Question: On what good a limit on avatar changes would do, if any.

Would limiting how often anyone can change their avatar (to once a week? month? something like that) help relieve server load?
Since I change my avatar so often, I have come to wonder if the upload of images by all members has a cumulative impact on site performance.

Twilight Sky said:

Even if that was an issue, I can imagine a good 90% of the community being against this idea. .___.;;; Simply because avatars have become such a staple of online forum identity, so limiting it wouldn't really be the best of ideas...

Click to expand...

Even if that was an issue, I think that if that is a possible solution to a problem, the 90% of the community being against the idea would have to get over it and choose their avatars a bit more carefully. If you're changing your avatars often enough, do you even have an online forum identity that an avatar can properly portray? I don't think so, anyway.

This is a question, not a suggestion. Everyone please remember that.

Twilight Sky said:

I'm just posting my opinion, nothing else really. u__u;; Sorry if it came across differently.

Click to expand...

That's fine; the reason this is a thread and not a PM to Ausaudriel is for the sake of discussion. I just don't want this to spiral into some ridiculously vehement debate before the initial question is answered by administration.

Just a thought. What about restricting access to some categories to members only?

Ausaudriel said:

I personally prefer that guests can see everything a member can see, that way they can get a complete image / good feel for the community before deciding to join.

Click to expand...

Oh! Is there maybe a way to restrict like.. how far back they can look at threads? (You know at the bottom where you can sift through threads there? How you can see threads made like 6 months ago, etc) @_@ Not sure if that would actually be an issue though.. since they wouldn't be viewing it.. but I dunno if the server like.. culminates all the viewable pages or whatever? I was just curious and maybe that would help.

Guests can't use the search function can they?

@_@ But damn that is actually cool. I would've thought avatar uploading would've caused more stress than viewing. Wonder why name changes cause so much stress then.. ._. But wow.. good we have that Porygon page up though! I really like Syphiel's art.

@_@ Hot damn.. yeah that is a lot..

Well doesn't it need to change that same sort of thing for Avatars or is that like.. on some other layer of visibility or something so it doesn't have to make a million different picture request changes ._. Guess cause the name is like hard-coded sorta.. or something..?

Kura said:

@_@ Hot damn.. yeah that is a lot..

Well doesn't it need to change that same sort of thing for Avatars or is that like.. on some other layer of visibility or something so it doesn't have to make a million different picture request changes ._. Guess cause the name is like hard-coded sorta.. or something..?

Click to expand...

Yeah. For you, the server would have to change your name 10,272 times for your posts, at least 3,266 times for your Visitor Messages, 114 times for your blog entries, however many times for the comments you've posted on your blog and others, your PMs, etc. There's a lot requested when a name change is performed.

With the avatars, I'm fairly certain (though not having worked on the back-end of any database all that much, I'm certainly no expert) that the avatar is simply pointing to one location all the time through a variable, and what that variable pulls back to the post is whatever that user's current avatar is, since I'm fairly certain there's only one avatar listed in the database for each user at a time.

Do correct me if I'm wrong, Audy.

Patchisou Yutohru said:

Just a thought. What about restricting access to some categories to members only?

Click to expand...

This is interesting, because when you look at the who's online most of the guest are viewing Rom Hacks, so maybe restricting that section only to members might help? Just a thought.

This is interesting, because when you look at the who's online most of the guest are viewing Rom Hacks, so maybe restricting that section only to members might help? Just a thought.

Click to expand...

Restricting our most popular forum, the one that causes most people to join PC, is not a very good idea.

Ausaudriel said:

This isn't particularly useful on PC because 1) we never delete accounts

Click to expand...

Why is this such a cardinal rule, anyway?

Sydian said:

Restricting our most popular forum, the one that causes most people to join PC, is not a very good idea.

Click to expand...

When you put it this way haha it makes sense. I was just thinking it might actually make more people join PC as another benefit, but looking back I didn't word it the best way and realized that it would actually be a bad thing.

How about caching the results? I'm pretty sure that this community doesn't need to be completely overhauled every time someone asks for something.

Like, ask for the posts only, and then JavaScript/AJAX (which is our problem) can deal with the adding it in and stuff.

Ausaudriel said:

That's also why I added that filter for guests. By stopping them from viewing a bunch of pages when there are more people online, it makes it more likely that members will be able to continue using the forums.

Click to expand...

I had no idea that was your idea. Thumbs up to that

I'm not too familiar with vBulletin or JavaScript but is there a way you can stop people from refreshing multiple times (Maybe a limit of 5[?]) ? That would help tons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!