What shall we do?

[Baldrick]

Here you can post any ideas what we can do about the webhost.



Note! You can only post and view in this topic, the rest of the forum is still closed.

[Mdanner423]

Hey,
I have been with vcdhelp for a couple years now... You have had the forum the entire time, so you guys must have quite a bit of space... But, since it has been tooo much, i think you should add back some but not all of the forum... Dont add the OFF TOPIC, that is just a huge waste of space... I mean, topicd of how hitler is gay and stuff like that, is that really neccessary at a vcdhelp site? Also,if you must, limit each user to so many posts a month... Some is always better then none...

I have a small message board on my space camp site... It was FREE! Why cant you just get a board from ezboard, sure it has advertisments, but hey, your old forum was the best place on the face of the earth to get help on digital video matters, so i dont think anyone would complain about advertisments! I have learned more from your old forum then anywhere else!

I would love to donate money, but im 15 and have like 50cents to my name, so cant help ya there!

Now that this fourm is closed, there is basicly no place to get that much help on digital video, which is a real shame... I hope these ideas will help you to be able to re post the forum.

Matthew

[pinoy2201]

i suggest u use the free webhost idea and the free forums...i think i speak for everyone we just want this great site back up and runing as soon as possible

[Mdanner423]

Hey,

I am sure we have tons of questions to ask each other, judging by how many posts are usually happening each day... Until VCDHELP knows what they are going to do about their situation, i suggest we use this

http://pub37.ezboard.com/bdigitalvideohelp

I created it a few minutes ago, and should due until vcdhelp is up and running again!

Matthew

[WMike]

After ad possibilities are exhausted as well as ways to use free bandwidth, I wouldn't object to a subscription. This site has saved me an enormous amount of money in wasted time, resources and software. A nominal fee to keep it going wouldn't twist me much.

For example, I went out to buy another DVD player today. Thought to myself, shoot, I'll just check the board.......ooops, no board.

That's my 2

[Mdanner423]

why would you pay for what you can get for free? Why is ezboard bad?!

[Dhruv]

Maybe you should limit everyone to a number of posts a day on the forum so that your server space doesn't get clogged up. Also you could delete posts from over a month instead of 4 months...

[shochan]

Hey Baldrick I have your solution check your email.

[StudeBarc]

I agree with Wmike. I haven't been a contributor to too many posts but I have enormously appreciated the advice and help this site provides. I'm from Oz (Australia) so be aware if you set up a small fee in US funds u can double the amount for Oz conversion. Same as Wmike i went to check SVCD compat in standalones and oops it ain't there. Damn Shame!

[ebaldino]

I side with WMike.

Everything that's good costs money - well, eventually at least.

VCDHelp has saved a lot of people a lot of money and grief.
I would not have been able to save my Star Trek collection were it not for you guys.

Unfortunately, I don't believe ads will pay your bills.
Charge for access to specific features of the site! I'll pay, gladly (and I even refuse to pay for access to the Internet!)

Run a survey to see how many people will pay. Actually, use the email addresses you have in your database and run a survey to everybody who's ever posted to see if they would be willing to pay. No, it's not spam, you have reserved the right to email these people...

A while back I suggested you organize and run a newsletter. That's a little piece of added value easy to charge for...

rgds
E.Baldino

[Mdanner423]

Most People come to the internet for free imformation, they already pay a monthly fee to get on the internet... How much is it going to be if individual sites want money for information?!

I think we should find another way besides a pay service, because, us teens, wouldnt be able to pay it!

Matthew

[pacmania_2001]

I think that you should make users of this site click on a certain number of ads before they can enter like a warez site. Sections of the sites should be hosted by free hosts. Sections that could be done like that are the WHAT IS, HOW TO, FAQ, LINKS, TOOLS, VIDEO REVIEWS, WEBSHOPPING, VIDEO RECORDERS. The DVD PLAYER section could also be hosted on other sites by having a separate free page for each player. Also like an above poster said posts should be deleted after a month or after a certain time of inactivity. Posts should be limited too to stop serial posters. If people wish to post more then the limit they should have to donate money.

[TwistedPair]

I would be happy to pay a small monthly fee (~$5 USD) for the right to both access the full site and post messages in the forums. Perhaps this would be a way to help filter out the nonsense postings - charge a fee to post.

[jeex]

baldrick

i just wanna say thanks for even having the forums up. they were a great place for learning and getting help. and from what i saw, you worked very hard to keep them crapfree.

even though i doubt people donating money or ads would be your solution, i still hope somehow it will return.

thanks for all that you've done.

-mark

[TurboRunner]

Hi,

Don't do that stupid idea by having to click certain amount of sponsers like the warez sites just to get in as it will down grade you site and will probably lead users to go else where maybe start there own vcdhelp site.

You can try http://www.topcities.com which is a free webhost the gives you 150mb of free space have never tried the service but anything free is worth a try or maybe

spaceports
Sign up with Spaceports to get:

unlimited space
up to 20 GB of transfer for your site per month
a free domain name
your own cgi-bin
PHP scripting
MySQL database support
helpful user forums and real-time support chat rooms
All this and we pay you up to $0.10/click for the advertisements you display on your free site.
http://www.spaceports.com

And like the above users said try ezboard for the messageboard it's not too bad and because it's separate from you site if your site goes down because of bandwidth your messageboard should still work.

Hope this helps

TurboRunner

[Battra92]

I emailed Baldrick but I can put the msg here as well.

I WILL pay a nominal fee per month. Hey if the hundreds of regulars here donate 5 bucks a month that should pay the bills (or at least part of it.) I like the idea of limiting posts on the forum to so many per day and no off topic posts. I have a suspicision its the forum that is using the most bandwith.

VCDhelp has been a godsend to me. I just got a B+ on a report on digital video with this site as one of my main sources and I went to the site to see what was going on and it was gone. I almost cried... literaly.

[vanillabox]

Baldrick,
You may want to check out this site, if you haven't already, http://www.phpwebhosting.com/ . For $9.95/month they offer 125 megs to start and upon request will increase the space for the site. All that and they support PHP4 scripting and un-metered traffic. Check out there terms, this site already follows them.

[Hotskillz]

I would like everyone to keep in mind that when they say that they would be glad to pay a fee, many of us cant to that. I would say about 50% of the users on this site are 18 are younger and we dont have credit cards so haw are we gonna pay? And dont say that we arent important if we cant pay because I would say 50% is pretty damn important. And the certain number of clicks is ridiculous, Ive done that at warez sites and you never end up finding what you are looking for, just an endless maze of porn and MOD chips. I think we need to try get some bigger, important companies advertising their banners, Eurekamovies is great but we need some real advertising in here. Im sure several companies would be interested in advertising on a page that generates over 1 TB a month. The forum and the DVD players list are 2 extremely important things and without them the site just isnt the same. You should have seen the look on my face when I typed in VCDhelp.com and I got a server not found message, it was like a day that the world stood still.

[KoalaBear]

It's all about bandwidth reduction -- getting the traffic down to manageable levels, right? Here are a few suggestions that come to mind:

(1) Dump the signatures and the ability to quote prior messages. Both are pure wastes of bandwidth.

(2) Alter the forum so that threads are paginated earlier, every ten messages for example. When a thread becomes "hot," less bandwidth will be wasted showing remarks that have already been read.

(3) Alter the forum so that remarks in threads are presented in newest-to-oldest order for the same reason.

(4) Limit accounts to two or three postings per day. You'd be surprised how much bandwidth this step alone could save.

(5) Consider content restrictions. For example, the DivX scene is covered extensively on other forums and has little to do with [S]VCD per se -- why waste resources covering the same ground here?

(6) Update the FAQ, and lock any thread asking a question that it already covers.

(7) Add a reminder to "do a 'search' before asking a question" to the posting rules.

I'm sure there are plenty of other bandwidth-tightening ideas I haven't thought of, but maybe this will get the ball rolling.

[whopp]

How reduce the bandwith usage by..say..30-40 percent.

Simple. use gxipped pages.
ALL major browsers support this (IE and Netscape)
this will add overhead to the server. but use cached pages
that are generated every so so often instead.

What do you all think of this?

[alucard2050]

The day the world stood still, I would have to agree with that. This site has saved me a tremendous amount of time and greef. As a fact I never even heard of VCD's till I came across this site. I don't know much about web-hosting and that stuff but I would have to agree that the forum is the biggest part of this site. How many people actually go to the help topics before they post a question? I am even guilty of it. I think I would focus my attention on the forum, it seems to be the most important part to people and most help for people. Alot of the same questions are answered on the forum. Here's an idea. when a person goes to post a topic it has the title line to what it's about. Why not have that line as an automatic search for keywords before it is posted in the forum. That would cut down on alot of reposts. Thanks to everyone for their time and help...............

[JHebert]

Did a quick search for hosting services and found one that quotes $.80/GB/month or $800/month for 1000GB monthly transfer. This includes a dual P3 1Ghz server with 2GB RAM. The link is http://www.swiftwill.com/

[gambit32]

I am so sad...I logged on to see what's new and *poof* no forum. So how does one fix it? This idea is a little out there, but to save on bandwidth...why not host each index topic on a different board. What I mean is have a board for newbies in one spot. Have another board for ripping separate. Separate urls for each board. It might require a little more clicking for the user, but if it keeps the site up I'm all for it. Also, you don't have all the index topics crammed on one board. Use frames, most browsers should support them by now, so that when you click on index topic it actually takes you to a completely separate site that that particular board is on, but since it's in frames you'll never know the difference. Do this for all index topics. Not sure if this saves any bandwidth but it might help.
As a side note, and I'm rehashing what has already been said, thanks so much to Baldrick, Sefy, Vitualis, and everyone else that has helped me sift through this enormous amount of info. I hope that I check back again and see that the forum is back up.

[zeppage2]

Well, seems as though I was remarkably prescient.

Monthly memberships seem problematic. How would the administrative duties be handled? They are a full-time job in of themselves: late payments, late notices, the extra space devoted to the records of payments received, etc.

My suggestion is a yearly subscription of $50 US. This can be paid via credit card, money order, pay pal, etc. There would be 1/12th the record keeping, etc.

As to the free bandwidth, Baldrick mentioned that 1000 gigabytes were needed last month, surely an amount that would quickly overwhelm any 'free' service.

I don't understand the attitude of entitlement that pervades this site. If someone cannot afford a membership, perhaps they need to re-order their priorities, or simply not become a member. Young people have money, period. If this site is important enough to them, they can make arrangements with their parents' concerning using a credit card; surely this hobby is harmless compared to other 'diversions' available to young people today.

The bottom line is in our marxist society, things cost money. "I don't like it any more than you.."

[WMike]

Man, you want to play, you better be prepared to pay.

One way or the other, somehow the site has to be paid for. If you want to get the info without distraction, subscription. If you want pop ups and so on, then it's annoying.

You folks who are teens? Forgetaboutit. You got more dispensable cash than anyone. You want to use the site, pay up. No credit card? Use mom's and pay her. You can work around it if you really want the info. Otherwise, bandwidth gets cut.

As far as starting another site? Go for it. Maybe if there were a few quality sites, no one site would get bombarded. But if you set one up that's decent, be prepared to get your wallet out!........

[mmitchell_houston]

Well, it was great while it lasted. I think you will have to do all of these four things:

1) Cut bandwidth (no sigs, cleaner HTML)
2) Charge a small fee (I wouldn't pay $5 per month, but would pay $20-$30 per year)
3) Premium content areas
4) More sponsors/ads.

Good luck!

[Anonymous65]

Why not move the forum over to http://www.delphi.com? Or other online forums. Then integrate the forum or this page with the links, reviews and so on to one new site.

[hotmat4]

Hi Baldrick
Its a shame u've got to limit you're services up. I come to this site at lest 3 times a day to check the forums because I've had porblems with my ATI Card and this site is god to me.

I agree with others that you use ezBoard for ur forums because its free and now bad too use.
As with setting up ur own site and getting a domain, I don't if you would be able to setup ur own server in ur own home and buy a fast internet connection. Because I live in England, I can't really give you any prices. My school has done that, setup a separte server with a fast internet connection. Not sure how much it is, but its a good solution and you would have unlimited bandwidth.

[vitualis]

It was a sad day, but I think it was inevitable that commercial realities would come into play. The amount of traffic that this site generates, as pointed out by someone previously, would overwhelm any free service.

That leaves advertisements and/or a subscription/membership fee.

Advertisements, I think, is not a commercially viable option on its own and at best only a supplement.

That leaves subscription/membership fees. Unfortunately, I fear that this may be the only viable option in the long term, but I feel that it would at the same time degrade this forum. One of the great things about this forum was that it was a free exchange of information and ideas and this, no doubt, lead to its popularity. Any membership system would undoubtedly create an elitist sentiment. Although it may be utopian, if this board is to be re-incarnated it would be desirable to retain this spirit.

Firstly, it would be wonderful if all the old threads could be reinstated (but closed). Thus, at least the vast amount of information and knowledge (which would undoubtedly cover most if not all of VCD creation and playback) could be searched.

If a subscription/membership system does arise, I think that a non-member (i.e., anyone in the general public) should at least be able to read, if not post in the forums. A quota system of posting for non-paying members would inevitably lead to abuse so perhaps they should be limited to just reading.

As for paying members, a quota system would be a good idea as it would not only reduce the volume of traffic, but generally increase the quality of posts.

Regards.

[hotmat4]

I've just found a website that you can search the properties of all webhosting sites to suit you.

http://www.free-web-space-finder.com/

There are loads that do unlimited and you can have domain is well. Some are Sub. Domains (not so good) but if you want to you can change ww.vcdhelp.com in a redirections site which goes to your unlimited bandwidth domain.