Ideas and suggestions for vpsBoard

[HalfEatenPie]

@vanarp, honestly I see your point of view and it's quite reasonable.  

Why too much transparency? This thread itself is titled "This is your community". As a proud member of this community I want to know how my community is thriving. I am not asking to give complete access to the Google Analytics reports. Just show the traffic trends like @MannDude posted in the other thread.

 

Ok reasonable.  I guess it was the extent/detail that I was worried about.  

I felt below thread was derailed. It is understood that it is a non-verified offer. I feel that an offer thread should contain the offer and any questions with respect to the offer. People can review their experience with the provider or false information by the provider etc. on separate threads or bring to the notice of Moderators to take necessary actions. Simply put, one should not feel like some post on offer thread to have actually belonged to off-topic section.

 

Hm.  I'll review this later when I have more time, but thanks for clarifying it.  This is mostly for myself to set an example as to what you thought was off-topic.  

By stating User Community I meant the people actually purchasing vpses. I know most of the vendors here are very much consumers of vpses from other vendors. But at some point conflicts might arise. So why not have some mods who are not into selling vpses/servers so that makes it look well balanced. This was the last point in my list and so obviously least important one.

 

So what you mean is have at least a few members from the VPS Community who aren't providers to be moderators?  Hm, worth a thought.  Although I don't think growing the moderation team too quickly is a great idea, but we can look into something like that.  

 

[acd]

I would like to see a section like Know your Provider where each and every provider trying to post an offer on vpsBoard should have his business and infrastructure details published. They need to own their thread and update it as necessary when changes happen. When they post an offer they can simply leave a link to this thread to know more about them as a provider.

I feel this is a bad approach and is bound to drive more providers away than encourage community participation and offers in general. That being said, I would like to know that information, specifically loading/overcommit factors (yeah right), as well as hardware node specs, shared uplink speeds (site), shared port speed (server), QoS policies, test IPs&files, and what datacenter you are in and/or who your peers are and all AS# associated with your business. From the business side, it'd be rude to ask "how many clients?", but "how long have you been in business?" is completely reasonable as are direct links to the AUP and TOS and any network/node uptime guarantees and ticket SLAs if applicable.

The negative side of relying on donations is that every month is different.

True, every month can be different, but in general, subscription based donation solves this problem quite nicely. I can pretty much guarantee costs for vpsboard are less than 30$/mo right now, and if it's more, vpsboard admins should rethink the software stack. Give an "Active Donor" star (blood pack icon?) to people who contribute some minimum amount monthly (for example 1 dollar). If Curtis wants to run ads that's reasonable too, though it'd be nice if donors didn't have to deal with them. Maybe an upcoming news/site plan announcements forums, or "test beta feature" access, but definitely not donor-only offers or off-topic discussion. With the number of active users, breaking even shouldn't be an issue.

I would like to see vpsboard operate as a nonprofit, preferably a government recognized one, but that might be too expensive (either time or money) or generally too restrictive. The level of openness it requires is very appealing however.

 

[TheLinuxBug]

 

[drmike]

And every dollar made on this should go directly to vpsBoard or split between the provider/vpsBoard?

I like the idea since it's a new way to "make money" and cover the costs it is running a site like this.

I stayed away from the actual money part or split so as not to soil the idea

I'd like to see the idea ran by some of the active providers here and see if it is doable without much hassle for all involved.

 

[MannDude]

Great suggestions everyone, keep them coming.

I think ideally to keep this place running long term we may implement a donation system and keep all costs of operating public. Once said cost is reached, donations will not be required or excess will simply be applied towards the following month's costs. I just want to keep this place up and running optimally without having too much burden on myself to do so. At this time, everything is basically prepaid for 3 months. Donors would likely be recognized via some custom title to show that you supported the community.

Another idea I had was to enable ads when you're logged out/viewing the forum as a guest. Log in, they're gone. While membership increases everyday, there is always a handful of guests viewing the site so this alone may prove to be sufficient enough to support things while the cost is low.

But this thread wasn't necessarily created to talk about financing the site (Though I do appreciate the concern and the offers to help).

What features can we implement to make your experience better?

Any rules we should put in place to make this a better place for all?

Anything else?

 

[drmike]

I would like to see vpsboard operate as a nonprofit, preferably a government recognized one, but that might be too expensive (either time or money) or generally too restrictive. The level of openness it requires is very appealing however.

So much to comment on so I'll start with this one.

Non profits in the United States often are highly profitable.  The legal status and hoop jumping with the IRS to get 501©(xxxxx) status takes years and several thousands of dollars and is a royal pain.

In return for tax exempt status and paying the government flat fees you have to justify way too much, be governed by government rules and mandates. It really gets silly and provides nothing for a site this size except headaches.  If the community blossoms and becomes a 50k active user base, then sure consider it.

 

[drmike]

I am all for transparency

I'll contact @francisco and put some credit on your BuyVM account to help keep the site going forward.

 

[mikho]

As I'm mostly browsing this form from my phone I would love having the possibility to quote posts from the mobile view.


Thank you in advance.


Edit: and just like that I found the feature. Ignore me.

 

[vanarp]

Mobile version of the site (basically the mobile theme) needs two quick enhancements:

• A Go to Top button in the Bottom

• A View New Content link (can be an icon) easily accessible at Top and Bottom. Currently I have to scroll up to the top and click on a icon in the right corner to get this very useful link

Also, I would like to know what security measures have been implemented for this server. I think discussing this openly can produce suggestions to better harden the environment. Kindly note that I have no idea of the technical expertise of @MannDude or @Nick.

 

[mikho]

I have the "new content" url bookmarked on my phone. Then I open the links on a new page, when done reading I close the page and go back to the "new content" page.

 

[vanarp]

I have the "new content" url bookmarked on my phone. Then I open the links on a new page, when done reading I close the page and go back to the "new content" page.

I am doing the same thing too (on my Android running UC Browser). But less clicks are always convenient

 

[vanarp]

Anything else?

 

According to below report browser cache is not being leveraged for some images. Same can be observed from Google's PageSpeed. Please look into this as it might help improving page load times.

 

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/vpsboard.com/ySq2MCNz

 

[HalfEatenPie]

Any rules we should put in place to make this a better place for all?

 

Ban anyone else with the name referencing baked goods in order to respect mah authority.  

Disclaimer: This is Sarcasm. 

 

[wlanboy]

implement a donation system

What system do you want to use? Paypal, Flattr?

 

[TheLinuxBug]

I had made a suggestion here: http://vpsboard.com/index.php?/topic/149-offers-section-verified-not/page-2#entry3720

However, this may not have ben the best place for it, so I think it was ignored.  For convenience, I will also include it here for discussion:

I was thinking about the offers section here a bit ago and was thinking it would be a good idea to make a section called "Low End Offers" in light of the fact that a lot of people have come from LET and now the offers are pretty much combined.  Maybe set some similar limitations on the 'Low End Offers' section as there were on LET.  Allow each host to post once a month to each section, 'Low End' and 'Regular' offers, that way if they wish to do a Low End offer it will not effect their ability to still advertise their more premium products.   

I am just throwing this out there, what are your guys thoughts on this?  

Cheers!

 

[MartinD]

With regards to new content on the mobile theme, it is already there. Square/menu icon at top right then new content

 

[Night]

This might sound a tad silly, but I really miss the randomly generated avatars from Vanilla. Does IP.Board have anything similar? It's much easier to distinguish people when they have an avatar.

Well on the old LET avatars were just ran through Gravatar, defaulting to the retro avatars generated based on your email. I'm sure IPB has an option to enable this, possibly.

 

[mikho]

Perhaps a rule that you need to change your avatar before you can post.


That way we never have to see the default and spambots who sign up will never be able to pos spam at all.

 

[MannDude]

Well on the old LET avatars were just ran through Gravatar, defaulting to the retro avatars generated based on your email. I'm sure IPB has an option to enable this, possibly.

This is already enabled however the move from one server running Apache to a new one running lighttpd broke a couple basic things. The Gravatar is already enabled in the backend and was working, I see. So I'll have a go and see how to fix this. =]

I miss the Gravatars too.

 

[titanicsaled]

I'm not fussed about avatars at all. I've never had one for the two years I've had an account on LET.