What shall we do?

[mike416]

Baldrick,can't you ask money from those big companies ? I'm sure all the member will back you up. The fact that I know this site from support of Lygos because I asked a question they can't answer and suggest me to look up this site. I'm quite certain that not only big shot like Lygos aware of this site

[pacmania_2001]

Surely with all the computer and video stuff that the members of this site buy an internet retailer would be interested in partnering with this site in a deal where this site would recommend all potential buyers to buy from that site. Also you could offer companies priority listings of their DVD players and Capture Cards in those sections of VCDHELP. Software makers could also pay you to give recommendations of their software to users. If these options were taken users would have to be notified of them so that they can make a proper choice. Another idea is when notifying users that a reply has been made to their forum post that the email contain advertising.

[eatin sammiches for lunch]

WHY NOT CREATE LIKE A FREE HOSTED FORUM FOR EACH FORUM TOPIC.....I KNOW USERS WOULD HAVE TO SET UP AN ACCOUNT FOR EACH FORUM BUT EACH FORUM TOPIC WOULD HAVE A DEDICATED PLACE.. THIS WOULD CREATE DIFFERENT (LESS) BANDWIDTH USAGE FOR EACH FORUM INSTEAD OF HAVING ALL TOPICS IN 1 SINGLE FORUM......MORE WORK...BUT FREE

[beta72]

Perhaps this site.
http://www.asp-world.co.uk/
October offer. $9.99
Not Monthly But For A Whole Year
E-books Valued at over $200
Sub-domain (yourname.asp-world.co.uk )
NO BANNERS OR POP UPS !!
Unlimited Web Space (Usual 300Mb)
Full FTP Support
Full ASP Support (DSN-less connections,MS Access support etc)
CDONTS
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH !!!!!!!!!!!!
E-mail Diversion
Certificate of Registration

[TurboRunner]

Hi,

To the subscription. It is a bad idea as people release their solutions and expertise on this board for free and they are not asking for any money for their expertise then it would be a crime and a killer to the site to use their expertise and make others and them pay to recieve and give help.

I'm over 18, I do not own a credit card and even if i did I would probably not want to risk releasing the number over the Internet for hackers to get a hold of and use.

The best solution is to go with the free services as ezboard or other free messageboard and as gambit32 said even split the catagories up to there own separate messageboard and use a frame to join them together.

Then you could maybe keep you website on the same domain or if not goto a free webservice

Maybe have a few banners as they are not too bad but the pop ups form of advertising are anoyying.

If the Domain cost money and you cant pay it from sponsers or banners maybe drop the domain and use just the free webhost address that they provide as once people have been to your site they can simply add your site to there bookmarks.

like pacmania_2001 get magazines, Manufacturers of the capture cards, VCD creation Software companies(probably the paid software) and retailers to sponser your site.

As this site not only helps the users but also the manufacturers of capture cards as this site has probably solved alot of problems and has probably prevented alot of emails to technical support and maybe even the return of the product.

Hope this helps on you decision

[hvr]

distributing the forums sounds like a good idea;
I've setup an experimental forum space at

http://forums.vcdimager.org/

to cover vcdimager related topics...

alas, since the host I'm using is vcdimager-project-bound I can't take over all forums hosted on vcdhelp, otherwise I could lose that hosting solution...

...but there's a big downside to distribute forums, people might have to register for each differnt forum-site... so that's no real solution...

[hvr]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
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?
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

does gzipping on the fly work with dynamic content (as generated by the various .php scripts, especially for the forums) as well?

gzipping would be great for the forums... but the load might bring the web server down to its knees...

[Peter]

Setting a max for the postings each day isn't good for the board. If people can post a few messages and not more, they will not help another person so quickly! People will get less replies.

[macko]

As President and CEO of an internet e-commerce company, I see you have only one viable solution to keep this site going. That is to make it a pay site. I want to know why people think that getting information from the internet should be free. It is a reality that over 90%, Yes 90%, of the original dot com's that started in the 1990's are now gone. Most of these companies or organizations failed because one, they offered their products at too low a profit and ended up in the red, and two, they offered services for free. People, especially those youngsters out there, must realize that "someone" is paying for the upkeep of this site(or any site for that matter). Again, why should they bear the burden of its costs? I want to address the issue that "half" the members are under 18 and could not afford or do not have a credit card. This is a poor excuse. How many of those "half" spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on video games and other "toys"(don't say you don't, a walk through Compusa, Electronic Boutique, or Software Etc will prove this) . Maybe they don't have a credit card, but I am sure their parents do. I am sure their parents would allow them the funds if they saw the usefullness of the service they were buying. With the traffic that is involved in this site, it would appear getting over 1000 members would not be difficult. A fee of $5.00 to $10.00 per month would be an acceptable and practical amount. Your site has helped me greatly. The time I have saved and the knowledge I have gathered is worth many times more than $5 to $10 per month. Addressing the credit card issue again. If you fear using a credit card on the internet or don't have access to one at all, don't forget, we still have something called regular mail, aka, snail mail. Obtaining and mailing a money order is very easy. Even a person under 18 can get one at the post office, convenience stores, or the bank. My company receives hundreds of orders a week from customers paying with a money order or personal check. So in closing, I want those people who have used this site to think about how really helpful it is. For those new to the site, look at the articles and tools available and decide if this storehouse of information is worth a couple of bucks a month. I believe you will realize it is. And for those with attitudes that they can get information free on the internet, why should I pay for this. I say to you, will that site or sites be there next week or the week after? Paying for the upkeep of a site increases its probability of a long future. Regards.

[Stinky]

Baldrick,

First thanks for everything (that should go without saying)

Second can you breakdown what parts of the site generated the most traffic? Some of us have web server access and might be willing to host the images or other tools - but I need to know what caused that much traffic.

Third, and I've suggested it before - but the "Off Topic" forum should go - too much traffic for NOTHING - there are a million other places to talk about your favorite color or other non-vcd topics!

If your not comfortable posting the stats about what caused the most traffic then email them to me and I'll see what I can help you with. Send me a copy of your "stats" page or the report your ISP sent you.

[pinoy2201]

macko what happens to us teens who are younger than 19....Dont u get it us teens dont have credit cards and extra cash...i would love to donate some cash but most of us teens are flat out broke!!!!!...ur talking beacuase u are a president of a company and u make lots of cash!!!!!!!...there must be a better way of keeping this site up and running without the fees.

[Stinky]

Oh also - your site is using PHP and MySQL correct? I may know of an unlimited bandwidht host for you. Your needs are a Linux/Unix flavour server correct? not IIS I would assume.

[d4n13l]

Baldrick, I am glad that you have created this single post for people to express their views, I hope I gave you the idea in my email to you .
As to whether paying for a membership, I really cant say, would enough people stay? And what about enticing new members? Would a fee put them off? You could charge a yearly fee to post in the forums, that would make sense. You could make the forum read-only to non members then, or part of the forum read-only at the least. I must say that I did a hell of a lot of reading in all topics that were available. What about the competition out there, how do they structure their sites?
On a more technical level, could the content be more streamlined? Optimise the images even more, optimise the HTML even more, optimise all function fully.... If this has not already been done that is. Deleting all posts older than say 2 months. I think that the compression of pages seems a good idea to at least look into. Finally, the obvious - find a cheaper host and try to generate more paying advertisers.

PS
These points below have been mentioned earlier, I think that these steps alone will solve your problem for the short term... maybe even forever.
<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
(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.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

[dumwaldo]

i read many forums and all the forums seem to share one oppinion and that is that vcdhelp is the place to go for technical help. this is a very respected forum IMHO and i think it could be restored if these other sites were to donate some of their resources. what i am suggesting is this... contact the administrators of of sites like that place with isonews or that other place with binnewz or some of the several other sites like that and make some deals. make a trade with them that if they host just one section of the forum then you will allow links to their sites. then you make a forum home page that is local on your site but when someone clicks a section they are actually carried over to another forum. i can see many benefits of a system like this. first and foremost it would help defray the workload of the forum over many hosts insuring the entire forum can not simply dissapear in one days time ever again. another benefit would be the ability to freely share the information that some of these other sites offer through postings on your forum.

anyway hopefully this can be worked out... best of luck baldrick

[Mdanner423]

Hey!

Ok, i agree that we may need to pay a SMALL fee for the capture card and dvd player lists, because those are really big, but really usefull!

But, on the forum, there are tons of FREE forum's online, so why would one pay for what is free?

Matthew

[TIbrO]

I started coming here a month before I turned 17, and I am still here. I've also donated to the site before, and now it is going down because there are too many people.

As much as I love the Off-Topic forum, which is where I eventually ended up spending most of my time while at this site, it has to go. That forum almost caught up in number of posts to the other forums about real topics in no time. Clearly that forum has to go. It is unrelated to VCDHelp.

About a quota for posts, that's a double-edged sword, because if you have a quota, then you might use all of your posts on the first five threads you come across, then on the sixth, you know the person's exact problem, and the solution, but now you cannot post to help them... But the site stays up.

As for us teens having no money, that's almost 100% true. However, Mister CEO over there was right... I've done the numbers before, and I have spent about $10,000 since 1997 on video gaming consoles, their peripherals, games, and computer hardware, as well as games for the computer. Not to mention other things, like GamePro subscription, arcade visits, and cigarettes... the list goes on.

There is something called PayPal, for those who have no credit card. It links up to a bank account. If you have a job, an email address, and a bank account, you can use PayPal. This is my preferred method of payment on the internet, and is what I donated with the first time.

And I completely agree with those that said if you can't pay, you can't play. I've been here for almost one year, and if Baldrick decides to start charging, I'm all for it. Everything in the world revolves around money... There is nothing in existence that doesn't require some kind of money. Why would VCDHelp be any different? There are tons of registered users here, and a fee of $30 from each of them every 120 days would ensure that this site stays up.

What should be done is this: Implement some sort of account system for people. Everyone can access the website, period. People who want to access the DVD Players section, What Is sections, and various other sections to be decided later, can do so for free. If they need to access the Capture Cards, Comparisons, DVD Hacks, Guides, Tools, and Reviews, they must pay a one-time $5 fee for unlimited access to these sections.

For a one-time $10 fee they can register at the forums and access the entire database of posts infinitely, and you get a 7 day trial with this initial $10 fee. So for 7 days after you registered, you have a full account, and you can post and reply like the people who pay $30. This fee is seperate from the $5 fee above for accessing the mentioned sections.

Moderators and Administrators should not have to pay this $30 fee. But they can donate if they wish, because they are already donating their time and effort to all of us by even attempting to keep this site up.

So it breaks down like this:

$30 - Full Membership for 120 days - Access to every section and the forums, with message post quota of 5 per day. Quota value can be raised and lowered based on how much the specific user pays. If he or she wishes to pay more than $30 every 120 days, they can pay an additional fee of $1 per extra message they wish their quota to be raised.

$10 - Trial Membership - Access to the free sections. Can also access the forums as a Full Member for 7 days. After these seven days, the user can access all of the free sections, and can read-only from the forums forever.

$5 - Limited Membership - Access all free sections, and can access the Limited Member sections which include Capture Cards, Comparisons, DVD Hacks, Tools, Video Reviews, and Video Recorders. This membership also lasts forever.

I don't know if my suggestions are realistic, but I wrote them according to what I am personally willing to pay, as a teen with a part-time job who never has money... Yet I can smoke a pack a week, play DDR several times a week with $20 bills disappearing every time I go, and has a Wireless Intellipoint Explorer that runs on two AAA batteries. Ofcourse this is also a mere rough draft, that Baldrick would have to accept and revise and modify so that it makes more sense and all...

[d4n13l]

I forgot to mention a minute ago...
I also found that your site was unreachable yesterday, just like you said it was down on your news section on the homepage. I did a few tests and found that there was a massive network load going on in the region that does your hosting. All of the last hops on the route to your site were under servere load, tell-tale signs of a DOS attack going on somewhere: It looks like vcdhelp.com got caught up in the cross fire of this - The same thing happened to one of my sites the other day. I could be wrong because I didnt look to far into what was going on, but a DOS attack seems as the probable cause of why your site was down. Your hosting company may have been the target.

[Stinky]

I found the info on an unlimited bandwidth host with a 500 meg limit in space - thats should solve it all - 9.95/month --- email me

[Baldrick]

I hope to keep everything free and keep the forum and all the lists as they are, I have found some ways thanks to all your ideas.

I will first try to use gzip(compress the data) where it is much text such in the forums and in the lists. I didn't now that was possible at all but found that it is very easy with php....but it might be too CPU demanding.

Then will our current webprovider http://www.eurekamovies.com help us move the site to a cheaper host and continue help us pay for it in exchange for banners, the http://www.swiftwill.com/ host has very good data transfer rates...I dont believe webhosts that says unlimited data transfer rates.

And last I hope to monitor the data transfer rates better so I can be more prepared but it was kinda surprising because in june,july,august we had about 200-300GB data transfer and two months later 1000GB.

But all this can take some time so you have to wait.

More ideas are of course welcome.

[SatStorm]

Hmmm...
Some people wrote about pay services, etc... Do that only if you want to create services for americans. Elseware, ain't work.
I think a solution may be like this:
Create a start point page, a home page like http://www.vcdhelp.com/phpBB/index.php you already got
Put some adds there, get some money.
This page is a link page to 4-5 seperate forums, hosted in free webspaces like ezboard, etc...
Use a couple of pop ups. Let's say every 3 posts, 1 pop up. Ain't that bad...
Make it impossible (ok, difficult is the right word...) to access those pages direct! You have to follow the order I wrote, so to visit the adds...
With all this, maybe will work for 2-3 years more.
From the other hand, you need e-commerce. International one. But this is a whole new post... You offer free information and also some solutions. You read somewhere: "you can do this and that" and you say "That's cool, but I don't have it all, I need this, this and this to do that. Where I can find it?". If Vcdhelp can offer solution to those needs in good prices, it is a hit. But this needs online shop,etc. Ain't easy...

Anyway, I'll be very sad if Vcdhelp close. I love the place and it helps me a lot. There are alternatives, don't think that vcdhelp is unique. But the alternatives ain't that good as Vcdhelp... Don't waste what we got here...

[d4n13l]

baldrick, for people tpo really be off help, they need like the site stats to see what can be done. Without stats people can just speculate about things that may not even be a problem.

[TIbrO]

Aw maaaan...
But having pay services would solve just about everything.
Hehe... oh well.
What ever you all decide, I will support it!

[Bullworth]

I'm kinda divided on the whole issue. I don't really like the idea of paying for information that I have always obtained freely. On the othert hand it is true that reality for these guys is quite different and they can't just keep paying for this site without earning any really revenue, it's just not the way business is done. If they are willing to ask for a nominal fee, I would agree to pay for it. This site has been very beneficial to my understanding of digital media.
Many people are complaining that they don't want to give out their credit card number. Get a Visa Bucks card, you can establish a low limit and once the card is used only you can recharge it; or do what I do when I place an online order. As soon as the charge goes through I just report my card lost, you get a new number.
I have to agree that some members are too young to pay, some parent might even think it's a waste of money. On the other hand many teenagers do work these days and do have money, they just want to spend it on other things. They'll give $500 for a PS2 and $50 for each game but they won't give money for something they think should be free at any cost. Sorry, not ragging on you guys, but it seems to be the mentality I see in this generation, not all but alot.
Gripes aside financial reality is giving everyone a rude wake-up call. I'd hate to see such a great site go so I say make it pay. Get rid of unnecessary part like the off-topic forum, sigs and quotes. Probably merge forums like capturing and conversion and the like. Wish you guys the best!

[Baldrick]

I have reduced the size of all images with more than 50% as they stand for almost 30% of the total transfer.



here are the top sections that take much bandwidth...i have closed most of them temporarily, this is for one day total of 40 GB:


<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Item</th>
<th>Bytes</th>
<th>%</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> <a href="dvdplayers^2ephp/directories.html" target="directories">[
/dvdplayers.php]</a><a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/dvdplayers.php" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">4,054,287,490</td>
<td align="right">9.63</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right" height="22"> <a href="DVDConversionGuidev1^2e4/directories.html" target="directories">[
/DVDConversionGuidev1.4]</a><a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/DVDConversionGuidev1.4" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right" height="22">3,817,070,540</td>
<td align="right" height="22">9.07</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> <a href="phpBB/directories.html" target="directories">[
/phpBB]</a><a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/phpBB" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">3,068,453,808</td>
<td align="right">7.29</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> /<a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">2,426,621,654</td>
<td align="right">5.77</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> /dvdplayershack.php<a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/dvdplayershack.php" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">1,937,579,580</td>
<td align="right">4.60</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> /vcdtools.htm<a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/vcdtools.htm" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">1,464,337,674</td>
<td align="right">3.48</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> <a href="http://www.vcdhelp.com/VCDImagerEasy_v1.0.1_VCDImager_v0.7.10_CDRDAO_v1.1 .5.zip">
/VCDImagerEasy_v1.0.1_VCDImager_v0.7.10_CDRDAO_v1.1 .5.zip</a><a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/VCDImagerEasy_v1.0.1_VCDImager_v0.7.10_CDRDAO_v1.1 .5.zip" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">1,126,367,210</td>
<td align="right">2.68</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> /tmpgenc1.gif<a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/tmpgenc1.gif" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">775,262,896</td>
<td align="right">1.84</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> <a href="avitovcdfoolproofusingcce/directories.html" target="directories">[
/avitovcdfoolproofusingcce]</a><a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/avitovcdfoolproofusingcce" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">705,673,250</td>
<td align="right">1.68</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> /capturecards.php<a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/capturecards.php" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">615,402,756</td>
<td align="right">1.46</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> /convert.htm<a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/convert.htm" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">472,212,946</td>
<td align="right">1.12</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> <a href="toasf/directories.html" target="directories">[
/toasf]</a><a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/toasf" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">434,736,518</td>
<td align="right">1.03</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> <a href="reviews/directories.html" target="directories">[
/reviews]</a> </td>
<td align="right">382,548,392</td>
<td align="right">0.91</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="right"> /faq.htm<a href="../referrersbydocument.html#/faq.htm" target="referrers">
[Referrers] </a> </td>
<td align="right">367,280,414</td>
<td align="right">0.87</td>
</tr>
</table>

[d4n13l]

Please no pop-ups. That will just drag the site down, pop-ups just serve to annoy, like blind links: This is not a porno or warez site, pop-ups will annoy the hell out of people. There are many quality sites that are free and have no pop-ups, this will hopefully continue to be one of them.

[gf]

Try limiting the message body size, more how to to cover other software like virtual dub, avisynth,..., and if so get some more advertising like other web pages, I mean this site gets enough hits a day.

[d4n13l]

Get rid of the smileys.
= 2 bytes (or whatever) in ascii.
= 590 bytes of gif.
Animated gifs are even more.
I am sure people can live without the pretty pictures and make do with ascii smileys. I dont even think that the forum is a major problem, nothing a bit of optimising and cutting down will not solve. It only accounts for 7% of bandwidth, how much smaller can you make it?
Using multi-hosts may solve some headaches, use free hosts wherever possible.

[sullen]

I really have no clue about how to reduce the traffic problem at the site, but I will give you some thoughts.
1)Just like others have mentioned about the program TMPGEnc, I would pay for it and this site. I am sorry to say that I have not donated to the site before, but will be doing so with my next paycheck.
2) I absolutely, positively despise pop-ups! I get enough of those elsewhere.
3) Would making stuff downloadable make a difference? Make the most recent guides downloadable instead of hosting the space that they occupy. You could also take the DVD player list and compress it to the different things people have reported they do and use a star system to rate the players. I understand this would cause problems with someone compiling all of this information. Then as new players come out just do updates on the player list. That way you download the main list and capabilities list in one zip and then just the updates.
Like I said, I have no idea about how hosting works, just my two cents.

[septor]

Ever thought about trimming down on the html and images
those alone are bandswithe consuming
Also the advertisements would hurt but it has to be done
as for hosting files let me know I can try to help out
email is septor@yahoo.com

[TIbrO]

Definitely making all those jpgs into interlaced, index color gifs, with smaller resolutions would aid in the guides. People who make the guides and use screenshots should do this before submitting it to Baldrick since he has to use his time on other things pertaining to the site. Use Index color Interlaced Gif files! Plus, when it is a screenshot, you don't need to have it at 100% res of the real window, use 50% or less. People will get the idea even if the image is not at 100% size of the screenshot. Clearly it is teh DVD Guide that uses the most bandwidth. Perhaps making it a downloadable PDF would make things better. And make the download $5 or something, hehe... I mean, users of this site SHOULD have to pay SOME money, even those who would have to go way out of their way to try and donate. Atleast if you charge for something, you know you'll always get some money. Optimizations will only do so much, because once you have everything optimized, it will only last like a month, because more people will register and join, and browse the site! The only real answer is to get more income by either charging for something on here, or getting lots of ads that are not popups. So how much is it costing right now, Baldrick? Is there like a counter somewhere with the amount needed to relaunch or something? Hehe... I am going to go donate some more money right now.