its very very important that people mention whats wrong with the new forum but we shouldn't loose sight of whats right....  this is not the first time the forum has changed and  some features were added as we went, such as the image posting and the code container frame....

most of the issues posted seem vaild.... most are obtainable given time..... several people have had some neat ideas.... and some complaints still escape me, such as the code posting problem.... i can not see the issue... code posts for me just as prior, with the exception of the little code container frame.... thats no biggie... whose site has that anyway.....

we can start on any page of our choosing.... so bouncing to and from unwanted pages to reach your destination is not needed.... its true the pages now are roughly twice the kb size of the previous.... but the pages today contain almost a third more content than prior.... so its almost a wash.... at tops there might be a second or 2 difference in download times....

i have already rewitten the pages to suit my tastes, but as jose said thats not an option most will have.... still we need ask ourselves how many were fluent in  bb code prior to the phpbb forum.... html is no more difficult but really not necessary to post......  there are only a hand full of people that would use it anyway...

as is,  the new forum is still possibly the best metastock forum on the net.... think about, what other site has as much posted content  and growing daily....

before we throw the baby out with the bath water, perhaps we could give the forum design team the proper time to search for the posted problems solutions....

hey , speakin of search, ain't it nice to have it back...... h

Hey H,

It's good to read a positive review, but...

"most of the issues posted seem vaild.... most are obtainable given time"

The most important issue, bandwidth, is unlikely to be resolved without re-building the whole platform from the ground up, without any bloated OOPs in lieu of simple slim functions.

"its true the pages now are roughly twice the kb size of the previous.... but the pages today contain almost a third more content than prior.... so its almost a wash.... at tops there might be a second or 2 difference in download times...."

They are at least 4-5 times the original size, and around 10 times the size under some circumstances.

The main bandwidth issues are:

1) Not everyone has broadband, and or the patience to wait up to 1 min to load a single post;

2) With a few hundred users on line, the Equis server will fold under this terabyte load.


jose '-)

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MetaStockTools.com

hey jose... and i'm sure we both see someone pointing out a flaw is equally positive....

i checked the size of the phpbb pages when i saw your post.... i have saved virtually every page posted from the prior forum, with the exception of chat and such....  those pages are saved both by forum and author....

i compared similar pages with similar content  from both formats........ this thread here, prior to this specific post, looked to be a tad over 47k.... a similar post on the old forum also took about 47k....  i checked quite a few before posting and  also compared the exact same pages with each other from both formats....

the new servers/hardware/software might have a negative impact, of that i'm not sure.....  i choked my speeds down to 26k and didn't notice much different in loading speed.... if any page takes a minute to load something is definitely astray.... even at speeds of  9.6k it should take that long.....

don't underestimate your, roy, henry and such draws.... there are many that would log on at any speed to read......

100 users online?, bet that would make equis jump for joy.....  i kinda watch the who's online stats, its considerably lower than that ....

i'm kinda sure they'll get it worked out ... still amazes me they pulled it off..... and as mentioned before, don't underestimate our apprecation of your input, our silence is often out of respect for your time......h

The new server is far more powerfull than the old one.  It has 4 3.6 cpus and the old server had 2 766 cpus.  The new server has 2GB of memory and the old, 1GB.  The new server has dual network cards, the old, one.

If the server began to crawl, we would add another server and make it into a web farm. 

It must be noted that the old forum used to lock up and have many problems.  I used to have it restarted at least once a week to clear out the memory issues caused by the php and phpbb mix.

H, a saved or cached page is not exactly the same as the original page loaded with all the required background code necessary for the post to first appear.

For example, I can save this current page as a 60KB HTML page, but it took over 250KB to download the first time. Posting it will require an additional 250~300KB or so. Ridiculous.

... There is no doubt about it in my mind. This obese, featureless & pre-beta "forum software" is absolutely unsuitable for our community.

Whenever I find myself in the middle of a bad trade in the markets, I try and cut my losses immediately. Waiting and hoping for things to get better is a really bad idea.

I strongly recommend Equis does the same.


j '-)

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MetaStockTools.com

As an experiment to prove the point, I've logged off the forum, took note of my PC's download count at that stage, logged back on and loaded this current thread.

Total downloaded to view this thread: 643,136 bytes !

Text content of this entire thread: 5,312 bytes

"Bloat ratio": x 120


j |-(

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MetaStockTools.com

FWIW, the whole page isn't sent back every time you post.  Just the data that you type into the text box.

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Traders' Consortium

G, the bottom line is how much the PC needs to download in order to read any post. The only way to measure this objectively is to note the connection's download count, as I have done in my previous post.

There are many irritating things in life, and irritation in itself is not a bad thing. Annoyance is something one needs to build up a tolerance to, a bit like the common cold, and this cannot happen in a perfect world.

This new software is not irritating, but rather unproductive. I haven't wasted so much time and bandwidth since the days when I first discovered something called "email".


jose '-)

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MetaStockTools.com

I'm glad you still have a sense of humor.  

I'm stressing because you're annoyed.  You see, I have a people pleaser trait that is hard to squash (aka servitude; aka slavery).  It seems like no matter how much "exposure" to stress I get that it never get's any better.  However, annoyances, like viruses, tend to run their due course.  They will fatigue you and make you miserable for a while, but then hopefully things get better.  Still, level of annoyance = quality of life.

Your remarks are important and are being reviewed.

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Traders' Consortium

Sorry to stress you, G - it's definitely the very least of my intentions.

I really wish these issues were all about some annoying idiosyncrasies, such as Product Activation in Windows XP or the bouncing 'Click Here to Begin' XP arrow.

However, my feeling is that these issues are more about the survival of our MetaStock community, which you (G) have helped a great deal to create and support.

Poor decisions have been made (I include myself here), and a great deal of time, money and resources have been thrown at this project.

The result is that we now have a forum platform that is a bloated bandwidth hog, is missing user-friendly & essential functions, is in constant beta-testing development, and IMO doesn't suit or reflect our community's purpose. The non-working search function in the previous forum now seems like a minor annoyance when compared to what we have now.

There comes a time when we need to cut losses and move on.

Enough said on my part.


jose '-)

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MetaStockTools.com