System faster now, and more announcements.

[Peter Poelman]

Hi all,

First of all allow me to personally apologize for the state that this has been in for too long now. Even with the little time I had, I could have done more. I guess have a problem motivating myself if I know I cannot make something perfect.

Secondly, I have the pleasure of announcing a long-needed and overdue hardware upgrade which happened today and which should have made things much faster for everyone. I certainly notice a dramatic speed increase. More and faster processors are a Good Thing (tm).

Thirdly, and probably most importantly: Since I was so frustrated with being so time-constrained that I was not able to deliver perfection, I have taken the liberty to silently hire someone else to take care of the site full-time. Flar (username "Flar") had her first day at work today. I've had the opportunity to work with her on previous occasions, and I can tell you that she is one capable professional young woman. She'll need a little time to get rolling, but she and I will soon be managing the migration the system to yet better hardware, switching from phpBB to vBulletin, creating a new structure, cleaning up the ftp site and migrating the wiki to Mediawiki. She will then take care of daily moderation of the forums and all the other daily and weekly tasks that go with properly maintaining this site.

Fourthly, we will in future have ads. I don't like ads much, but there's simply no way around it if we want to make this thing rock again. We get quite a bit of money in donations. (Thank You! You pulled us through even when we did not deserve it...). But even if donations were to increase significantly after the upcoming improvements, they will still never pay for the combined costs of hardware, colo, bandwidth and Flar's salary. We will (ofcourse) make sure the ads are never of the in-your-face, moving-over-the-content, audio-at-full-volume kind, and we will most certainly not dare to have ads until the rest of the house is much, much, much more in order than it is now.


For now, feel free to fantasize about what XDA-developers could be, since we will now have both the machine-power and woman-power to do something with these ideas.


Peter Poelman
(who is looking forward to spending some more time with y'all soon)

[ZeBoxx]

Thanks for the post, keeping us updated - it is very highly appreciated :)

I can understand what you mean with finding it hard to get motivated when you know you can't reach the level of perfection that you'd like, so thanks for keeping up the good work anyway :)

[meschle]

(who is looking forward to spending some more time with y'all soon)

Thanks Peter for the system update - we all look forward to seeing you and your expertise :D

[richardlai]

Was wondering why I couldn't log on earlier... This is great now! Thanks Peter!

[cedrick]

one word : THANKS :D

[nsriza]

Thank you very much Peter :lol:

[TauTau]

This really *is* fast now, thanks a lot!

[rob61280]

much quicker now !

Thanks

[lozzd]

Its a lot quicker, and I don't mind Google ads if you wanna use them :P I know how painful it is to run a site with no money!

[TauTau]

btw, it seems that the database, which had some hickups before, now can't stand the speed of the site. I get frequent phpBB messages about failed DB connections. It only gets annoying when you press the submit button after writing a lot of text ;)

[iainmann]

Much faster now and looking forward to the future developments. I'm fairly new but have found this site really valuable and users are very helpful. And welcome to Flar

[Brazilian Joe]

Why don't you set upa a shop to help keeping up with the costs? You could sell accessories like BT headsets, MMC/SD/memory sticks, extended batteries etc. and of course HTC phones.
I think the people here would prefer to buy at shop.xda-developers.com than anywhere else, especially knowing that it will help to offset the website's costs.

[ralpheboyo]

I most definately agree. I would buy all my stuff from the xda site!!!!

[neilius]

I think I'm starting to get a little moist!

[oink1]

Good job! 8)

[boh113]

I love this site! My wife reckons that i should have married it instead of her (i spend alittle too much time on my laptop).

Welcome to Flar hope you enjoy us :lol:

Last thing i agree if you set up shop where we could all go and buy a good lil tiddley bits i would do my shopping here.

But ads are ok and i guess both would be even better from the site's point of view!

Good luck and thanks for the fantastic site!

[pat12]

Great news!
The site is indeed much faster to load
Don't apologize about the ads, try to get as much money as you can to make this site even better
Welcome onboard, Flar

[zerimar]

Thanks and great job, Peter:)

[levenum]

Hi.
Just wanted to say that I personally wouldn't mind a few adds if I know they help to improve and maintain the site. I am sure others will agree.

I am also glad to hear about the upcoming improvements, but a bit worried about switching the system type.

Hope you wouldn't accidentally loose anything from the database or the users listing in the process.

Any way,
Good luck!
This is a great site.

[JwY]

thanks, it's a lot faster now
this is a great resource site and even though i don't like ads, i completely understand the need for them

[Jorrit Schippers]

vBulletin is _really_ heavy. I manage a 1,8 M post / 20 K user forum, and I almost need a separate server for the search functionality

[tyl]

Cheers mate, noticed the zippy speed straight away :D

Ive always liked the phpbb2 forum though, dont you want to try phpbb3 just about to be released as beta? :wink:



Well done in any case, for the good work :P :P :P

[Flar]

Hi All,

Thank you all for all the support and welcoming :)

I'll be more and more active on the site and look forward to talking to you all.
Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is anything you'd like us to know!

Greetz,

Flar

[fimbulvetr]

Welcome Flar, glad to meet you.

So when we see problems (*cough* like on wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=ApacheGPIO where it just asks you to download a page), how do we report it?

Thanks

fim

[YvonLeFou]

Welcome Flar and Thanks Peter for your work ;)

[Flar]

So when we see problems (*cough* like on wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=ApacheGPIO where it just asks you to download a page), how do we report it?


When you spot problems or have suggestions you can drop me a PM or send a mail to webmaster@xda-developers.com.

Greetz,

Flar

[theonlyone23]

thanks!

[rebelish]

thank you peter and welcome to flar. :D :D :D :lol: :lol: :lol:

[johnstag]

I would like to add my congratulations to you and the current site. If a few adds will help support the current site and enable you toimprove it further you have my vote. Well done !

[Flar]

So when we see problems (*cough* like on wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=ApacheGPIO where it just asks you to download a page)



Hi,

Problem is solved.
Please let us know if you still experience problems. (I'll be watching this thread the upcoming days)

Greetz,

Flar

[Robrecht]

Good decision on the forum and the ads, it's a healthy evolution for a community this large and influential. All the best to you.

And now I'd like to add my little welcome to Flar. :wink: Wouldn't it be cool if she got 94.561 welcome posts here -- the current number of members on xda-dev. :shock: God, I remember being astonished by a sudden rise to 40.000 (http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=27656&highlight=) during one of our "historical events" (WM5 on Blue Angel, I think), not even that long ago.

Edit: Damn, I'm a geek.

Anyway, welcome!

[gquipster]

Keep up the good work everyone - a fantastic site.

Welcome Flar!

[ZeBoxx]

It appears that the following wiki page went missing:
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=WindowsMobile5Colors

Do you happen to know why? Can it be restored? It was/is linked from another WiKi page, so any auto-pruning shouldn't have caused it...

[ZeBoxx]

ah, it's back now :D
If you happened to poke at things - thanks!
If not - thanks, gremlins!

[KTamas]

Welcome, Flar! :)

Which HTC device do you have? ;)

[urksaddy]

Been on this site for about a year now and its faster than ever...!

Want to optimize MY forum? :) :) :)

Great job...

[Flar]

Which HTC device do you have? ;)

I've started using the Wizard (t-mobile mda vario) about a month ago :)

[m01y1i00]

I personally am sick of ads ads ads ads and more ads.
Please, please set up a SHOP. I would defiantly bye from this web site. I know the work you guys have put into it and the benefits I have received. Thank you..... SET UP A SHOP

[tsutton]

Maybe consider an 'ads free' membership package? (i.e. $5 for 3 months or something)

[HDuser]

Well I still get

phpBB : Critical Error

Could not connect to the database

[Tubbie_GL]

Welcome onboard flar...

Oh and Peter, thanks for upgrading this site, it works soo smooth again...

I would love to awoid the adds, but hey if that's what it takes, then go for it..
I kind of like the Shop idea even better and I would surely be a regular in the shop as well....

Keep it up:D



Tubbie

[fraser]

I'm liking the recent update as well, very nice. The RSS feeds will come in handy I'm sure!

[zxmju22]

I'm liking the update as well, very nice. The RSS feeds will come in handy I'm sure!

Thank you for this update....

[christopherwoods]

COOL! Really pleased to see the XDADev site get a well-deserved refresh and update to its forum software, I look forward to much faster foruming :D

Top work, to all involved, impressed with the speed you managed to get it all done!

[desingo]

Greatest Thanks to all of you guys !!! It comes handy with speed. Btw, is there still buggy with quick reply ???

[decebal]

Thanks guys for the things you're offering to our community !