Random Images Feature Removed

[ClaremontPhoto]

I am so sad to see that Random Gallery Images has been removed due to RangeFinderForum's popularity.

There are many commercial advertisers here who can easily pay for the webserver, and we could keep our images online, and as a major feature of the site. One of the advertisers could even pay to be the sponsor of the gallery.

The Random Gallery Images were only a few thumbnails anyway and could not have had a significant effect on the server. I run websites myself and would not mind about the popularity of a central feature of a site with a low bandwidth requirement.

Suggestion: Put the Random Gallery Images back and do away with the Classifieds; there's more of them on the front page.

 

[Richard Black]

Jon,
I concur! I thought I had lost my settings before I realized the random gallery just disappeared. No advance notice was provided, unless I missed it. Hate to see it go!

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

Jorge once tried this exact same move and had to restore it because of people here saying they wanted it back.

 

[BrianPhotog]

Jorge (or Steven),

I run a photo website with similar popularity (PhotoMalaysia, not the CV one in my sig 😉 ). It does ~60GB in traffic/mo and serves ~40K pages daily. It also has the exact same basic setup as you: vB+PP. We've also has traffic issues on and off, like you have.

Here are a couple of changes that helped us:

Front-end: Disable the "who's online" in the /forums index. This is actually a HUGE drag on resources, especially if it's set to "alphabetical" but even if not.

The random image block from PP isn't that big of a deal.

Back-end: Change your mysql config file to allow MySQL to make better useage of memory. If you database is large (ours is ~500MB) then you need to increase it's ability to use RAM, otherwise it's stuck with the same limits as someone with a 1MB database. If you need some examples, let me know.

Server: Increase RAM. But you still need to change your mysql config otherwise the RAM increase is pointless.

Hope this Helps 🙂

 

[rover]

Due to the increase in traffic and the heavy loads on the server lately, we will be removing the random images from the home page until we get a chance to perform some maintenance. Please be patient while we work on making the site better.

Quoted from the Home page of RFF.

 

[BrianPhotog]

Quoted from the Home page of RFF.

Yes, I know. I was just offering tips on how to increase vB and MySQL efficiency based on my recent experiences. 🙂

 

[MP Guy]

Brian,

RFF is pushing 400+ gig xfer per month with over 200K pages per day. Memory is up there. But like you say, its all the VB stuff like who is online, imges etc ... Stephen decided he wanted the who is online back on the front page but it is a resource killer with a query everytime the page is loaded.