Subtle changes, bugs and feedback

any chance all current posts can go back more than 24hrs?

Not really.

That link is clicked more than 20,000 times a day. Increasing the size of the resultset would hit the performance.

However... why?

You can use Quick Links > New Posts to show everything that you've not read in that format.

And if you know you're looking for something specific you can just search.

And if you're browsing you can browse by category.

In case people missed it, we just got a style/theme for mobile devices like iPods, Blackberries, and phones that can do the internet.

It should magically just work when you access the forum using one of those devices.

I forgot I had this thread... perfect place for it though.

Members get the randomised headers.
Non-members get one pre-chosen header... the blur one:
http://www.londonfgss.com/images/londonfgss/header_blur.jpg

The reason for this is bandwidth.

Each image is 50KB > 90KB, which is fine if you're visiting the site repeatedly as the images get cached by your browser and you only ever get them from the server once so it costs us very little to have many headers.

For guests, and they make up 70% of visitors to the site, they don't really come back frequently and so with 12 possible images we could have served 1MB to each visitor, and there are thousands of visitors. And because they don't come back frequently, no useful caching occurs so we serve this over and over.

So guests now get just the one header, and that means we serve only 50KB rather than a potential 1MB per visitor. It also means that the key caching servers within an ISP cache one file with a higher priority than many low priority files... so it should prevent some requests from reaching this server.

I'm worrying about bandwidth because of two things: 1) The money from T-shirts isn't going to last forever. 2) The pound sliding against the dollar is making that money burn faster than is desirable... we're going to run out of money sooner than I anticipated.

That said, the money from advertising (to non-members) is currently delaying my coming cap in hand to you guys, as that has helped make the kitty last longer than it would've done.

I'd happily pay a few quid to help out sir.

banners arent coming up for me this morning. doesnt bother me if it's there or not, just wondering, did you change the location of the banner pics or is my workplace widening their banned sites. im on https

Ah, I know what it is.

I'll fix it :)

Nope, it works already. I had changed things, but nothing that you should have noticed.

What browser are you using?

Forget that, I've just taken a look... you're on IE7 on Windows XP.

Ahhhh. Is this why there's a Specialized banner now?

No, for that... see this: http://www.londonfgss.com/thread12690.html

I'd happily pay a few quid to help out sir.

Me too.

Should we compile a list?

I'd happily pay a few quid to help out sir.

Me too.

Should we compile a list?

I think so, how much money is needed, how many active members are there willing to part with a few quid? If the regular 100/200 posters all chip in £3 (the cost of one beer) it will certainly get a fairly decent sum.

A list or a brand new thread?

New thread I reckon, a round fiver each. What say you all?

We have about £300 still in the bank.

We make about $70 per month from adverts (shown to non-members, it used to make more but has declined since the credit crunch hit).

The server costs $160 per month including disaster recovery backups (nightly).

So we're good until about February/March, and then crunch time again.

I have a paypal address that I use to collect the money for T-shirts and donations in the past. And also have done a whip-round at a few events.

There's no panic for cash as it's quite a few months away, and I'm sure we'll sort something out as we always do. However if you feel compelled to donate today, then my traditional response was to "Buy the server a beer"... donate a small amount whenever you think it's worth doing so, to paypal@buro9.com and the server beer money basically goes into the pot and eventually gets spent on the server.

VB are you going to be at The Bridges Ride on Saturday? Maybe I can give you a donation then? My paypal isn't working at the moment.

ooh. http://www.londonfgss.com/misc.php?do=buddylist&focus=1 = likey!

I've changed something... guess what it is.

1 Attachment

nice, like it

new hat?

i do like it much better than how it was before...

Pass. What is it?

Lightbox (ish?) plugin.

It's the preview click on attached thumbnails, innit?

It's the preview click on attached thumbnails, innit?

Ha.. ah see i didn't notice that because I always right-click and open in new tab.. :)