Wouldn't it be nice if ....

[Al Darby]

Given the recent outage due our bandwidths being exceeded, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit this topic from the Archives:
http://www.georgetown-online.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2964

Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to keep visiting the boards, to see if anything new has been posted?

Well ... you don't, there's a 'neat' little thing called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which will notify you everytime something is posted, let you read it and if you want to respond, open up the boards and let you do just that.

phpBB has a host of addons (they call them MODs) and one of them, will set this up, in a flash. All you need is an "RSS Reader", they're free and dead easy to use.

The MOD takes about 3 minutes to install. I know, because I had it set up on my company boards, for Tech Support. Whenever anyone posted a problem, I knew about it immediately.

Using the RSS Reader would greatly reduce the demand on bandwidth, as you'd only be reading the new posts, not all the others around it.

Then, as mentioned, if you want to reply, you can go directly to the message from the RSS.

Don't know about other Browsers, but IE7 already has an RSS Reader built in.

[Guest]

Thanks Al, sounds very interesting, I will have someone more knowledgable then myself look into it (Jen, are you there?).
Take care,
Don

[JenG]

Yep I'm here.

As far as I know, phpBB doesn't have an RSS feed. We would have to install a modification to get that to work. I think they are going to include that in Version 3.0 if it ever gets released.

[Al Darby]

Yep I'm here.

As far as I know, phpBB doesn't have an RSS feed. We would have to install a modification to get that to work. I think they are going to include that in Version 3.0 if it ever gets released.

Hi Jen,

As I said in my note "one of them, will set this up".

[2.0.19] RSS Syndication mod
If you go here http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewforum.php?f=15 and search you'll find heaps, here's the latest I could see:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=349668

[tessa]

how did we exceed the bandwidth?

[Al Darby]

how did we exceed the bandwidth?

T,

Don't know the specifics of the plan that Don has set up, but for a given price you're allowed to upload / download a specified amount of data (web pages). Once you pass that limit, your site gets shut down until the next period, or you opt to pay for a higher limit.

Every time someone visits the site, the main page is downloaded to their PC and if everyone is visiting several times a day, it adds up in a hurry.

Also, the nature of this board is that there a certain number of "posts" per page, regardless of their size (word count), so if you have very lengthy posts and a lot of them, that makes individual pages even larger, which again chews up bandwidth.

On my own site, I review bandwidth daily to ensure I don't get to a situation where viewers are "locked out".

Whatever the solution, it generally involves needing more money, but the RSS feed would help alleviate that. The only down side of RSS is that web site hits are messed up by the RSS Readers looking for new posts, but I'm pretty sure Don doesn't analyze his web traffic to the extent that I do.

[tessa]

i wonder if we have chewed through the bandwidth because i am reading through the archives?

don...is there somewhere we can paypal you to donate to the site? i'd love to chip in.

[Al Darby]

i wonder if we have chewed through the bandwidth because i am reading through the archives?

don...is there somewhere we can paypal you to donate to the site? i'd love to chip in.

You'd probably have to do it 24/7 for it to be ALL your fault. Something like the ~2.9K hits on the [Clues] thread (or [Jokes Jokes Jokes] with ~4.5K hits) would more likely be a problem.

I've no doubt Don will accept your generous offer. If you look here, you can see who else has put their hand in their pocket:
http://www.georgetown-online.org/pb/wp_73ed39b0/wp_73ed39b0.html?0.033356402712244215
It's a short, but distinguished list.

[tessa]

okay...thanks for that, al.
i dontated...but i'm not sure how that works! LOL.
kinda scary.

[JenG]

Sorry Al, I didn't read your quoted text from the archives! My bad!

Tessa - absolutely no way you alone caused us to go over our bandwidth. At any given time, we have a number of "guests" viewing the site as well as spammers trying to register accounts. That coupled with our regular users and the increased popularity of GTOL recently caused the bandwidth outage!

[Al Darby]

Don,

What, if anything, happened to this:

Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to keep visiting the boards, to see if anything new has been posted?

Well ... you don't, there's a 'neat' little thing called RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which will notify you everytime something is posted, let you read it and if you want to respond, open up the boards and let you do just that.

phpBB has a host of addons (they call them MODs) and one of them, will set this up, in a flash. All you need is an "RSS Reader", they're free and dead easy to use.

If you go here http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewforum.php?f=15 and search you'll find heaps, here's the latest I could see:
[2.0.19] RSS Syndication mod
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=349668

The MOD takes about 3 minutes to install. I know, because I had it set up on my company boards, for Tech Support. Whenever anyone posted a problem, I knew about it immediately.

Using the RSS Reader would greatly reduce the demand on bandwidth, as you'd only be reading the new posts, not all the others around it.

Then, as mentioned, if you want to reply, you can go directly to the message from the RSS.

Don't know about other Browsers, but IE7 already has an RSS Reader built in.

[JenG]

Al, this: http://www.georgetown-online.org/phpbb2 ... php?t=4378

[Al Darby]

Al, this: http://www.georgetown-online.org/phpbb2 ... php?t=4378

Sorry Jen, don't understand your response. The URL given is about [Bandwidth], not RSS Feeds

[JenG]

Al, this: http://www.georgetown-online.org/phpbb2 ... php?t=4378

Sorry Jen, don't understand your response. The URL given is about [Bandwidth], not RSS Feeds

I was meaning to point out that the bandwidth issue was resolved so there isn't really a need to install a RSS Feed mod to reduce bandwidth.

[Al Darby]

Al, this: http://www.georgetown-online.org/phpbb2 ... php?t=4378

Sorry Jen, don't understand your response. The URL given is about [Bandwidth], not RSS Feeds

I was meaning to point out that the bandwidth issue was resolved so there isn't really a need to install a RSS Feed mod to reduce bandwidth.

Hi Jen,

It would still be nice, especially for Don, to not have to be continually come back looking for new messages, rather they come to you.

As I said, easy to do and worthwhile (at least I found it to be). Maybe like a "Chat Room", it could be trialled for a period of time and then re-evaluated. ... Can't hurt.