I will put forward my points from a while ago, again- see if anyone else agrees with me.
From what I can understands, there is probably a significant amount of bandwitdth used to host the Smilies and Topic Icons. To save bandwidth, I suggest trying the following:
1. Remove Topic Icons altogether. Sure, they are cute and quite fun, but are otherwise fairly meaningless and from common observation, many people don`t bother with them and just leave it set to the default parchment-thingy icon. There is a lot of HTML coding on each Forum list page, and each discussion page, that goes into supporting these regardless of what they`re set to. Not to forget the images themselves, even if only a few K each- it all adds up. On each forum topic list, on each discussion page and every time anyone goes to make a new post or edit one, they are called from the server and of course- appear above where you type. I think we could easilly live without them.
2. Reduce the use of Smilies. I don`t mean stop them altogether or reduce the current images-per-post count from 8 (as this would affect photo posting too), but rather make them harder to use. Instant-Gramelins is a great and handy feature but it is all too enticing to click a bunch of them into your posts when maybe a simple smile, "eek" or frown would do. I`ll admit I do use them often but try not to be excessive. Removing the instant-graemlins feature will discourage their use- if you can`t see`em you`re less inclined to use`em unless you absoloutely want to. Every time you go to make a post, all 11 of them are loaded so if they weren`t there, that`s another lessening of the bandwidth.
These two measures- removing topic icons and trying to reduce the use of Smilies, will not only save bandwidth but speed page loading times on slow dialup connections too. A lot of us here use dialup, a lot of us here have to wait a dog`s age for all the little faces to appear and the damn pages to finally stay still (no height/width numbers are coded into each image`s HTML tag so the page length jumps and jerks around while they load- browsers don`t know how much room to leave for each one so iinitially leave a default space- which is always different to the actual image) so you can click a page number or "quote" button, etc.
I think it would be a good idea to try this, even if only for a month- and see how many miss the icons and instant-smilies, compared to those who don`t miss them. Weigh that up against the bandwidth usage for the trial period and decide whether or not to put them back. I think you will be surprised at the savings.
Along with these technical solotions, of course CPF users can do our part too.
-Try to avoid excessive editing and re-editing (take your time to proofread your posts and check your coding if any is used).
-Try to avoid excessive quoting- delete parts of post quotes that are not relevent to your reply.
-Try to avoind using so many smilies!
-Try to avoid posting multiple replies in a row (using "quote" buttons from mutiple messages)- use the inset window at the bottom of the post-reply page to copy/paste quotes should you wish to quote more than one post- it behaves just like any CPF page so you can change pages to find the posts you need.
- Take time to review the list of topics and choose the right forum for your post, to save it from having to be moved thereby using more resources (and taking up our Moderators precious time!).
-and if you can, donate a little to the Boss, or bid up that last brass Arc to a record breaking total!
(see- just one this time!)
