Forum Moderators: rogerd
as you can see I'm new here, I was a member years ago and it's good to see WebmasterWorld still doing well and continuing to grow.
I'd like to know if anyone has any info on whether there is bulletin board software that can distribute it's server load amongst it's members?
From a search on here I saw the phase one software that littleone( not sure that's the right name, but I can't remember it now!)built and it looks really interesting as something that could be tweaked for this kind of thing but it doesn't seem to have been developed past it's first version.
I ask this as an online community I'm part of wants to keep itself ad-free and subscription-free but is currently running at 40,000 posts a month and it's getting harder to fund.
40K posts per month is a busy forum. Is it on a dedicated server now?
Also, when you say "distribute its server load amongst its members", what exactly do you have in mind? Are you thinking of a SETI-type load sharing project? It would seem to me that (depending on the server software) CPU capacity won't be as much a limiting factor as bandwidth and database queries (assuming dynamic pages). But, I may be misunderstanding your idea.
No doubt if you are getting 40K posts, you are also logging some millions of pageviews per month. Although it sounds like you (or the forum owners) are reluctant, I'd suggest experimenting with Adsense to see if the forum can generate sufficient revenue to cover its hosting expense, and have even something left over at the end of the day.
It does have dedicated hosting yes. Millons of page views per month yes but Adsense is never gonna happen, no ads period. It's something that the Editor is idealogically deadset against.
At the moment many board members have standing orders set up and many others pay as and when they can, none of the people who pay are known to anyone even the Editor. It works but it's not a system that has long-term peace of mind built in.
It's the bandwidth that I'm really interested in looking into distributing, as in, instead of it coming from a dedicated server the members of the board would all take the load amongst them.
The idea is that the bandwidth would be distributed SETI-like, amongst the boards members. I wonder how the threads would be accessed, would they be kept on each and every pc and if not when someone goes offline would they take a certain thread with them?
I realise that these questions have no particular answer atm but I just wanted to start the debate on here and kick the idea around a bit.
I can't really help with a p2p forum setup, but here are a few thoughts that might help:
1) If your forum has images, can you transfer the image hosting to another server? Depending on the image load, that could cut your forum server's bandwidth usage quite a bit. Also, the forum would continue to function even if the image server wasn't available.
2) Most forum software sites have their own forum where a frequent topic of discussion is how to reduce bandwidth and/or CPU use. If you haven't already checked this out, it would be worth a look. Each software package has its own features, and often some of the special functions can be quite resource intensive.
3) Consider enabling compression your server if it isn't already and if this feature is available.
Perhaps someone else has a P2P suggestion that is responsive to the original question. One thing about that approach - it would really be a "community" if many members were sharing the delivery of content!
The ideas about saving bandwidth that you suggest have already been implemented rogerd but thanks anyway. We use vBulletin and as you probably know they have no plans to implement this kind of idea in the foreseeable future.
As the board is a community based board and as the people funding it are going to come and go this idea seemed to me to be the way forward.
In principle it seems to me that the technology is in place and there must be a computer language out there that can handle this type of program so maybe I should go and do it myself. :)
What about having some sub forums hosted elsewhere? Perhaps you could program some kind of single authentication process that would permit a common login while keeping most of the forum code unchanged.
This is an interesting project, Ashuk66, and I hope you share some of your thoughts as you sketch out your plans.
I understand what you're saying about the relatively low cost of hosting but when you're having to pay a proportion of it out of your own pocket then that cost becomes prohibitive.
When someone doesn't want to have ads on their site and doesn't want to make people pay for the privilege then paying for the bandwidth month on month becomes more and more of an issue.
This all comes from an idea which is very close to our hearts that all people should be able to come together in virtual communities, not just those that can afford the entrance fee. I feel that the WebmasterWorld community is a great model and love the fact that it is freely accessible but it is not how we would move forward.
Thanks for your input rogerd and any progress I make on this will be reported back here.
Dunno how I missed this post, interesting idea, and I think it would have some real-world applications.
Out of boredom last night, I wrote up a quickie white paper on a possible framework and implementation for such a BBS, mostly to brainstorm the framework, and identify a few key problems (I think things through by typing them out)...
I have no idea if it would be of any help to you at all, but if you're interested, sticky me and I'll send you a PDF.
