What shall we do?

[video567]

why not go here http://pub37.ezboard.com/bdigitalvideohelp
there are already 13 posts people are ofering advice and posting question. maybe for the time being , but i can give people an option until this matters get resolved. This is not my forum but it was posted in an earlier thread. Ive been using ezboards for the last 2 years .. yeah they have pop ups kinda anoying but youget used to it. especially since its free.

[bvcproductions]

I just want to say that not everybody here drives Ferrari and owns a villa in Fiji or where ever. I know this is the best website to ask for help on VCDs and stuff, but if it becomes payable, i'm not even going to come here.

By looking at the age topic that was placed here couple of weeks ago, i saw that maybe 35% of the people here are teenagers that hardly earn any money. The rest (maybe 60%) are between 20 and 30 years old that work in places like Warner Bros. and that get paid enough money to buy what they want. If you still have no idea what I'm talking about, it's about the paying forums thing. If I had 5 million dollars, I would gladly donate to this site because it's been really great help, but since I only have $30 I'm saving to buy a DVD player, I can't even buy CD-Rs.

If this site becomes payable, then it's gonna be place only for rich people that own houses on the beach and go to work with choppers.

PLEASE KEEP THIS SITE FREE!!!

[septor]

Best bet would be to hold the forums on another website dedicated directly for the forums
I also highly recommend the newest ubb that is coming out which will cut down 3/4 of bandswithe use
I don't know if vbulletin will have that feature but ubb seems like the go ahead
I have a valid ubb liscense to sell if wanted

[Bong]

I wish I had a wack of money too, but I don't. I also don't want to keep seeing good sites disappear. Ads don't pay jack because if you can't afford to buy anything you're not gunna support the advertizers and your dream of "free" is a waste of time. The end result is this kind of discussion. Excellent content is replaced by mediocre, and soon enough there's no point to the site.


Don't mean to burst anyone's bubble.

Bong

[jeex]

i wonder how baldrick even was able to afford it before this 1 TB disaster...

[hitechjunkie]

with all of the (VERY SPECIFIC) H/W and S/W recommendations being made on this forum, and all of the purchases being made because of them, i am surprised that there isn't some way for this forum to reap some benefit (commission?) from these purchases, even if the purchases are made outside the forum.

and those tech support sites? think of how much busier they'll be without this forum. that's got to be worth something to them...

[EricB]

My 2 cents:

First, this is the best forum by far of any I have ever found on any topic. Information is solid, and help comes quickly.

The audience appears to be people looking for FREE information, and FREE tools to produce mostly stuff for amateur video. It defeats the whole purpose if this becomes a pay site.

I really appreciate all the help I've received here, and can afford to pay for support, but I don't believe I would ever pay for the service. I would just keep searching the net, and missing VCDHelp.com

[neomaine]

baldrick,

How about a quick synopsis on the main page of what you've recieved for viable courses of action so far. Perhaps a list of:

Things we ARE going to do...
Things we need HELP doing...
Things we MIGHT do...
Things we're definitely NOT going to do...

...in order to keep this site going as is. There have been a ton of good suggestions and specific areas where the site can be more efficient.

I'm working on the assumption that Thursday brings us a new month and hopefully(?!) some or all of our throughput restrictions will be lifted. How about lifting our spirits with a little 'word from above' to keep the army of minions battle ready for the next life of 'WWW.VCDHELP.COM'?

[PORNOST4R]

Probably the best solution is dedicated server. You can forget normal webhosting for $10-20-30 . There is no unlimited bandwith for that money. And nobody will give unlimited bandwith.
Reduce image size, clean html, move downloads to another server, no off-topic forum, delete all off-topic posts from forum and do not allow people post such topics and messages, find bether sponsors ... These are the steps you have to make.

P.

[jeex]

there are 3 ways this will end;

some miraculous solution and vcdhelpland will be back to its full glory.. very doubtful

this will turn in to a mediocre site not offering something we couldnt get somewhere else.. possible..

either vcdhelp will go away or it will just be crappy excuse for what it once was.. most likely..

lets face facts.. we can hope all we want, but that isnt going to do shit.. you need to take action and do something.. but i dont see people offering to give baldrick a $100 to help out.. i know i wouldnt.. i mean, i really enjoy the site.. and i doubt i'll find another one like it. but all good things never last.. just be glad you had it, if even for a while..

i dont mean to be a bummer or piss you off, its just brutal honesty.. there's no reason to see it for something it isnt

[d4n13l]

Unbelievable...
Changing my earler image to png format would make it a tiny 4952 Bytes.
I know I said that I would shut up about images... but this has to be said, I now PROMISE that I will shut up. LOL
Using this image last month would have saved an incredible 703MB in bandwidth!
Here is the image:

This image is 4.9% of the size of the actual image that this site uses.

There, that is the LAST you will hear of it from me.

Why bother to do away with things like the off topic forum when changing just a single image can save like 703MB in monthly bandwidth? Some of the things in Off Topic are of great help, some of it crap... some of it funny. However, where do you post what will not fit into any other Topic?
I mean if a single image change can save up to 703MB in bandwidth... what do you think optimising the entire site will do? Firstly it will make the site a hell of a lot faster and secondly it will save Baldrick a hell of a lot of $ that could be spent elsewhere. I dont know why people are even worried it will become a pay site. With all the suggestions it looks as though this site will be able to stay free forever. I think the idea of selling CD-ROMs (thank you Baretta ) is very viable.
How many similar sites do you know of that charge membership fees? Porno is the main type that I can think of, but porno is very addictive. I dont think that you could entice people to become members by them showing pictures of TMPGenc on the home page. LOL If the site goes payed membership only it will become a small specialist site, it would not have the mass following it does now, this site is kind of legendary for what it is. I learnt everything about the whole topic of digital video from this site alone. If I came across it as a pay site, I would have just moved on to the next site that was free. I never want to see this site become a Over-Lord-Only site for experts, we need to make the knowledge free to everybody. I would also suggest that if this site were to become exclusive pay members only, it will wither away and die. Then you have the problem of stopping some wise-ass publishing the content of the site elsewhere on the web for free.
I think that a bit more advertising certainly wouldnt go a miss. Whoever said that if people are too broke to pay for membership, therefore will not visit adverts because they cant afford anything missunderstands the logic of peoples thought: I think that they forget that most people dont want to pay for membership because they would rather spend the money on VCDs, DVDs, players, hardware etc... so wouldnt having adverts for this market pay off? What is wrong with wanting to spend your money wisely on things you can keep forever? Not spend it on a membership that has to be renewed all the time. More targeted advertising is called for, thats all. This is a specific market, you have a large audience of potential buyers and what is better - You know what these people are likely to buy, therefore you place specific adverts for them. Simple.
I dont mean to burst anybodies bubble that a pay site is the only way because quite simply, it is not. There are MANY quality free sites out there, the trick is to manage you site wisely and do everything possible to keep it viable. Do I pay for all the knowledge I get from tomshardware? NO. All that has caused this problem is a 3 fold increase in traffic over a month or so. I doubt that this 1TB a month will be the norm, bu when it does become the norm... if it does... then the site will be prepared for it.
I wish people would show a bit more determination for what they want, I cant believe so many peole give up so easily. If all you non-believers just left the site completely then it wouldnt be in this situation. Instead of bitching about the site dying why not just leave, go elsewhere? Honour your promises.
I am trying to take action. My donation to this site was my offer of optimising it fully - Just using my image above in place of the real one will save Baldrick money and help speed up the site. What does wasting yet more bandwidth bitching achieve?

[spiderman2k1]

One thing if you are going to charge poeple there should be rule like not pissing some on else off and say bad wrod to another person.

[Jestorius]

With your trafic in mind and all the registrated users, you have a "Gigant marketplace". You can make a fortune with this site if you can reorganize the site for advertising and can make a deal with one of those advertising firms.

[Xesdeeni]

Baldrick appears to be headed away from a pay site, but I wanted to point something out to those of you who think it's a good idea:

Most of the information here comes from regular people. Baldrick does a great deal to organize it and deserves anything we are willing to give him. But there is something terribly socialist about charging people to access information provided by someone who is not getting a piece of the income for his (or her) work.

Xesdeeni

[Baldrick]

The site will remain FREE. If I just had checked the statitics in mid october this would never happend...I hope to enable the forum on thursday.

I'm testing compressed html now so I want some feedback, if you get garbage on any of those pages please email me and tell what os and internet browser you are using:

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.html

https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.html.gz

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdmoviefactory.htm

http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdmoviefactory.htm.gz

and lastly

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic=15&forum=1&3

[d4n13l]

Hooray for vcdhelp and Baldrick!
Now, all of those people who thought that free was not possible, do you believe now?

[Baldrick]

can someone explain why gzipped(compressed) html pages works for some and not for some using same OS and browser???...it is driving me nuts

[d4n13l]

Two of the links baldrick posted are wrong.
They are:
https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.html.gz
It should not have the .gz applied to the end. If you use
www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers.html it should work OK.
www.vcdhelp.com/dvdmoviefactory.htm
NOT - http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdmoviefactory.htm.gz
ALL of the links worked for me, after I removed the .gz off the end of the 2 links above.
I dont know if I am the only one seeong this but a lot of the text appears to be screwed up. It is way over sized than it normally is.

[d4n13l]

What OS and browser? Are the problems with varied browsers and OS or is it more specific?
It works fine for me under Win98 SE with IE 5.5 and Opera 5. It even works fine with a new browser called K-Meleon which is in like beta release. Are people complaining because they are possibly using the links with the .gz extension? I presume that the .gz needs to be removed and the browser is told that it is a gzipped page that it has to open. I also presume that the same link with the .gz removed is the compressed page and not just an ordinary uncompressed HTML page.
I also noticed that the style of the page is contained within the <HEAD> tags. Is this for a reason because I think it would be better to have it as seperate. Have you began to optimise the pages yet or are you just concentrating on getting the compression working?

[d4n13l]

Just to clear up that what I said a minute ago not exactly correct.
You CAN get your browser to open a page with a .gz extension, it is just that it wont work if you have a download manager set to download any .gz file extensions. So the original links may work for some but those with download managers working, chances are it will attempt to download the page instead of displaying it.

[Baldrick]

No links are wrong, they just work different for everyone. All work perfects for me with all browsers, opera, mozilla, netscape 4 and 6, explorer 5 and 6 so I thought it was no problem using compression....

The .gz and the without is the same file, the webserver autolinks to the gz on the server.

The ones who have complained have used win98,winme, win2k,winxp and explorer 5, 5.5, 6 and netscape 4.7. The os/browser maybe need some kind of "plugin" that is not included in the os by default to get it to work.

[KingJohn]

<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>
On 2001-10-30 13:02:44, Baldrick wrote:
The site will remain FREE. If I just had checked the statitics in mid october this would never happend...I hope to enable the forum on thursday.

I'm testing compressed html now so I want some feedback, if you get garbage on any of those pages please email me and tell what os and internet browser you are using:
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Well I see it, but it wont let me reply !

"Selectdberror"

[d4n13l]

Sorry for saying "wrong", it was the 'wrong' word to use, hehe. It would be better to use the links without the .gz though because some browsers may be configured to pass it over to a download manager. I assumed that the webserver did the auto linking to the html page. Ie. That the .htm would open the compressed page.
I will try the links on another computer I have, one with a new install of Win98SE and IE that has never been updated or plugins added, I will Email you if the pages do not work with it.
If people need plugins to view the site, then have a link on the home page or a script in place to detect if they have the right plugin - if it is possible to test for, that is.

[d4n13l]

Ok, I couldnt be bothered to Email you.. I am on a computer without an updated IE 5.5. It is a "clean" Win98 install, with a clean IE 5.5 - All of the new pages work fine.

[major]

garbage on Explorer 5 Macintosh

[neomaine]

Running NT4 sp4, IE 5.01 sp2 and everything worked.

[pinoy2201]

i run on Win ME, IE 6, and everything looks great on my computer

[TIbrO]

All of those links worked flawlessly for me in Windows XP Professional in IE6. So how does GZ work, anyway? Does the webserver send me the html.gz page, and then my computer uncompresses it and shows it to me? That's pretty awesome! Another thing I noticed is how fast the pages loaded, too!

[Stinky]

Reminder - if your re-doing your images remember to tag them with VCDHelper.com !!

also when you submit a "how to" guide what format should it be in? I just started to work on one.

[w00kiee]

i use gozilla and it tried to capture the file.. it realized it was html and offered to send it back to the browser.. i clicked yes and it loaded up nicely in ie (5) if you dont HAVE to have the .gz extention would be nice if you could dump it.. other wise i can take the association out of gozilla.. just an extra step and i dont mind.. but if it could be done easily on your end even better