Another (DOT.COM) bites the dust

[GLADIATOR 2002]

Baldrick

I am not exactly sure what is happening with this site but it is extremely slow and becoming less and less worth visiting, unless of course you hit it at the right time of day or night...depending on where you live. it is a far cry from where it was say 3 months or 6 months ago which is a shame. This site was even mentioned in some of the top websites, like ZDNET. I believe you stated before that operation of the site was dependent on contributions. I understand that perhaps you are trying to do the best with the resources that are available to you/the site...but it is going down hill. I am familiar with your frustration over this. It is very sad to see such a resouceful web site go by the wayside due to monetary reasons. Matter of fact, alot of the .coms have gone by the wayside in the past year or so. But a site that was touted as one of the best, and then one month or so after that mentioning..then oblivion and hardly and it is hardly worthh visiting because of the delays...come on. Many VCDHELP visitors predicted that this site would go by the wayside after it became so public and I fear that they were right. The longer a person clicks on a link or page and the longer it takes and the quicker a visitor just cancels his action and goes to DOOM9.ORG or somewhere else...they never have the problems that this site has...thus the more followers that fall by the wayside for VCDHELP. Is there a solution...that is besides money for bandwidth? In the beginning there was such a wealth of information..and quickly obtained..but now not so. This is my personal feeling of what is happening..perhaps if others view this in the offtopic forum they will comment. Is there a solution and what does it take to make it happen. You started something good..what does it take to continue it? VCDHELP was a unique/one of a kind site and it is becoming second rate....to other websites. Where does VCDHELP.COM stand in the video community on the web as we know it, what are the stats..regarding all subjects of the matter of course. Most importantly..what is being done about the problems.

[d4n13l]

I am hear you. The problem is too much traffic, pure and simple. Perhaps some bugs with the new forum code arent helping things.
Solution? Money.

Here is what Baldrick said on the home pages news section:

We still have some serious server problems some parts of the day as you probably have noticed, many pages does not load properly so you have to reload all the time. The main problem is that our server can't handle all the new traffic so we are looking for a new webhost only for our forum section. Email me if you either wanna help with a free webhost or in exchange for banners or if you know any good, cheap and reliable webhosts.

Perhaps FreeBSD would be a better OS than Windows 2000 for the job. I do notice that this site started using windows 2000 around Jan 1st.
I am not saying this as a joke either, *BSD is a rock solid sever OS, PERFECT for web sites. BSD is renound for its performance under heavy load, it is what Yahoo famously use. This site used to be under Red Hat Linux I think. I am not saying it is Win2000 to blame, but it may actually be hindering the site even more.

PS
If some idiot called shiZZZon says that he is making this happen, discount it.

[GLADIATOR 2002]

I hear what you say about BSD, I have thought about running it as my own operating system, however, there are alot of configurations that you must make to make things happen. Rock solid, yes as reported by the community. In fact alot of ISP's use it as a secret weapon of sorts for troubelshooting and smoothing things out. I don't thing Baldrick would ever go for it as it is a totally independent OS and very little support. At any rate, I don't know what his background his as far as programming and script writing. This site is becoming like sludge. I read all the problems the site is having..but I just cannot believe it is all money related. Perhaps it is like anything else in this world though...all money based and depending on the contributors....well enough said. It is a shame that the public has to suffer at the hands of the monetary Gods. Especially since the ultimate outcome that those visitors are seeking is video nirvana, life events/preserfations mostly.

[d4n13l]

Actually vcdhelp has already run under BSD, about 13 months ago. After that it was Linux, then recently Win2000.

[Baldrick]

I cant do anything about the os on this server, I would also rather have linux or freebsd.

Currently am I looking for a new forum host and also trying to optimize the dvd players lists because it is a mysql killer(very bad optimized) to improve the perfomance.

[d4n13l]

I would also rather have linux or freebsd.

w00t!
8)
I have been switched to Win2000 hosting before too, my original host was UNIX based. I got moved to Win2000 after the sub hosting company (who hosted my site) underwent a big ddos attack. The hosting company just cut their losses and jumped ship. I emailed them when the IP for my site wouldnt even reply to a ping, they explained about the attacks and offered me Win200 hosting or a part refund. I couldnt do much about it and didnt want the hassle of getting a new host, so I just stuck with Win2000 because it was only a small site that didnt have any CGI anyway.

* d4n13l *HATES* script kiddies.