More growth for 2005!

[Scott Greczkowski]

Howdy everyone,

What a great start we have had to 2005, our CES coverage was unmatched by any other Satellite forum! As 2005 progresses we have a bunch of new things in the works!

We are planning on adding a second server to SatelliteGuys as we are continuing to grow at a record rate! The new server will host our databases, while this current server will continue to host the actual site and serve the website and email.

Our current server is a Dual XEON running at 2.4 GHZ running Redhat 9.0 and Cpanel. It has 2 GB of RAM, a 100 MB uplink to the net, as well as 2 80 GIG Hard Drives (1 is only used when backups are ran each day)

Our new server will be equal specs, in addition when the backups are run the database server will be backed up to the web hosting server, and the webhosting server will be backed up to the database server, this way in case something happens to one of the servers we can use the second server and with a few DNS changes can be back online quickly.

With this new server you will see the speed of the site kick up nicely.

We are planning on adding this new server in the first quarter of 2005.

To help pay for the second server we plan on introducing IntelliText to our site. We have been using IntelliText for the past two months with our unregistered users and have been having good success, especially when paired with our Google ads. I should note that Pub Members / Supporters will not see these ads.

To give you a better idea of what this technology is all about let me provide some overview that we have obtained from the advertising company itself....

IntelliTXT creates sponsored text links from keywords, hooks and phrases within article-based content. This user-activated advertising message provides users with relevant product information.

IntelliTXT works by analyzing the text on the page, identifying keywords and then matching those keywords against relevant advertisers. The areas of text to be analyzed are marked by surrounding those areas with special tags. When IntelliTXT is applied, the HTML in those areas is replaced with a modified version containing the IntelliTXT keyword. The modified version looks the same except for the addition of the highlighted IntelliTXT keywords.

Some important points to note....

IntelliTXT does not violate privacy and there are no known stability or security issues. There is absolutely NO SPYWARE involved as there is nothing downloaded into the client's computer

In addition, we are also working on a way for registered members to turn the IntelliText off. If anyone is good with PHP and knows vBulletin 3 and would like to help out please PM me.

We will be monitoring your feedback of this new feature carefully.

We are also looking to give SatelliteGuys a new look, if you are a graphics designer looking to help out let me know, if you know vBulletin 3 styles and how they work even better.

Also in the next few weeks we will be changing things around, with some new forums and features, and some forums may also be going away and combined with other forums. If you have any suggestions now is the time to get them in.

Thanks for making SatelliteGuys.US the Internet's Most Popular and largest Satellite Information forum. We look forward to growing to serve you better.

Happy New Year!

 

[Pepper]

I hope they are paying you a heck of a lot of money, because the green underlined words are very irritating. And 99% of the time they seem to have nothing at all to do with the context in which the word appears.

And of course the term dish network is going to be vmcsatellite.com, the guys who spam ebay with all their $.01 auctions. And the name of the city I get local channels from ends up being an ad for ringtones.

 

[apocrapha]

I gotta agree those links are annoying. Just noticed them tonight and thought WTF is this?

I'm all for this forum making a few bucks-either just to make even or to turn a profit. I realize there are costs (time and money) involved and realize that this might be a good source of revenue. But personaly-even though there probably aren't any privacy concerns as Scott states- it just FEELS instrusive somehow. Probably just my own paranoia.

I'd much rather seen large banner ads than these sponsored links. But that's just my opinion.

 

[maddawg]

Gentlemen, both you folks are whining. Why don't you guys offer to donate instead.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

There will be a way to opt out of the IntelliTxt, I will be putting them up as soon as my wife gets out of the hospital.

Sorry I have been away the past few days because of this.

 

[apocrapha]

Gentlemen, both you folks are whining. Why don't you guys offer to donate instead.

Not whining. Just expressing my opinion. There is a difference. And I don't want to donate. I'm waaaay too cheap for that.

 

[navy8ball]

i would like to see a "mark all forums read button" at the bottom of the page so i dont have to scroll back up to the quick links button to do it their. thanks bj

 

[TuxCoder]

I like the sub-forums now being listed in the main forums page.

And I notice, if the small icon by a subforum is yellow-orange, that subforum has unread message(s) (same purpose as yellow color on bigger icon to the left of the main forum). OK, so maybe it's an obvious concept but it took me a while to notice and I like it. It makes listing the subforums even more useful.

 

[Pepper]

Gentlemen, both you folks are whining. Why don't you guys offer to donate instead.

I did donate. So there.