Yes, one for the old master, Kestas, and one for that upstart Zultar.

I am too young. I belive that was my first glance at kestas.

Actually, it came out of my overdraft, Jamie, that I perpetually live inside. I've given up alcohol to pay for it. ;)

Haha. Bullshit

I think the best way to look at this is that most sites (of this quality) like this are monthly subs. I'm not just talking dip either I'm talking entertainment. So to donate what you would value the site at is actually a pretty solid thing to do. Every small amount counts, especially compounded.

I've been a member of this site for 7 and a half years. During that time it's cost me nothing money wise. I'd have easily paid 5 dollars a month for the entertainment it provided me. So that's about the amount I made my donation. ~5 bucks per month I've been here.

What I want to know, is what happens if the donation drive falls short?

ALL HAIL THE ALMIGHTY JMO!

Dammit why does that keep happening? I thought you'd fixed that last 'update'?

Seriously Jmo I applaud your contribution to the site. I'm slightly surprised you paid using money, rather than the blood of 1,000 multis.

@ssorenn ... if we don't get the full amount, we'll penny pinch and crunch the numbers as best we can and prioritize our list of ideas based on how much they would be, how much time they would take, and how much of a difference they would make. Cost-benefit analysis, basically. Getting the full amount would make things so, so much easier, but if we don't, we'll still use the money.

Question:

You said donator badges would only last a year. Is that a calendar year (like, they all expire on 1st January) or 12 months exactly from the date on which that person makes the donation that earns the badge?

@Bo, i guess, thank you for that answer.

Simple forum solution: push all locked threads into a seperate archive (including the old purge ones if we still have them). Create an archive search page seperate from the forum (maybe making links to old threadIDs auto forward to the search page). Once a thread is X days dead (ie no posts) it is automatically pushed into the archive - unlike the current system where they are simply locked.

I don't know enough about db design to offer schema solutions or ways to get to them, but it does seem about doable.

Hey orathaic, the problem with that is you have a problem of ongoing maintenance. What we're looking to do is clean up the database structure altogether so it easily supports new features. While what you mention could be done (and in part was with the archival of some forum data) it doesn't solve some of the underlying problems with some of the tables/efficiency of the current site. So by cleaning up the forum, and probably how game messages are stored too, we'll knock out the 2 most inefficient parts of the site and be able to grow a lot more feature wise because of it.

@jmo, yep. I understand, just thinking of a cheaper solution.

The majority of the forum and in-game messages aren't read each day, having an archive would be a nice solution to keeping queries small.

I know enough to know i can't redesign the db to make it more efficient, this makes it smaller so that it is faster without more efficiency. IF we don't reach 10k in donations, i think we have the skills among people who hve posted to this thread to implement it.

I know it may be a worse solution (you get what you pay for). But i think it might function, at least until such time that we have 10-100 times the number of forum users, maybe even 1000...

Let's be clear, if we get 10k, we're already getting a budget solution. I don't think there ARE cheaper options.

And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that A_Tin_Can doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He knows exactly what he’s talking about

Then that goes back to my point, if there are no cheaper options, what really happens if we miss the goal. Let's say for arguments sake we get to 4K. What happens then?

Can't we get some of that sweet PlayDiplomcy kickback? /s

Out of curiosity, how much does the site cost to host? I just want to get an idea of how much WebDip needs to raise every year.

@ATC, did you read my proposed alternative?

It is not a better solution; but it has already been shown that trimming the forum down to size improves performance.

I might even argue that paying for better hosting with more RAM would help 'solve' the problem... Don't know if that would be cheaper. Infact buying $10k worth of server hardware (so you're only paying for rental space in the server farm) might be a better investment. I don't know.

But don't pretend the only option is highly effeicient code. When our forum threads get auto-locked after a couple of weeks, and most people probably don't look at game messages after a game is over.

@Valis, i don't think ATC has no idea what he is saying.

I think he probably knows very well what the standard industry solutions to this issue are. Webdiplomacy is not a standard industry website, and if it can't raise $10,000 this solution is unlikely to work for us.

Okay, So just curiosity. Couldn't we rebuild the site since its open-source. Lock ability to create games here and start fresh with neater coding and such?? and if so would that be less expensive or more expensive?

like im just thinking that if the site is that badly broken internally wouldnt it be easier to just start fresh

I suggest a new feature that easily allows users to view all the threads that they've posted in.

Where does the raise stand

I don't think they need more features to add, leon...
I'll also give you the standard response for frivolous features: "If you know how to code, feel free to add it yourself."

@leon, you can probably use google to search the site for you... They've got a cache.

Just search your username, and after put in site:webdiplomacy.net

"I suggest a new feature that easily allows users to view all the threads that they've posted in."

We actually had this, but it created such a strain on the database that it had to be disabled. I expect whatever forum solution is implemented will contain this feature.