A few questions regarding the site.

[Meaty]

Good thread.

First Off !! thank you Matt for allowing someone to help you with the site, this can only be of benefit to all of us.

second if i was not premium, i wouldnt have the gall to ask about funds and throw accusations of holding moneys, dont get me wrong i really dont want to stand up for Matt, just that sort of post demands it .......

[anzac_77]

I'm not saying theres no merit to suggestions of transparency/ accountability, but Meaty you hit it on the head a bit there: if someone doesn't want to become premium after 18 months on a site its all well and good (maybe its something that could be looked at, why some people dont want to make a commitment).

Its like our social club at work - everyone bags the committee for being useless and not organising anything worthwhile, then when something IS organised nobody turns up... we are ALL members because we want to be, if someone doesnt like what they see/experience they are free to leave

[WTR]

Im not saying theres no merit to suggestions of transparency/ accountability, but Meaty you hit it on the head a bit there: if someone doesnt want to become premium after 18 months on a site its all well and good (maybe its something that could be looked at, why some people dont want to make a commitment). Its like our social club at work - everyone bags the committee for being useless and not organising anything worthwhile, then when something IS organised nobody turns up... we are ALL members because we want to be, if someone doesnt like what they see/experience they are free to leave

Point taken, Phil re: people organising - see my posts.

However, this is about value for money - and I don't believe premium get what they pay for.

[anzac_77]

True, it may be difficult to see tangible benefits, i guess its like any club with a paid-for membership, your benefit reflects your participation. In my case i joined as a way to network with people with a common interest, have only been on 1 meet sofar due to unrelated other commitments (eg working the days they on, family, etc) but thats life.

Is it a valid point that perhaps if the inner workings were more transparent (eg an Annual Report/financial statement) this would result in more people becoming premium members?

[WTR]

PM Matt ....

[Fitter]

Ok can we get a poll of what benefits the premium members would like with their membership aside from stickers?

My car audio team (teamboomz) has shirts, stickers, business cards, magnets for cars, car stickers, keyrings, 2m long banners..... Can get pens, hats, etc and much more.

[Dire]

Why are we going around in circles?
Hierarchy was screwed up so we had elections so everything had 'a guy' to handle it and everything was organised.
Now we have no admins except Matt correct? So thats largely reversed. If Matt is going to post saying he doesn't have time for everything, can't we get other people to help again?

Then Pete started playing a big role in contributing his time to the site.
Then he lost his powers cos... Matt got upset?
Now he has them back again cos... Well I don't even know why, as people have been saying he shouldn't have lost them the entire time.

Can't things be run with logic?


Also what would happen to the money if the club dissolved? I'm not saying it because I think it will any time soon, but where would the money go? I've just never seen anyone say before. To Matt? Split between the premium's? Something else?

[sleeper]

keyrings and mugs are lame imo, leave that crap to commodore clubs.

but yes, no money has been spent for ages, we must have s##tloads, it should be up to all premium members how to spend quite a bit of it by way of options polled.

competitions, a day at the races, go karts, ect.

but still, if u dont participate u dont get value, lesson being BECOME ACTIVE

we also definately need a general election NOW!
too much power in too few hands.

[BlueWRX]

- and I dont believe premium get what they pay for.

And this is why i didn't renew my membership.

[SXLancerMum]

[quote:8b5cb6dfeb=WTR] - and I dont believe premium get what they pay for.[/quote:8b5cb6dfeb] And this is why i didnt renew my membership.

And why I didn't bother getting it.

Honestly........men reckon women are bitchy. I missed Pete getting kicked off. The only real action on here and I missed it.

[The X]

Anyway, an update on the site performance.
Yes, I have my server access back again. Thank you Matt.
I've only had a couple of opportunities to catch the site whilst it's laggy.

Basically with the number of feature adds, faster refreshing chat and Last 15 Active Topics, has increased the demands on the server. As there are more users, this increases demand substantially. Before all these increased refresh features were in place, this allowed more concurrent users, so there is a trade off.
so long story short, server probably needs an upgrade...

There are couple of things I need to double check from a technical perspective.
for those technically minded, the number of concurrent users for the httpd daemon, is soaking all available RAM, it does not seem to be a memory leak issue. The usage of all the RAM, causes the swap to be used. however it seems with all the disk I/O, the box is grinding to a halt. The OS is designed to kill off any processes that are becoming too much of a resource hog - (A feature of CentOS!) - which is in a way, a saving grace as it actually makes the server recover, because it kills off httpd, releaseing all the RAM and start up again, with a clean slate.
My concern at the moment is the subpar disk I/O bandwidth.... I'll need to capture more data measuring the performance metrics and determine if there is a fault with the disks or config issue with the VPS resources, or something else.

Current we are also researching server upgrade options, with the same provider. I'll keep you up to date.

Oh and I will lock this thread for now. Before it gets out of hand.