Forum updates, info, costings and plans

[weeksy]

So, despite this forum only being 24 hours or so old i can already see it's going to peak very quickly

costings by Steve Weeks, on Flickr

So i've taken the step and put some more money in the pot to upgrade us to the

Website Hosting - Business Web Hosting Package

100GB Disk Space

1000GB Bandwidth

10 Unique Web Sites

Unlimited Email Accounts

Unlimited MySQL Databases

I think this should do us for the next 12 months... I certainly hope so.. but even if not, the incremental information and payments counts towards the upgrades to the next level up.... But there's only 1 more level above this anyhow which is 'unlimited'

[Nidge]

Mate just say the word and I’m happy to pay whatever sub price is decided

[weeksy]

Currently i don't even know if that facility is available within this forum/phpBB.

I'm trying at the moment to install an 'extension' which will allow likes .... It all looks like i've got it done correctly but for some reason it's now showing in the customise part of the menu/forum.

[weeksy]

Wow... well i got the 'styles' working using the FTP process... but DAMN do i not like the new one... Hahahaha.

I'll see if i can have multiple styles so people can choose, but this one is 100% a fail for me.

[weeksy]

SO this scheme seems to be about the 'best of the rest' as far as 'free' styles go... But if i'm honest, i prefer the standard 'prosilver' myself.

But i'm up for thoughts from you lot.

[weeksy]

We now have THANKS buttons....

We don't have Smite or Dislike though i'm afraid. Thanks is all i can give you currently... And that was hard enough !!!

[Yorick]

Just random thoughts about costs and newbies.

Some good things I have seen from other forums....

New members need to be authorised, so they can't start spamming straight away

New folk get 5 or postings before they have to become paid up members. Nominal £10 a year.

That can be upped to higher level for another £10 to get PMs etc.

I can't seen anybody being to tight to help you in your new venture. A quick look at TRC showed only about half are Supporters. Strange.

[joe19]

What about https://www.patreon.com/

I support a few thing via that.

[weeksy]

Let's not worry too much yet Joe. It may thrive or it may die quicker than we can count to 100. Until we see how it goes, then there's nothing to lose sleep over.

[weeksy]

Just random thoughts about costs and newbies.

Some good things I have seen from other forums....

New members need to be authorised, so they can't start spamming straight away

New folk get 5 or postings before they have to become paid up members. Nominal £10 a year.

That can be upped to higher level for another £10 to get PMs etc.

I can't seen anybody being to tight to help you in your new venture. A quick look at TRC showed only about half are Supporters. Strange.

I've added a process for registering that should help with spammers. I did have it set so newbies have to have posts authorised but removed that for now, as the site grows I'll see if it's needed to put back on.

I'm not going to force people to pay, I'm not planning on adverts. But a few have offered some funding, at this stage I'm not going to accept.

[GuzziPaul]

I'm quite willing to subscribe a £10 a year. I was/am suprised how few regular users of TRC are not supporters, BUT, I do agree forcing people to pay after so many posts would limit the discussions and growth.

[weeksy]

OK, so in the last 2 days since starting off we've had a few requests

'Likes' DONE
'Classifieds" DONE
'Donations' DONE
'Youtube' DONE
'SSL Certificates' DONE
'Styles' DONE, but reverted.

I think there's more but i've forgotten.

I've also been messing about with Member Signup settings along with a few other background tasks.

I guess the next question is...

What else do you want that's not here ? No, not the sodding pineapple hedgehog

Regarding the Banner/Header, does anyone actually care about it ? Would you like something bigger, better, cooler ? Or do we really not care and are happy with it being simplistic ?

If you're bored and want to look, look here
https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/styles-2

It will give you an idea of what we can or can't do regarding 'styles' on the forum, the layout, schemes etc... There seems to be plenty of free stuff, plenty of paid stuff. Each one takes 10-15 mins to download and configure.
What i can't see yet is a way to offer multiple styles so we could have say a light one, a dark one and something else.. I can only currently see a one rule for all type scenario.

[MrLongbeard]

I'd not loose sleep over the banner, a nice to have maybe but way down the list.

[Yorick]

One thing I've noticed is that we can't do polls. Was gonna do WSB & MotoGP ones. No biggy really.

[weeksy]

One thing I've noticed is that we can't do polls. Was gonna do WSB & MotoGP ones. No biggy really.

I'm sure I can sort that easily after I finish cycling

[weeksy]

Well that escalated quickly

"You have exceeded your disk space limit."

So i've taken some money out of the kitty and upped us to the latest and greatest package.

It's basically unlimited in everything... Well, so they say, but we know how 'unlimited' sometimes goes in this world

[Yorick]

I'm having trouble uploading an avatar. Max of 6 Kb is hard enough, but max pixels makes it even harder. Hmm

[weeksy]

I'm having trouble uploading an avatar. Max of Kb is hard enough, but max pixels makes it even harder. Hmm

We'll stick it on the list for tomorrow... I'm done with Admin for today

Avatars within the settings are quite easy to change though so shouldn't be an issue.

I've upped them to 110x110 pix

don't forget, the more i allocate the more it eats into bandwidth, space, DB allocation etc... Once more and more people use it, it gets more expensive. I'm hoping the latest upgrade sorts that, but i don't actually know how long before that is applied and updated their side.

[weeksy]

So we're now up to 121 members which considering this only became live on the weekend i think is pretty good.

Donations for the forum upkeep have gone into the pot and our hosting package has been verified as high as it can go. So within reason there's no reason we can't do things like upping the private messages store to allow more than 50... or making changes to other aspects in the same way that will take up bandwidth etc

Next on my list is dynamic linking of pics instead of using the {img] tags that we need at the moment. So i'll be looking into that tonight when i've finished work etc.

[weeksy]

Just for clarity, I've paid one of the Admins from phpBB £50 over the last couple of days using the donate button on his own forum. (LOL maybe i need one of them to make it easier actually)

He's stuck in time, effort and help to get our forum to the way it is, so when i got help the other day i threw him £25 and for a few other things on the case currently i've just chucked him the same.

This came from the forum donations i've had, not out of my own pocket.

We don't need to discuss this on the forum as such, but if you have any issues and want to PM me, then please feel free to do so.

In simple terms, not all of this stuff is easy, sometimes i need some help and without this help, the forum wouldn't be in the position it's in right now, so i thought it was the best way to do things.