To Racketboy, regarding the spammers here

Post by **racketboy** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 5:10 pm

And actually, there are some adds on the bottom of each of the topic pages.
At this moment I make enough to cover the hosting.
However, the last few months the increased traffic has pushed me a little closer to the monthly ceiling for my entry-level hosting plan.

There are a lot of good gaming blogs/sites out there that already have much more advertising that I even intend to have.

I'm very design-sensitive, so I can even pull myself to disrupt the design of the site with overpowering ads, so I really doubt you will have to worry about that.

The reasoning behind only showing ads to non-registered users is that they are usually coming in from search engines and people coming from search engines are actually the most likely people to click on ads.

Are there that many people who routinely go to a message board, but don't register. I guess I lurked for a while on SegaXtreme, but that's the only case in my history that I can think of.

I would think that if a person really liked the site, they would register and want to post.

Anyway, if I ever do get to the point that I'm becoming "money-driven" let me know. I don't want to tick people off and I want to keep the focus where it should be. At the same time, I would like to have a little spare income in case certain events happen like losing my day job, etc or my wife becomes a stay-home mom.

But to be honest, gaming ads don't pay that much. My brother and I have been toying with the idea of creating an energy-efficiency site, but we haven't been motivated enough and don't have the extra time.

I don't want to take away from this site to make a few extra dollars. This place is my baby and I couldn't let it die without a fight.

Post by **racketboy** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 5:13 pm

CurulleanCat wrote:
racketboy wrote:well, I have a business trip for the next two days (I still have to pack tonight), so I probably won't get to it til Saturday.

Does it involve a Taiwanese hooker?

anyways just add some security codes to the registration's setup. Just make sure people can read them.
I find my eyes are dying one me and its getting harder to tell teh number/letters............

No hooker -- just Advanced Crystal Reports training

It's in the Detroit area, so it's a bit of a drive, so I'm staying overnight since its a 2-day session.
My wife was hoping to tag along since there's good shopping here, but she didn't want to get up at 5am this morning

She would also have to kill time until the 3pm check-in time.

I think there is already a registration code, so I'm not sure how the bots are getting through.

Post by **Mozgus** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 9:53 pm

racketboy wrote: However, the last few months the increased traffic has pushed me a little closer to the monthly ceiling for my entry-level hosting plan.

Um, where are you hosted at? I can't imagine a blog with text and a few images actually taking up much bandwidth. I only pay $4 a month and I get 250GB a month, and I only use about 40GB of that, at the moment. But thats because I host dozens of large videos, and quite a few albums, among other things.

Post by **racketboy** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:42 pm

I'm hosted at Godaddy.
The Magazine scans have probably contributed a lot.
I get Dugg and Slashdotted every now and then as well...

It all adds up. I still have some room to breathe, but I may eventually have to upgrade

Post by **Mozgus** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:44 pm

racketboy wrote:I'm hosted at Godaddy.
The Magazine scans have probably contributed a lot.
I get Dugg and Slashdotted every now and then as well...

It all adds up. I still have some room to breathe, but I may eventually have to upgrade

Well you're popular enough to fuel torrents of those magazines. I don't think you need to locally host them.

Post by **racketboy** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 6:15 am

Mozgus wrote:
racketboy wrote:I'm hosted at Godaddy.
The Magazine scans have probably contributed a lot.
I get Dugg and Slashdotted every now and then as well...

It all adds up. I still have some room to breathe, but I may eventually have to upgrade
Well you're popular enough to fuel torrents of those magazines. I don't think you need to locally host them.

Some people download them from work/school and can't use torrents.

Post by **retrogamer** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:37 pm

Not sure if this is possible, but is there a way to prevent people from signing up to the site and then spamming right away? I'm thinking that maybe some kind of waiting period after one signs up would help since they would be able to browse the site but won't be able to post right away. I'm just curious as to what the mods/members feel about this?

Post by **Mozgus** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:26 pm

retrogamer wrote:Not sure if this is possible, but is there a way to prevent people from signing up to the site and then spamming right away? I'm thinking that maybe some kind of waiting period after one signs up would help since they would be able to browse the site but won't be able to post right away. I'm just curious as to what the mods/members feel about this?

You dont need to go that far. There are many mods which don't allow people to post links for their first set number of posts. Spambots will be screwed, and never successfully post.

Post by **lordofduct** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 11:47 pm

Mozgus wrote:
retrogamer wrote:Not sure if this is possible, but is there a way to prevent people from signing up to the site and then spamming right away? I'm thinking that maybe some kind of waiting period after one signs up would help since they would be able to browse the site but won't be able to post right away. I'm just curious as to what the mods/members feel about this?
You dont need to go that far. There are many mods which don't allow people to post links for their first set number of posts. Spambots will be screwed, and never successfully post.

I know a couple active forums who use the link deal and sometimes in conjunction with a innability to post until a time period, except in a 'newb' forum designated for newbs to introduce themselves and the sort.

But those are VERY active threads. I don't think this place gets enough traffic to warrant such measures and just the link thing is a good idea.

Post by **Mozgus** » Fri Sep 15, 2006 12:50 am

lordofduct wrote:But those are VERY active threads. I don't think this place gets enough traffic to warrant such measures and just the link thing is a good idea.

That's really all he'd need. Spambots can still register, but they'd never be able to spam with the link mod enabled. But having a bloated list of worthless usernames isn't pretty either, so he also might want to install a mod which auto-cleans the user list for you.