upgrade, none of the ideas have been incorporated so far...but in a little more than a month....you will see some changes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devedander Posted November 27, 2006 Report Share Posted November 27, 2006 (edited) Devander, the hosting setup of RWG has been covered in several threads, but I'll give you the short version here. If this website was legal and everything going on here, legal, it would be no problem using "regular"hosting. Well, it's not. And because of the traffic RWG gets, it's not enough with a cheap shared solution. RWG is running on it's own dedicated, offshore server to be able to handle the 12-15 million hits it gets every month. In addition to this, there is a smaller, dedicated server set up as a reverse proxy to hide the real location of the server. These things cost money and offshore hosting is expensive (don't ask me why...) And ads...well, if members clicked the ads more than they do, parts of the bills could be covered by ads...but this has also been covered earlier in this thread, if I am not wrong....and regarding your logic about pictures...what would a forum like this be without the pictures. Members have a small amount of storage space...when it's used, they can either upgrade their membership and get more storage space or they can use offsite storeage solutions T Good to know, sorry I didn't see the details on other posts about the lengths you go through to stay anonymous... I just assumed like all the other "legally quesstionable" sites I belong to this simply operated behind a "plausable deniability" screen, but then I guess having paying dealers negates that possibility... But as for pictures, I am not saying get rid of pictures, I am saying enforce 100% offsite hosting or very small pictures... in a page of 25 posts I would guess the average bandwidth for avatar use rivals or surpasses the actual content... Instance, page 4 of this thread I download with no pictures, total file size 164KB... I count file size of the avatars (not many big or animated) and seems it's about 200+ KB for avatars... force those offsite hosting and your bandwidth cost goes down. We all have photobucket accounts I think... Small avatar... a few KB is still much larger than the average post text that accompanies it... if you can remove that bandwidth expense it seems like it could make a large difference when pages are accessed many times... But in general, agressively reducing costs is something you can have full control over and which will provide repeating returns, getting more people to pay money is going to be harder to accomplish in the longrun and harder to maintain... That said with this knowledge of your expenses it will change what I think of becomming a supporter... in the meantime I actively try to click the banner once a day and will continue to do so. Edited November 27, 2006 by Devedander Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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