Forum Development Update #1

To keep you all in the loop I thought I would start a semi-regular series of posts detailing recent additions and what changes are upcoming or in consideration. So here goes with the first.

Forum Growth

The forum has grown at a rate we didn't expect. During May we had to increase our Data Bandwidth capacity 4 times as we exceeded the allowed data transfer. This month we had already exceeded last months total bandwidth usage by the 20th and have also had to increase our bandwidth allowance once again.

Shoutbox

The Shoutbox has been in place since the beginning of the World Cup. If you haven't tried it out its a great place to have a real-time discussion during matches.

Updates​

• Not everyone likes and wants to see the Shoutbox and we did consider placing it lower on the page but for a number of reasons that wasn't ideal, especially during this test period
• We have however added the ability to hide the shoutbox. Under it is a link labelled 'Hide Shoutbox' and this will load the preferences overlay. At the bottom of those preferences, you will see a 'Disable Shoutbox Chat' option. Put a tick in the box and save and the chatbox will be hidden.
• If you want it back there will be a 'Show Shoutbox' link where the shoutbox would have been. Clicking this will load the account preferences overlay and taking the tick out of the box will unhide the shoutbox

Future Enhancements​

• When the season starts we might move the shoutbox off the main page and moved to one of the club forums (Maybe a new Match forum where we can have both the shoutbox and maybe a match thread for each match). We appreciate your thoughts on this
• We are looking into a way of adding live match commentary to the shoutbox. We don't know how we will achieve this just yet though.

Site Running Costs

As mentioned the site has proven more popular than expected but that's also caused higher costs. As such to help fund the running costs of the site we are considering including both ads and premium membership.

We are thinking the following

• Unregistered User
  They will see ads above and below the content and also an ad in or after the first post on a thread. Unregistered users take up a fair amount of bandwidth with their lurking but contribute nothing towards help make this place the best place it could be
• Registered Users
  A registered user is more likely to contribute so in exchange they will lose the first post ad. The above and below content ads will remain
• Active User
  If you are active and contributing you are helping this forum so once you reach a set post threshold one of the ads will be removed (Most likely above content)

For people who really hate ads or who just want to help support the forum, we will then offer a premium membership. Cost will most likely be around the £10 a year mark and will get you benefits such as

• Removal of all ads
• A special badge on your profile
• Bigger allowance for things like PM's, attachments and the likes

The exact set of benefits will be locked down later but if you have any ideas we would like to hear them.

When will this be happening?

You might see a banner appear below the forums for every at times during the next couple of weeks while we test things. We will give you a further update before it fully rolls out though
​

That's All Folks

We look forward and welcome any feedback you have on anything above. All opinions will be taken into account