General Notes on the future of the site

MSE_Martin

I know in general the site is struggling at the moment. To be honest the demand is truly enormous. We have pumped up the servers to their top level and they are no fine, it's now the software that is letting us down.

So here's the score this is what we're looking at doing - i hope it will be done in the next few months.

1. Change Yabb: We are currently looking at changing the boards. There is another very simialr piece of software that feels the same but doesn't use 'flat files' but a 'database'. Bascially it'll be yabb but faster and the search should work, plus more 'amendable'.

However we will have to test and convert this. My aim is that existing users will see not too much difference with the software changes.

2. Email delivery. We are currently considering employing a company to send the email. This should help with the spam systems, but also it means we may be able to offer a plain text version for those for whom HTML is difficult. (any suggestions of companies welcome)

3. Boards. I want to rejig and change the boards so they work more smoothly.

4. Cosmetic changes. There are more plans to keep the usability of the site up. Hopefully the green and red bars have made a big difference. There'll be more little changes to speed the useabiliy up

5. Abuse Controller & Board Guides. We've already done this, and i hope it has created a much more clear policy. Personally i'd like to thank everyone for respecting my wishes and taking probs to the Abcon, as it has meant less of my time taken up with it - which is very helpful.

6. Board Guides. Once the boards are suited i want a board guide on every board. I hope that'll make a big differnce

7. Flight checker, - only one permission left to get, then it'll stop being the Ryanair flight checker

8. Calculators, my aim is to have a series of easy to use calculators on the site to help people - they'll be coming soon too.

That's about it for now.

Just wanted to keep you all up to speed with whats happening. The top few of these are the priority - to get the site and especially chat working smoothly, quickly and easily.

martin

robnye

nooo

you cant stop at a list 8 items, you must complete the ten........ ::)

how busy are you lot gonna be....

loafer_2

2. Email delivery. We are currently considering employing a company to send the email. This should help with the spam systems, but also it means we may be able to offer a plain text version for those for whom HTML is difficult. (any suggestions of companies welcome)

Hmm I could profit from this then ;-)

I seriously suggest (again) doing this yourself with 2 mailman lists, one for each format.

Tony_H_3

Mmmm I have to agree with you Loafer, I was suprised to read that outsourcing is being considered to handle e-mailing.

MSE_Martin

Chaps the truth about the email is it takes a large resource to get it to send. There are lots of problems with simply sending it out due to hyperlinks breaking. It will all depend on the cost of out sourcing to be honest.

Martin

imported_Marmite

Will the listing of email addresses remain guaranteed spam free if you outsource?

MSE_Martin

Actually I hope it will be even more secure. This would be a pure technical outsource - the data would be ours and it would be totally unusable by anyone else. So yes it would stay totally spam free. The outsourcing is purely for more efficient, quicker, delivery so the email can reach more people. Truth is though we still haven't found anyone who looks reliable to do it!

martin

imported_Marmite

lol thanks

Pat__3

Good work Martin, look foreward to the changes if it makes things a lot smoother

loafer_2

Martin,
What sort of resource are you on about CPU/script time or bandwidth?

If you say both then I'll ask you to detail them so think ahead

Also it would help if you removed all the needless HTML from your mail, it looks like it has been cooled with an old version of Frontpage or Word to some extent.

System

The entire template is done in word, sadly :S

The mail list takes alot of resources - it takes 12 hours to send the entire thing :S

I must remember to do an "uptime" and "top" when the next tip is being sent