I am stunned

I started this forum with a shits'n'giggles attitude. It has grown bigger than I thought it would ever be and is turning very serious.

For the month of May CPF used 109GB of bandwidth. That is not a typo! One hundred and nine gigabytes of bandwidth usage for the month of May!

Last December I upgraded from Aschweb's Plan A to Plan C or from 5GB to 20GB of bandwidth, thinking that would be plenty. Now it is painfully obvious I need to think big. I mean I need to think huge.

I'm putting everything on hold until I figure out what to do. That means no UBB upgrade and no new links section for now.

Eek! I hope the proceeds from the brass Arc AAA auctions are on the way - that should help out, I imagine.

Given that there are over 1800 members now, I guess it should be no surprise that bandwidth usage is going up a lot..

Just say the word if you need any assistance - I'm sure lots of us are willing to help out.

Graham

David,
Should we back off a bit on our visits and posting?

No, Don,
the Boss just needs to get a third job. Hard work is a virtue.

Mr. W. - I have an idea. I'll e-mail you ......

lightlover.

(Too good to lose)

Something I just thought of. There were a lot of threads moved in May. That could account for the more than doubling of usage. Normally we use about 30-40 GB of bandwidth.

Please go about your business and don't worry about bandwidth. I'm working on possible solutions here.

A 3rd and 4th job is a possibility here.

I just thought - there are a lot of new members who may not have read the bandwidth-saving techniques topic. Boss, if you post on that again, maybe that would help, or remind the hardcore that it's a priority.
(I'll try to write a FAQ thing for that if you like, will be done tomorrow, promise)

There is a lot we as members can do just by following easy common-sense suggestions.

Oh, Boss - re-title this topic to draw attention to it's awful content ?
And if you like, you can put a link to this in a new topic in the Café ......

Jahn *Eek* *Gosh !* *GRIN* *Wink*
:Kool: :Kool:

for what it means - i am here and will do what ever it takes to keep this forums going- i think i speak for everyone on that.

if you need anything from us dont be afriad to ask.

We could save 30-40 GB a month if Darell posted half as much.

Seriously just say the word and I will contribute.

Feels like the energy crunch we had here in California. hehe..."don't use your major appliances before 7pm" was our advise.

I'm on a couple of discussion boards on the Internet. One of the big ones i am on is called VWVortex.com. That has MANY posts daily, and a lot of them have pictures. I'm going to ask somebody in charge how they pay for their bandwith. Their board seems to function similar to this so i'll try to gather some info for ya David...

I suggested before about adding a signiture on your name that would ask members for donations. It would be totally okay with me if you asked for money now and then.

I'm new, but Ah'm IN...

What if everybody took pictures out of their signitures and posted URLs rather than images in posts themselves

- I'm just about to take my own advice and delete an image from my recent Photon 3 post

Images in posts and signatures don't affect the CPF server bandwidth, since the browser loads them directly from the server the link points to.

The only images you actually download from the CPF server are the little smilies and emoticons..

Graham

I can't find that original topic (it was quite recently posted) where the Boss made suggestions on how to quote and so on.
Please can someone who remembers the title bumpTTT it, for everyone to read.

Graham,
I think there was a request for everyone to use their signature lines just once per topic ?
I don't think that was meant to apply so strictly to "declarations of interests" or business links, or Museums, etc. ?

lightlover

Found one of the topcs about bandwidth here.

There are a couple of others in the 'Questions or problems...' forum

Graham

Questions, do you add to the monthly bandwidth use just by posting or by opening and reading posts as well? If the second is true are you adding to the usage when you leave CPF open on your browser while not actually reading anything?

I figure a lot of the bandwidth usage doesn't even originate from the members on this forum - more likely the casual browsers, the lurkers and the general public who've been linked here. There's lotsa folks watching us here! We have less than 2000 members, and its apparent only a small percentage actually post regularly.

Another thing - newcomers usually set their profiles to download ALL topics, not just the last coupla days worth - so the poor server has to saturate the line with far more stuff that the average newbie can possibly sift thru in one sitting. This = wasted bandwidth.

Perhaps, the default settings for new signups can be setup only to show active topics of the day initially, with the option to display more later (but never allow to have a permanent setting of asking for everything - only for one-off searches and stuff like that).

If need be that members put up a tiny little fee to keep this place going, or if a donation is needed - count me in

cheers

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by geepondy:
Questions, do you add to the monthly bandwidth use just by posting or by opening and reading posts as well? If the second is true are you adding to the usage when you leave CPF open on your browser while not actually reading anything?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You are using bandwidth every time you open a page or post something. If it helps, you can think of each page you view as a file which your computer downloads (which it is, actually). It only downloads it once, unless you tell it to do it again by refreshing, or asking for a different page.
And when you post, you are effectively sending a file to the CPF server (the updated page with your post) - bandwidth is used when you actually submit the post, not during the time you are writing it.

Jumping back and forth between pages, topics, and refreshing pages a lot will add more to bandwidth useage than just leaving a page open for a long time, or taking some time to write a post.

So I guess one way to save some bandwidth would be to take your time and make sure your post is correct the first time, rather than going back and editing it a few times afterwards..

Graham

How about an annual "donation" of $5.00 from all active members. At this point that should give CPF more than enough without hurting the pocketbooks of the members since it's only once a year. It could even be for members who have posted a certain number of posts say 2000 and up (couldn't resist, darell). But seriously maybe change the "member" to "flashaholic" graduation to 50 or 100 posts and set the "donation" to come in to effect after that. That way lurkers could get answers, but more serious members could keep on truckin'. I wanted to add this is not a mandatory thing, just something that is in the FAQ stated something like "Is CPF free? Yes, but after XX amount of posts you will be sent an email for a donation of $5.00 every year, this is not a requirement, but something that will keep CPF afloat for years to come". If there is any extra money it could be used to fund contests or games or everyone who donated gets a CPF mug or something.

Just my $.02 and since I used that in this thread my $4.98 goes to David.

Since joining the CPF, I have spent many hours related to a new awareness which has developed from these posts; reading, writing, thinking (painful) and fabricating. I have also spent a small fortune on items I was unaware of and didn't know I needed. A small anual fee of $5 or $10 is nothing compared to my overall investment in this noble interest (OK illness)
When someone asks for donations for the sentient vegetables awarenesss foundation, I'd like to honestly reply that I'm sorry but I've commited such available funds to the keep CPF rolling fund.
David W,
If we can PayPal contributions to you please advise.

I noticed phpBB and other board software have the option to turn on gzip to compress the pages on the fly. Does UBB have that option? It could save a little bandwidth.