well thats ****ed it aint it....

[guitarswet]

before I forked out for the 'professional' version you would get about five pages of pop up adverts on your screen everytime you clicked on a link.  I think you'll find the exact same thing happens at Geocity's webspace (worse if i remember).
I clearly remember getting buckets of e-mails from people complaining about the adverts.
The main cost in keeping the site alive is the web hosting package since the site is several hundred megabytes in size you simply can not get away with signing up to a cheap service.  You also forget that the site is almost entirely advert free!
The network 54 enhanced package costs $100 per six months on top of this which at todays rates is about £100 per year.
I also have spent several hundred pounds on buying MS Frontpage and its upgrades.
Regards
Mark

[tck]

yet again youve missed the whole point squire...i posted it in the "Rant and Rave" which IS WHY it was invented!.... so instead of trying to always have the last laugh at my expensive maybe if you followed the forum rules for once and posted in the correct section all this would maybe not have happened???....over and out!

[rich_jc]

I just think posting pics like that without a NSFW warning is completely inappropriate, and is totally out of context of what the thread is about.

And are you trying to say that because I put a post in the wrong forum, all the grief that is happening is my fault?

Rich

[tck]

did you not notice the "near naked woman" is in fact a "bloke"??...hes got "b***S" lol......nuff said lol

[rich_jc]

My boss doesn't mind me looking at near naked gender benders at work.

?

Rich

[stevepeanut]

I like having Q&A and a rant board. Main reason is when I ask a tech question, it often vanished to the bottom, with a game of mallets mallet at the top and 100 replys underneath

[Neil_M]

Forgive me but I just can't see how the site is that big... disregarding the photos, which could be hosted on flickr or similar, just how big is it?

I don't know if you've looked at the network54 free option lately, but it doesn't use pop-ups anymore, just Google Adsense links. It's not too intrusive at all... alternatively you could just keep the Q&A archived on a free account & use WebBBS for the forum, it's free, extremely similar to the layout of this forum and highly customisable. An example of it in use can be found here http://www.malibustacey.com/cgi-bin/bbs ... pl?page=60 on a website my friend used to run for a band.

With Lycos you can get 50MB of free space which should be OK with the pics hosted elsewhere, and the ads run in a small frame down one side of the page and are fairly unobtrusive. I've put a mock-up on here http://members.lycos.co.uk/fordcaprilaser/ with a link to a network54 forum with the basic 'free' account.

[Matty28i]

When there is a technical issue to be answered you know it's not going to be lost in the general chit chat and within reason anything goes on the "rant and rave" comedy, life or the odd tech question.

Yes I prefer the newer format as it gives some clarity back to the Q&A but still, with the laid back atmosphere we have all come to love. It's not too difficult to swap between the two pages.

Matty28i

[guitarswet]

I was tired and suffereing from jet lag and meant to say several tens of megabytes.  The main site is currently 48mB in file size although approx another 13mB is being consumed by Frontpage extensions that also have to be installed.
I'm sure there are many other better places and indeed this site has been moved over the last ten years to several servers.  But is is a pain and I like the current provider who provides good band width and excellent uptime.  They are also in Cambridge so I can keep an eye on them.
I am sorry for misleading people with false statements....

[guitarswet]

forgive me it looks horrible, and I got pop up adds appearing almost immediately.  You pay your money and you take your choice........

[tck]

so once and for all can we all please move on!..and no more winging and whining about it!...if ya dont like it go else where!
Back to the laser page community laughs and jokes on here then.
oh and the messages to ask if whoever can mail whoever!...but for gods sake keep those off the q&a forum...peeps dont like that!.whos off to octofest by the way?

[Sonic]

I never thought we had a enough technical posts to justify splitting the forum in two e.g. 2 posts on the 26th and 4 on the 25th.

But if me and glyn are being singled out as the only ones who don't like it then there's no point fighting against everyone. Anyway surely the whole point of rant forum is to rant, so I wont be going anywhere TCK.

The more worrying problem is new members. As I said above, I've never been to a forum where you had to pay.

If I hadn't already been here a few years, I doubt I would have joined up if I had been passing through, like JC said, I would have thought the other Capri forums where just as good and added bonus of being free.

But since getting to know everyone and getting all the valuable knowledge, I would have happily donated money for the upkeep of the site, if I knew there was a cash flow problem.

[Neil_M]

I've said before, I don't begrudge paying a fiver a year toward the upkeep of the site... I was just trying to be proactive and show a possible solution for those who do object, and also possibly a way to entice back some of those who've strayed away and maybe some new blood too.

As for the popups, any decent popup blocker such as the Firefox browser or Google Toolbar would kill them dead