copland007

Please don't take this as a bashing or start flaming....

BUT

No search = no user for me

Shout out to all the great members who have made this ride a good one. I have learned a great amount from the wonderful discussions that lined the walls of this community. I can't even begin to thank those you have helped me both directly and indirectly.

I find it hard to justify paying for such a basic usage as searching. I hope this decision does not bring too much unwanted bandwidth, because I for one would sit here thumbing through hundreds/thousands of threads looking for what I once knew to be at my finger tips.

Cheers!


-copland007

snook789

Search is the most server load intensive option on this site. And feel that it is a very small amount to to pay to receive this feature, and many others, that are included in a paying membership.

Be sad to see if you left, enjoyed having you around

copland007

Very true, CPU utilization probably goes through the roof with all the searching. But I thought all this drama was to decrease the amount of bits per month transfer. I don't see how the ends justified the means in this case. Unless your ISP charges based on CPU %, which I doubt (and hope).

I completely agree with the direction of needing to cut back on bandwidth, and I guess I don't know enough to understand the drastic need for CPU cutbacks.

I just thought that the ratio of bw/search was more important than cpu/search, but maybe that isn't the case. What I mean by that is the amount of resources saved by restricting searching. i.e. How much bandwidth was saved vs how much CPU utilization was saved by restricting search.

I would think that by restricting searching more bandwidth would be used by users manually reading lots of threads trying to find what they need, even though less CPU utilization would be used.

Is the limitation of the hardware hosting this site becoming more of a concern than the bandwidth that this site is producing? Does either one of those two concerns outweigh the either in the monetary value? Could the capacity of the hardware (and the costs related in upgrading) in the short term outweigh the cost of the bandwidth in the long term before the capacity of the hardware is met?

At any rate (no punn intended), it was your decision to make, and you made it.

-copland007

ArN 2000 TL

It is bandwidth intensive as well as CPU intensive because of those people who use vague search terms like 'pics' or 'rims'. Many forum sites that provide knowledgeable content are a pay for service type (at least the successfull ones). For such a small annual fee it is well worth it, not to mention all the other features that come along with it!

daverman

The search feature is one of those things that will attract new users to this site.

I doubt that a search is any more bandwidth-intensive than a plain jane forum listing. Limit the output of the search to 60 entries at 20 entries per page and you've economized the bandwidth without sacrificing functionality. As far as server load goes, don't worry about it, put the search thread at a lower priority than the message server thread and I'll wait while my search executes

AFitchTLS

Hopefully other members will still be able to insert a link to another forum that pertains that topic & if not, then just look elsewhere I suppose on the internet. This place isn't the only one you can find information for, go to AOL.COM or GOOGLE.COM & do search on whatever you need, or just ask other member who has been around so much longer & hopefully they will be able to help you out!!

Speedy3.2CL-S_RENAMED

Search is not bandwidth intensive. If you don't believe me, email the makers of vbb. It is only CPU intensive.

oblio98

for 8 1/2 cents a day, you can have search, plus a bunch of other stuff. It is not too much to ask, IMHO.

:-jon

copland007

I guess that underlines the motif. The ends don't justify the means. I am sad to see that search was disabled to attract/lure members into upgrading their membership.

Please excuse me if I am out of line, but it looks more and more like search was disabled as a means for making membership look more appealing, and not to address the fundamental problem which was presented: the need to reduce bandwidth, which I was referring to in my above posts.

I don't mean to sound rude, or out of line, this is just my impression of the situation based on what the community has been presented with and my background of ISPs.

-copland007

SL1200MK4

I feel you man... but the truth is that they do need $$$ to keep this site running...

We get a catch 22 here again... If a newbie post a question that's beaten to death... What should we respond with? Use the searcch function? Doubt that everyone's gonna help him out with all the info he/she might need. So, the quality goes down...

That's how I look at it... I respect the fact that this site needs money to run, but guess it can't be like the good old days

crmsnidol

I think you hit the nail on the head with that one.

snook789

Oh man I could not disagree more.
You know how you talk about the "gold old days" ? You referred to them in the other post as well.
Well the gold old days with all of us being a bunch of newbies asking questions and talking to each other on this forum about them.
Now someone asks a question, you just see "use the search feature it has been discussed here before"
Where is the interaction ? I mean really, if that is the case, almost everything has been discussed before. So why ever post a post ?
Its not just to get the answer, but to interact
So let the newbie ask their question, let a long time member try to help him, and use the search feature himself to point the newbie to a post discussing it, and answer the question for the newbie.

copland007 you do not know, from what you speak.

marko

I agree with copland007.
For us Canadians it is plus 65% (current exchange rate) and I do not believe that search feature increases bandwidth so it becomes a problem. I can understand the need for money BUT Search should definitely be a part of very basic membership for free. Lets see how many people are going to pay.

nameeri

Copland007 dont do it man, we need people to stick around that have satin silver beauties like you and myself. get the gold membership i think its worth it. its not that much money at all when you break it down.

copland007

Please enlighten us/me then.
And please correct me where I am wrong.

If you refer to comments I made regarding your (acura-tl.com's) decisions, please correct me; I am all up for constructive criticism.

If you refer to my knowledge around the subject of ISPs and data transfer and bulletin boards, please understand that I will diligently defend myself. I am fluent in many programming and scripting languages. I have been actively programming and scripting for many years. I have been scripting bulletin boards since before the days of ub2k, vbb, yabb, and ubb... I have been beta testing and bug fixing on almost every single bulletin board system to date (no joke!) I excel in sql backend-ed perl and php applications. I do know what I am talking about when it comes to programming and bulletin boards specifically.

None of that was meant to be anger or flaming, I am just stating where I come from for the record so everyone knows that I'm not just another punk kid with a keyboard and mouse

I am just trying to understand from the facts of the case of what is happening and has happened.

From what I got from all the drama is that this site was producing a large amount of monthly transfer as posted by both you and ArN. Then a tremendous amount of posts focused on ways to streamline and reduce the monthly transfer.

I am just trying to look at the situation logically, from a technological standpoint. Looking at all the options that were presented vs. the action taken. Trying to look and evaluate which would effectively reduce monthly transfer and which wouldn't.

Then throwing in a membership fee into the picture, looking at what features should be included in the membership and what shouldn't.

So I guess what I have been trying to understand and remain focused on in this thread is whether or not searching meets these requirements on both sides and aims at the solving the problem that was addressed.

If there was more on the table than just reducing monthly transfer, fine. If the problem being addressed included more requirements than just reducing monthly bandwidth while retaining a member base, fine.

I don't want to keep going around and around or piss anybody off. I really do love this site and how you have run it and kept it running. And I will most definitely pay for the premium membership because of the other benefits that outweigh the cost (most notably the savings on parts ordered). But this won't happen until I am ready to make my next purchase

I hope I'm not venting too much. I just took what we were given and interpreted what happened. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

-copland007

copland007

Tim,

I really do appreciate this site and all you have done. Please don't get rubbed the wrong way by my comments.

I will continue to enjoy this site probably for the life of my car, and more

A lot has happened in the past week or so, and the smoke is still settling. My initial post in this thread I believe was a bit pre-mature because I did not fully understand the complete benefits of the membership fee (most notably the savings on parts ordered).

Feel free to close up shop on this thread.


-copland007