A typical new Equis forum session.


Go to main page ( http://forum.equis.com ): download 287 KB.

Sign in, go to "Discussion" (should be named "Forums"): 151 KB.

"Posts you have not read": 211 KB download to get there.

First post: 234 KB to get there - that's almost 1MB of downloads before I get to read the first post.

Next, read 32 other unread posts: 7.7MB (approx 60-80 Kb of text).
What, you're not interested in reading all unmarked posts you say? Well, you don't have a choice if you want to use this search function. Avoiding this just for a few of days will result in 100's of unread posts - try to find something specific there...


Next, I reply to 5 posts: approx 500 KB to reply to and re-load each post (no preview): 2.5MB total.

Total download for session: 11 MB.


The point?

1) Not everyone has broadband access - I expect our dialup subscribers will eventually give up on our forum;

2) Multiply the above bandwidth used by up to 5000 forum users, and the Equis server just will not be able to cope with the Terabyte bandwidth required.


Add the lack of posting functions (text format, code, URL, IMG functions), and I would not even qualify this forum platform for Beta testing.

This poorly executed and bloated excuse for a forum platform should go asap, before our community gives up on it and goes elsewhere.


jose |:-(

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MetaStockTools.com

The old forum was based on PHP, whereas this new forum platform is based on Microsoft's ASP.NET.

ASP.NET is a favourite amongst many programmers - it is flexible and programmer-friendly.

Here is an interesting (and fair) article on ASP.NET vs PHP.

"But what you gain in robustness, you pay for in efficiency. ASP.NET is expensive with respect to memory usage and execution time, which is due in large part to a longer code path. For Web-based applications, these limitations can be a serious problem, because on the Web, your application is likely to scale to thousands and thousands of users per second. Memory usage can also become an issue on your Web server."

The bandwidth issue is a serious one for both client and server - notwithstanding other current issues such as lack of essential forum functionality. No amount of future code tweaking is going to resolve this fundamental problem.

This forum should be all about finding MetaStock solutions to trading challenges, and not about dealing with newly-introduced problems unrelated to MetaStock.

Everyday that this forum continues to run in its current problematic incarnation, is another wasted opportunity to go forward.


jose

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MetaStockTools.com

I must agree with Jose.I'm not  as computer as savy as he is but I'm having a hard time navigating the forum.Another thing that I find is that  is not as intuitive as I think it should be.I feel that since many users might not be very computer savy it should be highly navigatable.One of the appeals or the old forum was that it was very user friendly and gave you evreything right in front of your eyes or very reachable with a few mouse clicks away.

Bandwidth update:

Windows XP with .Net installed doesn't seem to need to download all the bulky background ASP.NET code to view each single post.

So, all we need now is a forum platform with all the necessary working functions (quote, code, attach/upload image, post URL, font format, etc...), and one that looks and feels like a forum should.

Mr Equis, my view hasn't changed:
Please bring back a PHP-based forum asap.


jose '-)

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MetaStockTools.com

Jose:

So, all we need now is a forum platform with all the necessary working functions (quote, code, attach/upload image, post URL, font format, etc...)

Are you talking about single button clicks that will give you the formatting tags?  If so, I think you will find the new Tiny MCE content editor a lot more friendly.  We should be updating to the new editor shortly.

As far as image posts go, there is no "familiar" way to do it that I'm aware of without using HTML.  You have an optional image gallery to upload images and reference them from.  See: http://forum.equis.com/photos/group_leader_jose/default.aspx

For URL's, I'm just pasting them into the Design window and they are automatically converted to links.  Doesn't get much easier than that.

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Traders' Consortium

G, I've tried three times to upload a small jpg to http://forum.equis.com/photos/group_leader_jose/default.aspx , but no luck. It stills shows last update back to 1797. ;)

I look forward to the new editor.
It's a pity all this mess wasn't sorted out before killing the old (and much better) forum platform.
It's unfair to force our community members to become unwilling beta testers for some developer's new and untried software.


jose '-)

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MetaStockTools.com

I also agree that navigating on the forum now is less user friendly than before. Admittedly the old forum had bugs that needed to be fixed but there was no reason to change the whole layout. The front page of the old forum was much better to navigate from. You could navigate to anywhere from that page but now you need to click Discussions... then this... then that... (all of which takes a while to load up - far more than the old forum)

If it's not broke why fix it?

Hi Nobel-

It wasn't about fixing something that we perceived was broken in the layout.  More or less, the current layout is stock from CS... with the exception of the links box that we added for the very reason you are mentioning.  Design and layout are not something that I'd call complete.  Not by a longshot... and, I really appreciate your feedback.  These types of changes are things that I can do something about.  Right now, this is where we stand:

The themes that we are making available are problemsome.  That is, they are not fully upgradable without a lot of work.  We are getting ready to implement CS2.1 and that will make our themes useless.  Estimated time to convert a single one of them is 2-3 hours.  We have 14!  Then, add the time to mod each of them with changes that we need to make to have them be user friendly... that's a lot of time.

Looking ahead, CS2.2 will address this theme incompatibility issue.  In fact, it is supposed to make design changes, latouts, colors, etc. much easier to work with and will start the backward compatibility point.  It's not firm, but I believe that we will just go with the stock themes & layouts for now until we know that our man-hours can be preserved from one upgrade to the next.  Otherwise, we're just recreating the wheel every time.

To emphasize, I want to make changes to the layout to facilitate ease of getting around.  But I don't want to do it and redo it.  Jose's point about being "beta" users doesn't go away.  Hang in there with me and keep your ideas for layouts coming.  There is a real list of things to do and your ideas are on it. 

Thanks

 

 

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Traders' Consortium

G, without any doubt, I don't know of anyone with as much patience and perseverance as you have, specially considering the current forum situation and your busy personal/work life.

One can only hope that some day (soon) Equis comes to the obvious realization that they've stumbled onto a gold mine with our unrewarded System Administrator, and seriously considers remunerating him in some fit way for his invaluable contribution to the MetaStock community.


jose '-)

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MetaStockTools.com

Thanks George for explaining the situation. Much appreciated. : )

Cheers

Craig