Forum status - Important

[Czar]

The invite thing wouldnt be good because so much quality people come casually, and we would want to discourage them.

My proposition for giving him money (besides donating which is ofcourse acceptable  ), is for Chris to make CDs out of ALL the POSTS ON EVERY FORUM (as someone mentioned that CJ does), and then sells it,
because he said he wouldnt want to sell AGS (LIES I TELL YOU, time will tell), so why doesnt he sell Nostalgy and unnecesarry, illegal information?

C.

[ThunderStorm]

Great to see the forums back online.

BUT - The fact that the forums go down and come back without the competitions forum just when - for the first time - I had planned to enter the tune contest and actually made a midi makes me believe in murphy's law again.Ã, 

[Czar]

But there is an antidote to that!

Louise L. Hay!


(maybe this is TOO useless as a post?)

[Pumaman]

Ok, I've received quite a few e-mail suggesting possible web hosting.

Whilst I do appreciate the thought guys, perhaps I should explain the problem better.

This is not a bandwidth issue, and it is not a disk space issue.

It is a server CPU load issue. This is something that you'll hardly ever see a web host talk about, because it's not really a measurable quantity. You don't get a hosting account with a 20% CPU allowance -- it's all just what the provider deems reasonable.

Kicking out members with no posts won't really make any difference.

CPU load is caused mainly by SQL queries, which happen whenever you read a page on the forum, make a post, read your PM's, etc.

One option which would definitely solve the problem would be to move AGS to a dedicated server. This is a lot more expensive than our current hosting, but would mean that there are no other users on there to need to share the CPU with.

Fuzzpilz has kindly offered to host the forums on a temporary basis, but we're having some technical issues getting it set up. Hopefully we can sort that out before long though.

[MrColossal]

can we still kick some users...

I have a list!

It may not help CPU load but it will help loads!

[Pumaman]

Certainly! I think a posts-to-content ratio would be most appropriate here.

In fact, I'll start right away.

I hope you enjoyed your last post here, eric.

[mätzyboy]

How is the current webhosting financed? Maybe some kind of membership, possibly giving some kind of privilege (maybe as small as a forum title), with a monthly/yearly fee could finance a dedicated server?

Oh yeah, good to see the forums back. IRC proved itself more fun than I thought it to be, but I can't wait to see the Critics Lounge ant the competitions forums back online...

[rodekill]

Phew.
Nightmare averted.

[pcj]

Great to see the forums back online.

Hope you get your problems sorted out.

[Erwin_Br]

Hmmmm, I'd say drop the non-AGS specific boards (like critics lounge) and move them over to Adventure Developers.com, which will balance the active users a bit 

Sorry, I coudn't help myself. 

This is quite a problem, because you can't consolidate the CPU load with another server, because of sychronosation issues. An expensive dedicated server seems the only solution indeed.

--Erwin

[Traveler]

Hmmmm, I'd say drop the non-AGS specific boards (like critics lounge) and move them over to Adventure Developers.com, which will balance the active users a bitÃ, 
--Erwin

I think it's better to keep everything in one place. Critics' Lounge is an integral part of AGS, getting rid of it would be a bad idea.

CJ: how much would be a dedicated server per year? Let's see the numbers (if you have any) and see if donations would cover that. After that we can still go back to decide whether to shut down part of the forums.

(I'm a new user on the forums but I'm following it for more than a year. Techinal forums, game announcements and the Critics' Lounge were the main reason I registered.)

[Ishmael]

Hmmm.... less nothing doing memebers = less SQL queries.

No, wait...


I misread the concept there, everyone else was talking about bandwith... but CJ did say CPU load. Hmm...

[n3tgraph]

heh good luck with the forum problem CJ

too bad you've disabled the forum parts I only visit 
oh well, shouldn't spoil my fun

[Nacho]

Yeah... The forum parts that have been disabled seem to be the ones the people misses most... but that's logical, considering that it's been the popularity of those forums which caused the crash! 

So... not much to say... Good luck CJ! We are looking forward to seeing all the forums back again, in all its ways, but don't feel preassured (I am working more than ever in games is this lately days!  )

[SSH]

Hmmm, I realise that if I'm going to announce my imminent daughter's birth, then I'll have to make a game about it in order to have somewhere to post! 

for those that are interested, release date is guaranteed to be no later than next Wednesday, becuase that's our induction appointment...

[Blade]

Sorry to hear about problem. I thought about one solution - could someone pay for one more bandwidth to put some parts of the forum there? It would be just like you click on e.g. Critics Lounge and get redirected to the second forum. That could split the CPU between two servers.

One more question. What to do if you're looking for something on ags home page and it's disabled? Especially the games. Am I wrong thinking there's no other place on the net that keeps the AGS games? Well it's understandable there isn't but what happens if I'd like to go through the games some time to pick one I consider enjoyable and can't find them? Could something be done? Like one more games/FAQ directory?
I know it could be hard in some parts. Don't yell at me, please, I'm just asking.

[HillBilly]

Dammit, can't we just get critics lounge back and make the beginner technical questions a direct link to the manual? 

[Czar]

Sorry to hear about problem. I thought about one solution - could someone pay for one more bandwidth to put some parts of the forum there? It would be just like you click on e.g. Critics Lounge and get redirected to the second forum. That could split the CPU between two servers.

How strange, or not so strange, but we had teh same idea.
I think that could work well, tho' there would be some glitches with the Moderators and moving threads, but as i recall, the Crit. lounge was never causing too much trouble, so simple locking would be fine.

But then again, would we be forced to use doulbe login and registration?
But then again again, i think we are all willing to sacrifice our post number in order to have the CL, and save CJ some bucks, even untill he gets enough from donations.

How much does the ded. server cost anyway, Chris?

C.

[Ishmael]

SSH: Seems so Well, you have a professional art director there

lelev: If the AGS page is down, doesn't mean you can't downlaod the games. It only means you cannot access the database, and AFAIK there is no other place where you can find info on all of them. You can find all MAGS games from http://www.mags-competition.tk though...

HillBilly: Sounds like a good idea But that would leave Scummy, Rich and Gilbot unemployed and flood CJ's PM and Email inboxes...

[Blade]

lelev: If the AGS page is down, doesn't mean you can't downlaod the games. It only means you cannot access the database, and AFAIK there is no other place where you can find info on all of them. You can find all MAGS games from http://www.mags-competition.tk though...

That's my point - there's no such place, and it's not only about games but some technical archives and downloading AGS, but there's probably nothing that could be done about it.