British Trainz

Right, I need everyone's opinion on this.....



A forum user have proposed that a download section to the forums be installed for ease of access for new released content.

I need to know will people use this feature, or will it end up stagnating?

Your thoughts below, please.

It sounds like a good idea to me, i'd probably use it.

I'd use that as well, that's a good idea, saves me having to type a letter in the url bar haha

When you mean download section , do you mean a place where content will be permanently kept or a place where you can add stuff prior to it be accepted to the DLS ?

Can the forum handle the additional bandwidth , which will only increase as more content is added (the reason why I closed my website) ?
It's no good starting this up then coming cap in hand in a few months and saying everyone has to cough up or you lose the download section or even the forum .
Or will we end up with loads of annoying adverts all over the place to pay for it !!

Users have worked hard to replace the knowledge that was lost since the UKtrainz forum closed and will we have to go through all that again once the bills start mounting up and the towel gets thrown in (again!) ?

The DLS is free to registered users (the ticket only speeds up downloads) and the users of versions not supported anymore already have the option to use trainzproroutes to freely distribute their content .

Is the download section (or at least the links to the content) going to be only accessible to registered users , hot linking via visible links to other sites will increase the bandwidth use even further .

Who will police this download area to ensure that copyrighted material isn't uploaded ?

And before I'm reminded yes I do use the attachment facility that Mark has already generously provided but the content is removed once it's on the DLS .
Hopefully remaining a small spike in the bandwidth used

Nexusdj has virtually read my thoughts on this.
To add, I imagine Marky is paying for this site and probably wouldn't appreciate excessive bandwidth use landing him with a large bill or getting shut down for exceeding bandwidth, I assume he is oking this?
I find Mediafire works well enough for temporary downloads while waiting for the DLS to catch up.

Marky has said in the secret mod room that he can afford this. As he has plenty if bandwidth left. Nexus, it would probably be an extended version of the Releases forum, which would act as a permanent feature for downloading.


If needed, we could always set a donation feature up

If the big chief reckons he can afford it annually /6 monthly /quarterly/monthly then that's okay .
Your job now is to prove me wrong so that I don't come on and smugly say in a few months that I did warn you !!

No need for a donation feature as you've already told us that Mark can afford it

What will be the maximum files size that can be uploaded ?
What is the maximum speed available to download ?

Will there be a cap on the amount users can download in a day ?

Will you be introducing a policy of only allowing users who have posted 5 times or more in the forum access to the download area to prevent drive-by file grabbing ?

Will all of my questions get answered this time !?

If it's OK with Mark it's fine by me, just so long as it's not open house for non legal Trainz users.

Nexusdj wrote:If the big chief reckons he can afford it annually /6 monthly /quarterly/monthly then that's okay .
Your job now is to prove me wrong so that I don't come on and smugly say in a few months that I did warn you !!

No need for a donation feature as you've already told us that Mark can afford it

What will be the maximum files size that can be uploaded ?
What is the maximum speed available to download ?

Will there be a cap on the amount users can download in a day ?

Will you be introducing a policy of only allowing users who have posted 5 times or more in the forum access to the download area to prevent drive-by file grabbing ?

Will all of my questions get answered this time !?

Talk to mark

I have on here via my last post ?

clam1952 wrote:If it's OK with Mark it's fine by me, just so long as it's not open house for non legal Trainz users.

I find that I have to agree with that, Mark started this forum & it's up to him which direction he wants to go in.
I'm sure he knows the working & costs of his own project & I would just like to say thank you for anything he
wishes to add for our benefit.

As far as webspace goes I have about 8GB free, I'm not sure how much bandwidth we currently use as cpanel has a bug and isn't showing usage., however my limit is 500GB.

I'm thinking of only making it available to forum members, so you have to be logged in to download and upload files, as well as hot linking being disabled.
I don't want it to be an alternative to the DLS, just a handy place to store odd files which are not on the DLS, and what we currently do on the forums, just they will be in one place.

Only CDPs will be allowed to be uploaded, and there will be a size limit, and maybe have a daily limit of how many files can be downloaded.

At the moment I'm having problems finding a suitable script, so I may have to create my own one, doing this I could also link the members with the forum database.

Mark

Marky7890 wrote:I'm thinking of only making it available to forum members, so you have to be logged in to download and upload files, as well as hot linking being disabled.
I don't want it to be an alternative to the DLS, just a handy place to store odd files which are not on the DLS, and what we currently do on the forums, just they will be in one place.

I agree, I (in my opinion) don't intend it to be an alternative to the DLS; more of a place where you can conveniently store cpd. files whilst they are waiting for DLS approval, or relating to a thread on a forum (for example beta releases) etc.

Yes it should be for forum members only.

Thanks for the reply Mark and clearing up the questions that I asked

Nexusdj wrote:If the big chief reckons he can afford it annually /6 monthly /quarterly/monthly then that's okay .
Your job now is to prove me wrong so that I don't come on and smugly say in a few months that I did warn you !!

Good point, it gets me thinking, how bad is my website at the moment? The trouble is, although space is actually pretty cheap these days, bandwidth is a lot, I've already estimated that my website at its current capcity with all my WIP stuff, will sustain 110 users a month, not a lot if you think about it, although thanks to the 502, its probably a lot less. (That is 11mb on its own and err, yeah.)

This is where the problems will most likely start, considering how many users you will have. Another problem I did also think about is controlling it all, what measures are there in place to stop people from uploading content that requires permission? E.g. a reskin of nexusdj's reskin which is a reskin of my work?
How will you deal with guests downloading? I personally think downloading should only be for those that are already signed to this forum. You could also have a 10 posts until you can download rule as well, just to limit things.

Its questions and ideas, not to make things exclusive, just treading on a bit of caution until I know the figures, the best thing to do is think "worst case scenario" first.

EDIT: Just checked mine for the period upto now, only 2.7GB out of 30GB of bandwidth, I seriously thought it would be worse than that, considering that uploading my CDPs is pretty much saturating the market if you like and the first month will ALWAYS be the worst as you will be doing that, after time, you will probably find that people download less and less stuff, because they won't redownload anything they don't have unless they really need to.