Way to save bandwidth and load time with your forum.

[gid]

I was having a serious issue with FireFox the last few days and had to get some help on the mozillaZine forum.  I noticed something that seemed like it could be a good idea if you are really trying to cut down on bandwidth or loadtime.  On the Mozillazine forum they do not show the avatar unless you sign in.  

I think showing the avatar is a good idea because it might help lurkers get to know us and then decide to sign up, but if you are trying to cut back that might be a valid option.

[gabs]

I like the idea..

hmmm...

The other thing is to block content unless registered.. making people sign up..

I run 1 forum with 5,000 members and it pulls about 1gb of bandwidth a day... Not to bad..

[BabyChicken4u2]

The problem with blocking content for the unregistered is that if there is not anything to interest them they just click away  :cry:

[gabs]

If you mixed refferal spam with hidden content that would get them registering if the site look of quality ...





disclaimer: I've never used refferal spam and this is just a idea..

[onelife]

If your forum doesn't support gzip compression you could try these settings for your .htaccess file

php_flag zlib.output_compression On
php_value zlib.output_compression_level 5

I use them on a lot of my sites with great effect.

Cheers,

Dave

[treblesix]

If your forum doesn't support gzip compression you could try these settings for your .htaccess file

php_flag zlib.output_compression On
php_value zlib.output_compression_level 5

I use them on a lot of my sites with great effect.

Cheers,

Dave

That works for all php powered sites. No major effect on server
if adequate memory/cache is implemented. The downside is that
the visitors browser has to unzip the pages which can be slowish
on old hardware and impossible on some older and accessibility
browsers/textreaders etc.

Still ...guess who has 120 GB/day paidfor bandwidth  

[onelife]

Boy that's an old topic

Since then I've well and truly kicked the 'orrible PHP to touch and moved on to much greener pastures.

cheers,

Dave