Website Outages

[Gavin]

Yeah...at my other site the link to Amazon is actually a sticky thread...no ads or banners...just a thread stuck to the top...very mellow.

Gavin

as an added note...i like the affiliate link idea, the paypal is ok and so is having a "pro" member status thingy (pay a bit a year for it), but ads...gah...anything but that is my thought....

[DrPowell]

Mike, how much $ is needed to bump up to the next highest service level?

[evnow]

With the affiliate link we have raised many hundreds of dollars...It works seamlessly and the site you like gets money from purchases members would have made anyways...seems a win win...

There could be a paypal link for members to donate as wanted...

There could be mild advertising too...but please no audio ads.

Or a combination of the all of that...

This looks good. Anything but ads with graphics. They are the primary reason why so many sites are slow.

But one thing to note - we are now @ 500 members. By the time the first Leaf is delivered, I expect a thousand or so. In a year, we may have a 10,000. In other words, we should expect exponential increase of traffic for some months.

[garygid]

Where are you hosting?

Change the defaults so that many emails going out for each new post is NOT the default.
Perhaps make each notification cost the user 5¢ from a prepaid user-account, to encourage only using the email notifications when necessary.
Or, limit notifications to 2 per user per day.

The PM notifications are probably few in number. I need to turn mine off.

Adding ads will slow down the refreshing of each page. This forum is clean and fast. I suggest trying to keep it that way.

I host at 1and1.com and recently they went to unlimited traffic. Their charges seem very reasonable.

I am willing to donate, and I do not mind an occasional outage.

But, try to minimize the problem first, with "better" defaults.

[garygid]

We can all help.

Each post can actually trigger hundreds of emails.
Help reduce the unnecessary emails:

Click "User Control Panel" (at the upper right) and "Manage Subscriptions" (on the left), and un-subscribe to any topic that is not necessary. Also, un-subscribe to all Forums, unless you have a "special" need.

You might be "subscribed" (getting emails) and not realize it, and not really want it.

[evnow]

Gary, I'm assuming Mike already did what was needed about the mails.

But thats not the only thing that can happen - so in general if the service level is low, we are going to get such outages. More reliability costs more money ...

[garygid]

As I understand it, the problem was not "reliability".
Apparently the site was shut down because it was producing "too many" emails.

Perhaps the "higher cost" service allows more emails, but "spam" detection might still get "triggered" as the forum grows.

Also, the higher service level might phone (rather than just email) the owner whenever there is a problem.

How much do we need to "raise" for a "service" upgrade (be allowed more emails)?

But, a "feature" of being automatically subscribed to any topic you post in can cause many UNWANTED emails.

I just turned off my "notify of PMs", and checked that I was not subscribed to anything.

[Azrich]

It is funny though...I was, help, I NEED some LEAF info right NOW....which is kinda crazy...the car isn't coming for months...why would I NEED info right now?

Gavin

Gavin, I was in the same place. I need my LEAF info fix for the morning. I need to hear cool things about the LEAF so I know I'm making the right decision. Yikes.

I believe this site will be even more important once our LEAFs begin to arrive. We'll be asking for advice on extending range, adding extras, and comparing repairs and battery charging. This community is great and I'll do whatever I need to do to keep it up and working -- donation, membership, whatever to keep it open.

Thanks, Mike, for managing this forum.

[TimeHorse]

Well, for the Pro account, I'd pay if you had advanced markup like subscript and superscript and embedded TEX math markup for advanced formulas entry like on the PhysicsForum.

[bigtlb]

I like the Amazon affiliate link and PayPal options.