Possible to private message?

[Santyclaws]

I don't know my way around this site well enough yet to know if you can private message someone........

Anyone know?:confused:

[PINEVIEW01]

Nope! We all want the "hear":D

[Muumuu]

Come on. Share. We're all ears.

[Santyclaws]

OMG! :eek: LOL! I can't even!:D :D :D , but thanks for being so considerate of me!

[Santyclaws]

It's not dirty, I can tell you that much.:rolleyes:

[fllady61]

I don't know my way around this site well enough yet to know if you can private message someone........

 

Anyone know?:confused:

 

 

as far as I know, no you can not unless they have their email addy listed in their profile.

[*Mach*]

The PM feature of this board is disabled...

[L2J]

as far as I know, no you can not unless they have their email addy listed in their profile.

 

Which wouldn't be a private message anyway.

 

The PM feature of this board is disabled...

 

Any idea why, Mach? Not like the mods couldn't read them...if they wanted to do so.

[*Mach*]

Which wouldn't be a private message anyway.

 

 

 

Any idea why, Mach? Not like the mods couldn't read them...if they wanted to do so.

 

 

I'm thnkin' economics and complexity, Liv...

[GaTo]

I too would like to see the PM feature enabled. It sucks being forced to hijack a thread in order to tell a particular member something... especially when it's completely off topic.

[mike91911]

This was mentioned not along ago in another thread. I can't get the search to work (again) to find it. In that thread the poster thought one reason that PM is disabled is because it would be to easy to reccomend TA's and other ways to circumvent the rules for posting. I don't know if that is true or not. PM would be great, you wouldn't have to "hijack" a thread to ask someone a question.

[GaTo]

this is true but i could just as easily send a person an email or post my number and do it over the phone. If that's the real reason it's a poor one because there are always ways around it.

 

Sometimes you want to tell another individual something private such as a telephone number, cabin number, great tip, secret spot etc without having the whole world know about it.

[alfngf]

Yeah it would be a nice feature to have.

[DqALEX]

I don't know my way around this site well enough yet to know if you can private message someone........

Anyone know?:confused:

Sorry to say you have to use there E-mail if it is in there Profile. I get E-mails from time to time from people here. I hope they turn on the PM here. that would be great.

[JediSkipdogg]

I concur on the nice feature as I'd like to PM some of the members going on my cruise and see more of their plans on arriving and during the cruise without posting to the entire world.

 

If they want to stop TAs from giving out their info then just limit to say 5 PMs a day max. That would at least slow a TA down some and allow members to report suspected TAs. I guarantee I'd report them as they annoy me, lol.

[GaTo]

that's a good point... perhaps a 5 pm limit per day is a good way to start... and have a report feature so that TA's that don't follow the rules can get punished... Why punish the whole community for something that a few are doing?

[*Mach*]

I too would like to see the PM feature enabled. It sucks being forced to hijack a thread in order to tell a particular member something... especially when it's completely off topic.

 

 

Yeah... but when you look at the number of forums that we have here and the number of threads in each forum you quickly realize that the bandwidth requirements and server requirements are already HUGE!!!

Adding PM to the service would probably nearly double the required bandwidth and bandwidth costs money... lots of money...

[GaTo]

Completely understandable HOST i'm an Admin/SuperMod on a couple of other sites and we have had that issue as well. In the past what i have recommended and it has worked was to do this:

 

1. Work on the thread cut off date. I have seen posts on here as old as 2000 still popping up in searches. Where the last post was made that year. The cruise industry is constantly changing and evolving and alot of that old information is incorrect. These threads are obsolete delete them.

 

2. This website has far to many NON ACTIVE members. Roughly 70,000 members have made less than 5 posts. What we usually do is send out a mass email to all the members of the site asking them if they would like to keep their status on the site to please make at least one posting within the next 1-2 weeks. If not then their account will be deleted. This is a good way to weed out the "1 post wonders" that post 3 days before their sailing and never again.

 

3. Keep the PM limit to 5 per day or give each member a 20 pm limit before they have to empty their inbox.

 

 

Quick little search turned this up (though it might only apply to Vbulletin not sure):

 

Ways to save bandwidth.

I thought I would write up a list of ways to save bandwidth. Perhaps this could then be moved to the Hints and Tips forum. Please add any other suggestions:

 

ADMIN SETTINGS:

 

1) Ensure that you do not have NO CACHE headers set on in your settings

 

2) Reduce the number of threads displayed on forumdisplay and the number of posts displayed in showthread

 

3) Use CSS to replace font settings:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...threadid=17943

 

SERVER SETTINGS:

 

1) Install gzip and turn it on for the forum (biggest saving you can make)

http://i4net.tv/marticle/get.php?act...e&articleid=12

 

AVATAR SETTINGS:

 

You have a number of options here:

 

1) Encourage use of default avatars and not custom avatars (which don't appear to be cached by the browser. sorry could not find url discussing this)

 

2) Use hack to save custom avatars as files

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...ight=bandwidth

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...m+avatar+files

 

3) Use hack to allow users to enter a link to their avatar off server

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...ghlight=avatar

 

4) Prevent hotlinking of custom avatars with a referrer in avatar.php

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...hlight=rewrite

 

5) Store default avatars on another server.

 

IMAGES/ATTACHMENTS

 

1) Place all your images on another server and link to them. The other server being a place with cheaper bandwidth.

 

2) Reduce the max size of attachments

 

3) Prevent attachments being viewed by guests, will also stop hotlinking from other sites.

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...hlight=rewrite

 

4) Use mod re-write to prevent hotlinking of images and non custom avatars

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...hlight=rewrite

http://faq.solutionscripts.com/misc/hot_linking.html

 

 

CHEAP BANDWIDTH

 

I would recommend www.rackshack.net for a server at $100 per month and about $250 set up (rubbish server) but you get 300GB bandwidth and they have a decent network (with stats to show its use).

 

 

Of all these suggestions none really decrease any functionality of your forum. If you want to decrease more bandwidth and don't mind decreasing functionality, suggestions include:

 

1) Requiring registration (ie no guests)

2) Turn off Calendar

3) Turn off forum jump (can use quite a lot of bandwidth if you have lots of forums. More than 40 forums and I would get rid of it)