What shall we do?

[frodobagins]

"...there is no honor among thieves.."

the majority of this site is dedicated to ripping off and dubbing retail material... and you're going to ask these people to start paying you now?

good luck asking a bunch of deadbeats to now start anteing up.

OTOH, there are alot of legitimate members who frequent this site- come up with a reasonable membership fee and you can count me in.

btw- i can't believe an electronics/hardware manufacturer hasn't picked you guys up- there is a *wealth* of usefull knowledge here- not to mention a tremendous number of people ($$) surfing through.

[The VidKid]

HeY!
I've been with VCDhelp for over 2 years now, and they have helped me with everything from DVDs to SVCDs to VCDs. They even helped me with my presentation about CDs. (I even told the class "For more information on VCDs, SVCDs and the like, visit VCDHelp.com)


Anyway, onto the topic of "What shall we do?"

I remember this one site that was around 12.99 for like EVERYTHING at unlimited.. but I can't seem to find the URL.. but for now, here's something else (sounds fishy to me, especially by the name of the place.. but ah well)

- UNLIMITED space
- UNLIMITED transfer
- UNLIMITED POP3s
- UNLIMITED databases
- Control panel
- $9.99/month

http://49pence.com/

=======

Anyway, with that out of the way.. maybe going through each picture of How To and What Is and trying to get rid of any pictures not needed. Maybe cutting down the huge picture to just the file menu or whatever should be noted, rather than showing the entire window?.

As with the forums, I wouldn't mind one or two pop up addes, and a couple of more banners per page, but the paying thing? I don't know.. I think it will just be a hassle to you as well as us.

Yes, the offtopic forum has to go. We don't need bandwidth going to waste for someone proclaiming that Elvis is alive.

All in all, this is a GREAT site.
Easy step-by-step guides, and a help forum to top it all off. You can't get helped any better. GREAT JOB!

P.S. -- TurboRunner's idea for getting capture card retailers to sponsor this site. I'm all for that!!!

[HillJack]

Like JoeBob said, I skipped a few posts and if this has been suggested already, I'm sorry.

Almost every internet account, dialup or high-speed, comes with free webspace. I know that @Home here in Canada gives you 10mb/e-mail account, and your allowed up to 7 e-mail accounts - thats 70mb webspace for free.

1) Put screenshots from howto's and the like on those free accounts (if yours doesnt have one, find someone who has one - you can have mine, I don't use it and LIMIT the # of screenshots - we don't need shots of EVERY screen. Maybe even crunch/jpg them down to 50% their original size and link to a 100% version somewhere else... I certainly don't look at EVERY shot, if you need to see every single shot then you can click on another link.

1a) Drop any sample X/S/VCD's that are hosted on vcdhelp.com to conserve the bandwidth.

2) As it has been said, drop the off-topic section; this is a VCDHelp site, not a lame who-can-post-a-stupid-news-item-first board. Granted, there are some good posts in that forum, but this really isn't the place for them, atleast until bandwidth becomes free for all

3) With utils and stuff, link to the writers website instead of hosting your own copy(s).

I quite enjoy this site, its been a godsend several times and pretty much got me started on making my VCD's. I visit it at least 3 times a day.

4) Don't charge people access. I personally pay enough to access the Internet, I'm certainly not paying to access a forum, regardless of its content.

5) Don't implement a "Question?" or "Information" system, that will just double (or triple) your workload.

That's all I have to say. Best of luck with figuring it out!

[HillJack]

Addendum... (I guess we cant edit posts

1b) Or place a "See screenshot" link to a picture in the howto's for people who really need to see a screenshot. Granted (and this is NOT intended to offend anyone) then you should get someone to edit the howto's for clarity and grammar - It's pretty obvious with some posters that English is not their first language. Make the howto's more clear and whatnot, so most people who read them dont NEED to see a screenshot because the description(s) are so well written

[tendtend]

I believe people want this site be back due most to the simple URL http://www.vcdhelp.com, since it is not difficult at all to create a new similar site (just like what have been done by several people here, but maybe few people will be there due to the URL). If the reason is what the owner said, not others that have not been said by the owner, one simple solution is to move several topics to other free web servers, while http://www.vcdhelp.com only provides a link to it. This will reduce the traffic substantially. If the real reason is money or pressure from somewhere, that's another story.

[sean madison]

ShiZZZoN-

OK, this is the only other alternative if nothing else works out and i am definitely up to this.

Your forum is humungous. Nothing needs to be taken off. No one wants to see vcdhelp degraded just as well as i do.
So this is what is up-

I understand that the forum is broadband overwhelming. It takes a lot of power to run that forum.
Well how about this-

We volunteer to be mirrors

I will be one of the people who would definitely volunteer for that. I have a 1.5mbps connection(i know its no t1 or t3 or oc3...)
If you can get multiple mirrors and send us the scripting code, and change all links to refer back to a "main source" then each time the forum is updated, it is updated for all the mirrors.

If you have multiple mirrors, only 1 or 2 people out of 10s or 100s of people would have to be runnin it.
I can run a server 3-5 days without restarting. Down time is 2 min tops

Any questions, email me

[TheInformer]

A short question:
While the current dilemma is being resolved, where can we go to post questions/answers like we did here? Has anyone set up a site to post to temporarily?

[KoalaBear]

Let's look over the suggestions offered so far, and consider some of their implications:

Subscription Fees -- Logical as it might sound, the idea simply WILL NOT WORK. For example, there are already people who have the nerve to "bump" their postings when they haven't gotten an answer to their question in an hour. Can you imagine what these people would be like when they adopt the attitude that they *paid* for this advice, thus you'd better frigging give it to them?

Alternative Web Providers -- There is no such thing as "unlimited service," at least not where a terabyte a month is concerned. Sounds to me like the current web host was pretty understanding under the circumstances. Another ISP might not be so lenient. Changing providers should be regarded as the alternative of last resort, not the first, unless you want to develop a reputation for stiffing providers on bandwidth surcharges and moving from provider to provider every time there's an unexpected spike in the traffic.

"Free" Forum Hosting -- Has anybody considered the logistics of this idea? How would you transfer 17,000 accounts (or even 1,000 active accounts) to another system without forcing people to reregister? And if they did, would they have the same quality of features that PHPbb provides, such as the ability to edit one's postings and even cancel postings that have already been published? Several people have created "alternative" forums for use by VCDhelp regulars until the current crisis is straightened out; the fact that people haven't exactly flocked to them illustrates why the idea isn't a viable one.

That leaves bandwidth reduction as the single practicable solution that addresses problem without changing the nature of the site as a consequence.

Looking over Baldrick's usage statistics, I noticed that the DVD Conversion Guide accounts for almost 10% of consumed bandwidth by itself. If the guide is that popular, it would be wise to convert it to PDF format rather than hosting it as an online reference. This would (a) substantially reduce the size of the guide due to text and image compression, and (b) allow people to save the guide on their own system without referring again and again to the web site in order to read it online.

If bandwidth consumption could be cut in half, traffic would have to double in order to become a problem again. And that might not happen if, as people have suggested, the surge in traffic is related to recent publicity in the trade press.

[TIbrO]

Exactly, the forums don't even take up as much bandwidth as the DVD Conversion Guide does. d4n13l and I were talking all day yesterday as we posted these things, and we also noticed that the off topic forum shouldn't have to go either, because it accounts for like 1% of all site traffic. It is indeed the images in the guide, and all over the site, that need to be optimized.

About that paying for a community thing... It was the closest analogy I could come up with, with a city who needs tax money to fund public schools and what not. But getting info from your neighbour wouldn't cost you money. But owning a house would costs you mad property taxes and all of that, so you have to pay that to even have access to your neighbour. As for that nightclub analogy, you have to pay to get in there in teh first place. Once you're in there, you will most likely buy many drinks and what not as well... either way, you would walk out of the nightclub with much less money than when you came in.

And like I said before, I am all for free stuff as much as the next guy, but I am saying that I would pay to keep this site running. I donated yesterday again after the second page of this thread was formed. Have any of you donated?

[bbb]

Tibro,

I think you should sell all your anime belongings, your bike, and mortgage your parents house and give all the proceeds to Baldrick. That way, he might just have enough to pay for a couple months of webhosting service. He can even making you an honorary member.

[WMike]

The internet is learning a fundamental principle. "You get what you pay for".

It's been a great deal so far (free). To keep it the same is gonna cost. To keep it free, it's likely to have to be degraded somehow. I think that would be a shame.

[timmy_boi]

All i can say is VCDHELP was the place to be for me to go to for EXCELLENT HELP!!! and cool ppl to meet on the fourms. Yea im kinda itchy on the fact about paying for usage, because information is free and my internet connection isnt.

i donno maybe splitting the fourms to a diffrent sites, since dvd is really realy big maybe a seprate fourm called
http://www.dvdhelp.com?? i not realy familiar on how hosting works but hey its a suggestion.

all in all this site has been my main place to go. for finding info AND entertainment. and myself (like alot of people) would hate to see a site like this go down in any way.

[ngnr]

Guys, you may want to keep one thing in mind when you consider making this a pay site - you are essentially asking people to pay for information that they all contribute to. The information, or at least a good bit of it, comes from the posters, the same people you are considering asking to pay. It's a bit of a stretch to think that people will continue to contribute if you are expecting them to pay to do so. What will probably happen is someone else will set up another free site and the traffic will migrate there - maybe one of the posters above who has already suggested this. I'd hate to see this site go that way but I believe that is exactly what will happen if it becomes a pay site. Just my 2 cents worth.

[d4n13l]

This I cannot believe...
I looked at the image that I made an example of optimsing in an earlier post, what I found came as a bit of a surprise...
I noticed that it was a gif, fine for screen captures, the best type to use - But, the image has a picture of a clip from The Sopranos. Gifs do not deal with photos very well... you have to apply an effect called dithering to it to make it look better, the downside is that dithering uses a lot more bytes. I noticed that the gif used looked like it had dithering applied to it.
I made an identical screen capture:

This image is only 35Kb - I didnt apply ANY dithering to make it look prettier. Now compare my image size to the actual image that is used by this site.
Actual image = 101645 Bytes
My image = 36864 Bytes
Ok to save some maths lets just say that my image is like 36% of the size of the actual image (36% is very close to the actual difference in size).
The total amount of bandwidth the actual image was accountable for was 775262896 Bytes. That was over a period of 1 month.
Now, 36% of 775262896 is 279094643 when rounded.
The difference between the two is
775262896 - 279094643 = 496168253.
496168253 bytes would have been saved if my image were used in place of the actual.
496168253 / 1024 / 1024 = 473.18 MB!!!!!!!
473.18 MB of bandwidth could have been saved just by my image instead of the actual image.
This is quite frankly amazing. Remember, this is 473.18MB of bandwidth that could have been saved just by using a different image.

People think the forum is like the number 1 bandwidth hog? ROTFLMAO!

[d4n13l]

BTW, the actual image is:
http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgenc1.gif
Also, I did not reduce the resolution of my image, if I did the amount saved would have been even more.

[tendtend]

OK, if ask for money, just say it. Do not be shy, otherwise it wastes the time of so many nice people who contributeed the method of reducing trafic.

If not for money, we should have enough methods to reduce the trafic, so get the site back, please.

[d4n13l]

I think that I should remind everyone that Baldrick has already stated that he hopes to keep this a free site. He also stated that he wants to keep the forum and lists as they are. It would be more beneficial if people would bear his wishes in mind when posting.
Baldrick, could you post more statistics at all? Like every single stat that you have if possible, the more people know the better. Instead of posting them here, you could post them on a blank page for us to read and just give a link here.

Unless people know a lot about web hosts, then please refrain from posting hosting information. I have noticed that a lot of people do not seem to know what "unlimited bandwidth" means. The needs of this site are quite advanced and specific, you really need to know the needs before you can suggest hosts. Baldrick perhaps you might post an example of your hosting needs?

BTW, could it be possible that the recent high interest has been down to a few links to the site given in magazines? I think that if there has been a massive increase in traffic over a short period then this may be probable. I would think this highly likely if you are now finding traffic is subsiding. All this could be a temporary "flash in the pan", if a sudden high exposure in the media is the cause in a surge of interest. Have you noticed any signals that most of the extra traffic came from the casual interested surfer that may have just read about vcdhelp or vcd's in a magazine and saw a link?
A history of statistics would be very helpful, ie. if you posted the stats from previous months, before the sudden increase.

[major]

my 10 cent suggestions :

- find a serious unlimited bandwidth host; i used to host at webhosting.com who charge $80/month for unlimited bandwidth (however I never got more than 20 gigs month) on Unix and redundant OC12

- optimize what you can

- find good partner programs (everything from Amazon to anything possible who pays you money or % on sales)

- install a good rotating banner script like http://awsd.com/scripts/webadverts/ and add ads on top, bottom and right corner of all pages.

- run all the partner programs, and delete all those which get bad results; also replace banners with click conversion less than 2%.

I guess it should be possible that way to pay the hosting and more.

[d4n13l]

Damn it! I cant edit my last post (Baldrick - can you activate the Edit function?... Please? hehe).

Every time I read the threads, I find something else to say.
I noticed that some people have suggested having the guide as a d.load only. Well, this is like a catch 22 - The problem is that the people will HAVE to d/load about 4.2MB (in the case of Sefys new guide he sent me as a pdf, which I zipped down to 4.2MB). It is 4.2MB of bandwidth used... or nothing - If people want to read ANY of the guide then they will have to download 4.2MB. What would be better is to have both. You could host the pdf elsewhere (free ftp? mirror to reduce traffic?) and make constant links to it in the HTML version. This way it will hopefully reduce the amount of individual repeat visits to the sites guides: These repeat visits to the guides will probably not bring in very much revenue anyway, since they are specific "in-and-out" surfers. They know what they want and dont hang around clicking on adverts.
The guides are also very image laden, if they were all to be fully optimised then maybe they wouldnt be so much of a problem. As my earlier post demonstrated, optimisation will reduce the bandwidth by a huge amount.
i think that with mass optimising, more adverts (seeing as there is now a greater audience to attract advertisers), a E-commerce deal maybe? and the delegation hosted material then vcdhelp.com will become an extremely viable website that will last for years to come.


Hey, another idea, more "reminders" in the guides and forums for people to donate if they want. It couldnt hurt... hehe

[thefuzion]

hmmmm..

i think that a lot of good idea´s have been brought up, on the last three pages, so i dont really have anything to say about that.

What i DO have to say is, As much as i love vcdhelp, reading the guides, and hanging in the forums, i would NEVER pay for access. Not because im a cheapskate, but this is not the only site i use frequently and if/when all others start to do the same, all of a sudden its 5$ here, 10$ there and so on.

What i mean is, if you have a few interests and frequently visit some sites that deal with that topic, and every page charges money all of a sudden you are paying maybe 100 - 200 $ a month just for accessing different pages and/or boards, and on top of that you pay for your internet access.

Maybe its just me, but i do NOT make alot of money, and i have alot of expenses already that i have to cover every month...

well, .my 2 cents..

[d4n13l]

Ok, sorry to be a serial poster....
I worked an even smaller gif:

This is 27308 Bytes in size.
To save typing out all the math, it is about 27% the size of the actual image.(http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgenc1.gif)
Using this image will save 565941914 bytes of bandwidth.
565941914 \ 1024 \ 1024 = 539.72MB
Using the above image in place of the actual will save 539.72MB a month in bandwidth. I think that the image above is acceptable quality, I would not go any lower though.
Remember, this is 539.72MB of bandwidth a month that can be saved, JUST by replacing the actual image, with the above image.
ONE image saves 539.72MB bandwidth a month.

PS
Do also note that this is the amount that could have been saved last month, using the previously posted stats.

[d4n13l]

sh*t!
Above image link is:


baldrick... dude... please give us the edit function back. Please.

[WMike]

When you pay a fee for a web site, you're not paying for the information. You're paying for the forum to give you access to information.

Hey, I'd like it to be free. If that can be done without degrading quality......GREAT! If not, do what has to be done. Maybe there are other sites, but obviously there's something attractive about this one

[TIbrO]

Baldrick, definitely let d4n13l and I redo all of the images on the site for you. Another thing, we need to let Sefy know the new rule about images at VCDHelp being super optimized index oolor GIFs. He writes a huge guide, and all of his images are big fat JPEGs.

So after all of these days of suggestions, it turns out that the images in the DVD Conversion guide are to blame for the Terabyte traffic! Boy am I glad Baldrick wasn't out for cash from us, cause I sure wanted to give him mine!

Hehe, and good one... about the anime stuff... Nothing is getting my anime! I paid for that with good, hard-earned money!

Oh, Baldrick, how could we go about doing this, anyway? I mean, if you let d4n13l and I work on it... would you send us the images, or would we have access to the webserver?

[d4n13l]

Ok, I promise... this will be the last you hear from me on the subject of images.
Get this... 8972 bytes:

I cannot believe that I just didnt do this in the first place. Seeing as the image is best saved as a gif... and gifs dont do photo imagery to well, why not remove the photo imagery! This gif is a measly 8.8% of the size of the same image used in the guide.
This picture will save a staggering 674.19MB if it were used in place of the actual image for last month that it is designed to replace. And it doesnt even need to be reduced in res, it is not even worth it anymore considering the size of it!
674.19MB saved in bandwidth because of a SINGLE IMAGE being substituted. Crazy isnt it?
I will stop now... I fear I am beginning to sound like a broken record. But I hope that everybody gets the point; it is the simple things that make a big difference.

[pinoy2201]

ooh man!!!! i could have minimized mah images on mah guide that might of help out..(i was young didnt know better )

[tigerwolf]

just a couple of thoughts. While optimizing the site would help a great deal, if the bandwidth of the site has been increasing the way it has. It is quite possible that it will continue to increase, so optimizing would be a short term solution. That is if the people surfing here continues to increase and it wasn't just due to a few articles in magazines and the people flowing through will shortly slow again. You could incorporate a few ideas here.

1. First anything that shows low bandwidth and not much
usage could be moved to a free server Basically break up
the bandwidth some, but for this to lower costs you would
have to use free servers or hosts that would be willing
to support you,for some of it, otherwise you
you are still in the same dilemna.

2. optimizing the site never hurts.

3. I'm not sure limiting posting as aggressively as some have stated would be appropriate, but putting a cap on posting would assist, as well as how long you keep the posts. Also you could keep a longer archive in a downloadable archive and possibly make it available to supporting members only, basically as an added perk.

4. add the forum search feature to the search page that is linked on the left. I know at least when I first got here I misunderstood that there were two different searches. By adding the forum search to the search page could keep duplicate posting down, note COULD, LOL.

5. Possibly contact the writers of the articles about your site and see if they can offer any assistance, whether in referrals or seeing if their hosting site would assist. It never hurts to ask. Sometimes writers have contacts and friends that can help.

6. also on posting caps set different limits for different forums, such as the off topics, while I enjoy off topic forum, you can limit how many posts are done to that forum per user.

7. And my last idea, would be to study feng shui. If its suppose to help at home and work, why not on the internet. LOL.

have a great day,
TW

just some thoughts.

[Bong]

I totally think that this deserves to be a cool pay site that is supported by it's hobbiest members.
We're all dropping coin on our toys like burners, blanks, chips, cards, etc - it's totally realistic that we drop $5 a month on a site like this.
I hope everyone agrees that we save far more money as a group than we would individually scowering the net for tech answers.


Bong

[Beretta]

I've seen a lot of very good suggestions. I have one of my own to add:

Why not offer a product to help defray the cost of running the site?

For example, you could offer a CD that has all of the tutorials, samples, and freeware tools (with the authors permission to redistribute of course). In addition, you could probably get places like Eureka Movies (one of your advertisers) to supply you with short clips (10-15 seconds) of movies that they sell. You could probably charge $15-$20(US) for one of these CD's.

For those people with dialup connections (still the vast majority of Internet users) this would, in my opinion, be a pretty good deal. With modern CD's you can cram ~600MB onto a CD, which would take the average Joe days and days to download. And, to further enchance the attraction of the CD's, you might even include some stuff that isn't available on the site. (perhaps archives of the forums posts). Or, make it a subscription type deal. i.e every 3 months you get a new CD with the latest and greatest tutorials, software, and stuff for $15.

Costs for CD duplication are around $1.00(US) per CD when done commericially, and if you figure maybe $1.00-$2.00 shipping, you'd still profit $12-$13 each. All you'd need is a couple hundred subscribers to turn a healthy profit. Granted, it wouldn't be enough to retire off of, but it would be enough to run the site, and even probably pay for a small staff (1-3 people) to make it a full time job.

At the very least, I'd suggest opening a poll to see what the interest would be.

[Hotskillz]

I would pay a $20-30 yearly fee, IF it can be paid by money order and I think many of the under 18 people on here would agree. To all the people that say we have plenty of money to burn obviously you have forgotten what it is to be a teenager. Things are more expensive than they were in "your day." I would pay the fee but you're going to see a steep drop in the popularity of this site, in fact I doubt that you will see anymore 1 TB months.