OK, here we go with a forum change. :) Morgan and I have frequently discussed ways to handle the different screensavers and versions that will be covered here in the future. Right now we have topics and threads scattered all over the place about different versions, different screensavers, and updates. Hopefully this will solve some current problems and plan ahead for easier coverage of the future. There will be numerous threads moved in the immediate future to help consolidate this change and make things easier in the long run ( hopefully :) ).

Well, I didnt know if you were "hunting" or not but I did know you were unsatisfied with Web66's speed recently.

Speed, downtime, lack of MySQL 3.23, lack of GD 2.0, sarcastic responses to tech support e-mails, etc.

Also I want to add "lack of GZIP". You notice how this forum loads a lot slower than some other forums? Part of this is that Web66 is not running GZIP compression. This is a very simple module that integrates with the Apache web server. Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc. can accept and decompress GZIP-encoded web pages.

For example, the front page of our forum (just the text) is 33,653 bytes. GZIPped, it would be 6,552 bytes.

The last 3 messages of this thread (just the text) is 31,680 bytes. GZIPped, it would be 6,813 bytes.

So if Web66 would just install GZIP, the text on this forum would load 5 times faster.


Just e-mailed Web66 about these issues (politely!). We're probably moving in a few weeks.

I'm genuinely curious to hear what people think about the reshuffling and breaking up of the forum into sections. I know it means a bit more scrolling but it should help us as things expand. In the next few months, I think forum traffic and the number of posts are going to increase substantially and we feel it is our job to keep forum members informed.

I know there have been increasingly strong opinions from the early adopters about Prolific's involvement and the progress of development. This is a tough subject to cover without hurting anyone's feelings. Our contributions to the Aquarium in testing and suggestions have been greatly appreciated, but it is also necessary to step back and realize something.

Despite early adopters and radically strong support, the Amiga ultimately did not succeed. In contrast, Microsoft's cover-the-earth approach of getting their early, extremely buggy software onto every computer out there gained it success. Microsoft is a monolith which does things its own, often user-hostile way, yet it is the market leader. The music business and/or Hollywood are also proof of this. If a little is good, a lot must be better! :(

I'm writing an article on Prolific's philosophy in regards to SereneScreen, Jim, their own works, etc. I know there are some misconceptions which can hopefully be cleared up, namely whether Prolific is a publisher, a programming house, an artistic/design house, or what? (they are all 3) and how the success of the Aquarium and decline of the gaming market for non-multi-billion dollar developers has prompted Prolific to refocus their efforts. It is simply too financially risky to develop large-scale games anymore. If your game does not have a movie-size budget, it will probably be ignored by the market.


We are working on some things for the FlagPride and Goldfish forums and eventually these will get small sections on the Inside: SereneScreen site. The focus of this site is and hopefully always will be Jim's work. There are many folks here who have been fans of Jim Sachs' artwork and game development for 5, 10, 15 years now.

No complaints here. If it will help the forum, then I am all for it. Keep up the good work. :TU:

I like the new opening forum, well I generally like it when everything is clear sorted :D

I try and read *every* new post so it really makes no difference on how they're sorted. Feels good with a (early) spring clean-up of the place though.

/Tiny

P.S.
Been a Sachs fan since I saw the Porsche images and DotC back in 1986 – That's like 17 years ago :eek:

There are some more new tweaks that Morgan and I are looking into implementing to round out and support what we have done so far. Hopefully tonight we will get to these and see exactly what the process will entail. More details later. :)

The news columns (one for SereneScreen, one for Prolific) are coming very soon. From now on, there will be one place to get news about these products. Each news item will have a link to a forum topic where it can be discussed. The news forum itself will be locked for only new posts by Michael and I.

Wow. With all the latest developments, running this forum is becoming much more complex. Keep up the good work guys :TU:

Morgan,

is it possible to implement a user configuration, so that i can select only some of the forums?
The result should be something like that: When I click on "View New Posts" then there appear only threads of those selected forums.

Just a try...

OK folks, the first thing you should be noticing is better speed. I have seen several posts scattered about making remarks about this, so we should be making everyone happy. :) In addition, for ~2-3 days you may have troubles bookmarking certain things while everything gets finished up in the move and settles down.

Much faster thank you
 

I can only speak for myself but.... MUCH faster here in Northern Alberta :D

I'll try. :)

Hopefully it's something we can add to your bookmarks rather than me having to modify everything.

Morgan,
Just curious to know if your new semi-dedicated server account supports the forementioned GZIP compression & if you have already implemented it into the forum? & if so does it account for some of the faster loading of the forum pages?
If you have not implemented it yet, do you have plans on doing so? :)

"An Inquiring Mind"

It is a virtual machine, so I could format it and install any software I want, which is good and bad.
:)Good because I can do anything.
:( Bad because it took me 5 hours to get things configured where I want them.

Of course now I know how to do this. E-mail me for a quote. :D

We are running GZIP right now, so the TEXT/HTML part of every page loaded here is 80% smaller. The server is incredibly fast and so far has not been bogged down, so latency (time-for-something-to-start-happening) is positively zilch.

Basically, FeldonCentral is ALWAYS waiting on your Internet connection to finish sending you the completed pages. :) On the old FC, we were always waiting on the server to generate and send the pages.

I can see their point. Think of running every web page you look at through Winzip first. :eek:

But so far, CPU usage has never hit 10%. I think it is totally worth it since this topic page I am replying to is:

12,609 bytes compressed (2.7 seconds on 56k)
75,823 bytes uncompressed (16.5 seconds on 56k)

Over here in Australia the forum pages are loading almost instantly now, a very big improvement.

But what has hapenned to the clock?

The time was actually 1:26 PM here.
GMT +11 is correct for Sydney daylight savings time.
So there is an error of +10 hours minus 5 minutes.

thats one of the tweaks we have left to go, it will be fixed momentarily. :)

Woops.

Well there's only 1 person to blame now. :)

If they don't have automatic time services built in, I'll set a crontab to align the clock with the national time servers every minute.

Great job! I love all the new changes and haven't run into any problems! Keep up the great work!!!
:)