Judas

OK.... Of course Zardon, your major choice... but just consider it....

Jeff and Andrew might know how to do it easily... i'm not completely sure how it all works though so bare with me...

The DH homepage is static... Theme images/layout wise.. reguardless... not an issue....don't worry about that just yet... just making a simple point that with being on Dial-up for a good majority of my life of the internet (it's been a year since i first got highspeed).... that just recently, i've been on dial up again, the website is agonizingly slow as sin.... however, for me... just barely bareable... the main page loads within a dialup's reasonable time... (bit on the slow side considering.. but theres alot there).... However, the forums are just outright slow as all hell....

OK... an idea i've had for awhile...

Without having to hack a single thing (i think, i don't know much about the forums).... I think you can solve and even help out bandwidth wise with a adjustment of themes.... Even provide highspeed users with another option even...

Here's the idea....

Currently Guests and majority of members (below average active or not at all) use the standard Blue heaven theme, what if the standard theme was setup with by default, NOT showing signatures/Avatars/ the lowest quality buttons/images, you name it for pure speedy dial up users and guests. but before doing that, making a duplicate of the blue heaven theme as is so those that have highspeed and still like it could still use it....

Now i know, users can set an option in there profile to disable these certain things or whathave you... but with a lower quailty images or just less of them right off the bat, will still provide what is needed.... and will allow dial up user to even access the profile without waiting 10 minutes to get there...


Now i had another idea that would work with it.... but would probably most likely require hacking...

Making a Low speed/Highspeed button that would simple be a quick Theme change, that would switch between the low speed bluehaven, and the the normal blueheaven theme (if no other theme has been selected before so it could be set to "previous theme")

Now i know it would be a pain making a highspeed/lowspeed for each theme... but i figure just a low speed blueheaven would be just fine...i guess if demand was there.. it wouldn't be to hard to tone down the other schemes...

Only problem i could think of is certain images not working.. say for instance the Medals ( don't hit me ! ), i'm not sure how the entire forums works.. .but i'm guessing the medals may not be theme dependant, but user specific, they have to be hacked in right? am i correct..... if that's the case and there are plenty of these kind of examples... i guess the idea would be somewhat scrapped as that wouldn't allow for being without (reasonable) for the high bandwidth users, so there wouldn't be a change.....

Just an idea.... i've always liked the idea of having a "Low speed" "High speed" option for any site i visit....

erg... brain hurts... need sleepy!

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mainman

Well i've been talking to Judas and i think its a very good idea, if the demand is there and we think there is, this would be a great benefict to Dh users. Its now up to Zardon, Jeff and Andrew to figure it out. Im all for it.

Zardon

I read your whole post and I have to say (no offense as I love input and you have given some good ideas in the past) judas I think the whole idea is utterly useless - I can understand a "low speed/high speed option" if the site was massively graphically intense or had a total "flash" based site option. Users can already turn off sigs and stick with a lower bandwidth theme like trulyheaven and im certainly not hacking the site to remove images this would also mean advertisements if it was done properly, right? - people on broadband would use this option then the site would have no income - its bad enough as it is already with alot of our regulars running ad, popunder blockers. Its an ugly job but I have to balance income with outgoings - as much as I hate the ads, its the way of the world. Unless I was rich.

The only way to feasibly make a theme with low res or no graphics for dial up as "default" is to remove, all the graphics - advertisements, and create ultra low res graphics for everything, which would totally destroy the look of the place. And what happens if a new guest comes to the site on broadband, joins up and as many do doesnt even bother looking in the options, this "low res theme" is seen as default and they think "man this site is ugly im not hanging around here". Alot of people cant even find the profile option to edit their information never mind a low res/high res option! Then there is also the fact the advertisers pay for ads on every page. not just a high res theme.

I also have to strongly disagree with you on the forum being "slow" - I have tested the themes with dial up, and certainly a few take longer to load than others, but it should be only the first time upon loading as everything will be stored into your internet cache. The site is not dynamically graphically changing so your browser wont need to redownload anything apart from updated textual posts, and if the signatures are causing issues there are settings to turn them all off, thats built into the forum software (but hey I guess if people cant find that, they wont find a highres/lowres "toggle" either). As for the server delivering enough bandwidth its capable of pumping out 12,500k a second up and down on the T-line and ive never seen the bandwidth above 50% or the dual xeon cpu(s) time above 5% with 900 users online so it will handle the maximum delivery speed for almost anyone who comes here. Dial up will always have certain limitations of course, but ive found the site to load adequately fast on the themes and if you arent repaging everything into your cache everytime you come here its a few minutes wait first time only for graphics etc to download even for those on the worst connections.

Judas

banner adds would have to stay, those aren't an issue for most dialup issues as they usually aren't that large, and i thought there would be the ability to say, when a person joins... that they would be prompted for the choice of highspeed or lowspeed... got to agree that if a guest was browsing and found the initial appearance disgusting.... less incentive indeed... ...... as for bandwidth... i know DH doesn't have an issue.... but i figured over a years period... it's easily add up.....

btw... i guess dialup with 14.4kb explains the extreme slow preformance.. (you would be serprised how many people are stuck with 14.4kb connections still.... and those people are paying for 56kb connection yet)

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Zardon

hey, keep the suggestions coming , we always listen. might not always agree but we listen !

swimtech

Hey guys,

I use dialup from home (y'all may have seen me reference this before) that connects at anywhere from 16.8 to 21.6kbps - about a third of the 56k rate.

I can vouch that the home page loads slowly (sometimes a full minute) but it is something that I am used to (as I'm sure other dialup customers are). The forums, on the other hand, are actually rather snappy (count to five and it's up), even compared to what I see at work (where I can download regularly at 400kbps) which loads pages just about instantly. I do not frequent the Heavenly Visions very often from home though - for obvious reasons...

Just some input from someone who posts, and fits the demographic of your topic...

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

Zardon

Thanks Swimtech, nice of you to offer your experiences. ive had a few emails from people on dial up over the months saying that the forum is fast for them and I occasionally test the site out to make sure everything is as sweet as can be. Certainly there are little gifs and jpegs we could optimise a little more in places and thats something ive been meaning to get around to, but it would only be reductions from 5-3k in some instances. I think the killer on this site would be the signatures and thankfully the option is there for those to be disabled on a user per user basis. The medals etc, well they are only a few k each and once they are loaded into the cache, they wont need to be reloaded for every user who has one, as they are already paged.

We have a total kick ass server guys it will deliver the goods to the best of your lines ability.

pr0digal jenius

Being a web design hobby-ist (lol..that's my official title) I have to fully agree with Z

The only way to optimize the site is trash the adds, which means it won't be free anymore....and nobody wants that

However....the one thing i can think of that might speed stuff up a LITTLE and shouldn't be too hard, is to thumbnail images, or ideally only thumbnail those that exceed a certain size. I have never actually done this before though, especially nto in a forum setting, but it would speed thigns up a bunch if all images over, say, 2-300K were thumbnailed so when you clicked it loaded in a seperate window and you didn't hafta load the images if you didn't want

Judas

i was just thinking specifically that a special theme could be introduced for low bandwidth users....this would allow for improved or more complex images or overall forum styles to be loaded.. for instance the animated gold medals... purely an example...

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Zardon

Just to recap

we already have a low bandwidth theme, truly heaven, which is selectable in profiles. All other profiles arent exactly hogs, and you can remove signatures in them all to further help. ads will never be removed as I need every view I get , especially when more people are removing them on their own accord, forgetting that all this actually costs money, its not free to me. if it was i wouldnt have ads, and for those who remember, initially I ran the site without ads and paid for all the costs myself for around 5 or 6 months, then the site got too large as we needed several server upgrades, people forget all this stuff.

As for adding animated gold medals, I dont see a need, it just uses more unnecessary resources, kind of the opposite of your whole idea.

Andrew275

Also, just to repeat what's already been said, what's the point when the graphics are cached anyway?

Judas

i didn't know the truly heaven theme was more slipstreamed..... as for the animated.. i was thinking enhancements for high bandwidth users...... (just thinking of the advantages that could be taken controll of without worry for dialup users...) ....btw, i'm not trying to sell my medals

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Zardon

ok so the thread regarding themes for low bandwidth optimisations has changed into a thread now for high bandwidth users with animated medals etc? how about i make a 100 meg flash version and have andrew work a portal package into flash for me? that would be nice

seriously though, thanks judas but I think things are working well as is. we have more than enough options already for anyone, in fact ill go as far to say, I dont think there are many forums on the net, even on newer packages than this software with the array of options we have from gold members to a medal system with oversized avatars and flash sigs for specific users. its pretty well kitted out as is without being massively bloated.