Boards.ie advertising.

311

Hello ,a quick query about the plans for the future of boards.ie

Will the boards.ie site ever be advertised on radio or as an imformative service to the public ,in the future?

AlmightyCushion

CuLT did mention a while ago that there was plans for a banner swap with other sites e.g. boards has an ad for them and they have an ad for boards. I don't think he said anything about any other sort of advertising though.

Overheal

Maybe there are some boardsies out there who happen to be part time ninjas? They can go around to all the Mr.Tayto billboards and spray over it..

Sherifu

311 wrote: »

Hello ,a quick query about the plans for the future of boards.ie

Will the boards.ie site ever be advertised on radio or as an imformative service to the public ,in the future?

I don't think it needs to be advertised tbh. At this stage it grows by word of mouth. Not to mention when the media cover stories relating to boards. It would be cool to see/hear boards ads though.

randylonghorn

Sherifu wrote: »

I don't think it needs to be advertised tbh. At this stage it grows by word of mouth. Not to mention when the media cover stories relating to boards. It would be cool to see/hear boards ads though.

... plus people searching for something on Google and being directed here.

Overheal

wheres the boards merchandise already? Hoodies! Mugs! USB Hubs!

zAbbo

Over 800,000 visits a month, don't think there's a need to advertise.

311

Thanks for the replies ,I'm not actually sure how things work in networking etc.

Is the boards.ie site a constant development and growth or is it redunant sometimes ?

randylonghorn

311 wrote: »

Is the boards.ie site a constant development and growth or is it redunant sometimes ?

Don't mean to be a smartass, but run that one by me again slowly?

zAbbo

As fair as I know, There are two full time staff, with the recent addition of a developer, so things are on the up for sure.

AlmightyCushion

311 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies ,I'm not actually sure how things work in networking etc.

Is the boards.ie site a constant development and growth or is it redunant sometimes ?

Not sure what you mean. The site now has a developer plus vbulletin (the software that boards is running on) is always being updated so features will be added/tweaked. The admins usually recieve revenue from subscriptions/adverts that is used to pay for the hosting and the developer. What ever is left over is put into a war chest to pay for something when it breaks or to buy new hard ware like servers when needed.

If you are referring to traffic then the site will probably go through periods where traffic is lower like during the summer months because the students have gone home but generally it is gaining traffic every year.

311

randylonghorn wrote: »

Don't mean to be a smartass, but run that one by me again slowly?

Sorry ,what I mean is does boards occasionally get fully used ,or is it always fully used ?

AlmightyCushion

311 wrote: »

Sorry ,what I mean is does boards occasionally get fully used ,or is it always fully used ?

What do you mean by fully used exactly? Sorry but I just don't get what you mean.

Overheal

311 wrote: »

Sorry ,what I mean is does boards occasionally get fully used ,or is it always fully used ?

Do you mean is the server always running at full load?

311

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

What do you mean by fully used exactly? Sorry but I just don't get what you mean.

Ok ,I understand your previous post about the summer holidays and stuff .Thats part of what I was asking.

So basically what I'm thinking ,11am on a tuesday when there would be a couple of thousand users online.
The system would be running as normal ,or would it be only designed for up to the maximum it's being getting lately.

AlmightyCushion

Ah, I get you know. DeV answered this not too long ago.

DeVore wrote: »

The visitor stats have rocketed. Before, we would crawl to a stop at about 2200 users. Now with the new 5 server rig and 2 database servers we can handle 3100 without breaking a sweat by the looks of it.

Dev.

So it looks like there is plenty of space for new users and extra traffic.

randylonghorn

The servers were upgraded fairly recently: before that they were seriously over-stretched, the site was slow, everyone was complaining!

As soon as they were upgraded and site started whizzing along again, there was a fairly big jump in the number of users / members afair. Numbers will probably keep growing until they outgrow the current servers again (not for a while hopefully!) and we go back to having to feed treats to the hamsters in order to get a post in!

311

Thanks ,sorry for the muddling along there ,I was a bit confused about it .

I get the idea of the running of things ,cheers.

Overheal

randylonghorn wrote: »

The servers were upgraded fairly recently: before that they were seriously over-stretched, the site was slow, everyone was complaining!

As soon as they were upgraded and site started whizzing along again, there was a fairly big jump in the number of users / members afair. Numbers will probably keep growing until they outgrow the current servers again (not for a while hopefully!) and we go back to having to feed treats to the hamsters in order to get a post in!

Or we can move them into permanent homes inside the severs...
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1634735,00.asp

randylonghorn

They already tried something like that, and locked Regi into the server room with them to tend to their needs.

I think they under-estimated his needs ... some severely traumatised hamsters as a result! ¬_¬

Keano

Overheal wrote: »

Or we can move them into permanent homes inside the severs...
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1634735,00.asp

For some reason the designer of that scares me!!

Overheal

At the same time he's a genius.

Vexorg

Regarding boards.ie advertising, we have no plans to do this in the immediate future, its is very expensive and I think that there is still plenty of word of mouth growth left and imho the most valuable advertising we get is boardsies telling other people about boards:).

It would be great fun to have Boardsies create advertising campaigns for us but in the meantime I think talking to a good PR company could be a cost effective way to get the name out there.

Regarding growth and max numbers of users, we plan to keep adding or upgrading hardware to cope with increases in users, recently much of Cults time is taken up with maintenance of the servers, tweaking the software and general performance stuff.

To give you some idea of growth over the last year.

Month of March 2007


12 months to 31 March 2008


Month of March 2008


and to demonstrate the small monthly growth [10 March 2008 to 9 April 2008]



And of course these figures do not include the boards.ie classifieds on adverts.ie - a further 75K uniques and 1.7m pages

V

Overheal

is that powered by google analytics? cos I have that blocked by NoScript: Im a ghost

Vexorg

Yup - google analytics.

V.

Rb

Vexorg: Off topic, but can you tell how long a user has spent on boards in total since the creation of the account? I.e how many hours the account has been logged in?

6th

rb_ie wrote: »

Vexorg: Off topic, but can you tell how long a user has spent on boards in total since the creation of the account? I.e how many hours the account has been logged in?

I've thought about this too ... new thread? It could be interesting if its possible.

Overheal

6th wrote: »

I've thought about this too ... new thread? It could be interesting if its possible.

i really dont want to know.

Xavi6

Lol my missus will kill me if that sort of info is revealed. i'll also be sacked.

Anti

Overheal wrote: »

Maybe there are some boardsies out there who happen to be part time ninjas? They can go around to all the Mr.Tayto billboards and spray over it..

Your plan, i like it !

CuLT

rb_ie wrote: »

Vexorg: Off topic, but can you tell how long a user has spent on boards in total since the creation of the account? I.e how many hours the account has been logged in?

That information is not logged.

Join Date, Last Login, Last Post, that's about it as far as user centric timestamping goes.

Rb

On one hand I'm disappointed, on the other, quite relieved

Oh and nice disclaimer btw

Nerin

rb_ie wrote: »

Vexorg: Off topic, but can you tell how long a user has spent on boards in total since the creation of the account? I.e how many hours the account has been logged in?

6th wrote: »

I've thought about this too ... new thread? It could be interesting if its possible.

oh god im happy i dont know,better off that way.

Maybe there are some boardsies out there who happen to be part time ninjas? They can go around to all the Mr.Tayto billboards and spray over it..

part time?! bah, they aint real ninjas if its only part time.

Bard

Overheal wrote: »

wheres the boards merchandise already? Hoodies! Mugs! USB Hubs!

Here ! Woo !

Boards.ie hunting knives !

311

Vexorg wrote: »

Regarding boards.ie advertising, we have no plans to do this in the immediate future, its is very expensive and I think that there is still plenty of word of mouth growth left and imho the most valuable advertising we get is boardsies telling other people about boards:).

Thanks Vexorg . I really had no idea what was involved and the actual amount of traffic.

Fair play to yez!:cool:

I'm telling people about boards everyday ,I'm suprised how many people don't know about it actually.