UPDATE ON SERVER STATUS
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Ok after talking to about a dozen people last night on the phone and even more via email and PM's - We've came up with one or two things.
1. The Gallery is not going anywhere - it is however going to be locked down more so then in the past. Members have in the past had 2megs of storage with the largest file uploaded 2megs as well. Well when someone uploads a 2meg or even 1meg file that kills us in bandwidth - say someone uploads a 1meg file and posts it in the forum, that thread gets viewed 100time (more likely viewed much more) thats 100megs of bandwidth, and thats also not couting the people that view it IN the gallery. So the gallery has been limited to regular members so the biggest file that can be uploaded is 70KB which is more then twice as large as what most people recommend images to be. As well as the storage cut back to 768KB. Site Contributors have also been changed a little, in the past we've allowed contributors to upload files as big as 8MB's! This is now being changed to 1MB though they will have a storage limit of 8MB.
2. RCNT may be looking for 2-3 people to recuit advertisers workign on a commission based system and oppurtinty to receive products for review. On top of that we're looking into Google's ADSense which pays site admins a few cents everytime someone clicks on the ad - you don't have to buy anything, just click. RCNT will NOT support Pop-ups or pop-unders, nor email spam.
3. We are looking at dedicated servers right now, so far we've got our eye on a few. All running Pentium3 or higher with dual 80GB hard drives and anywhere from 500-1,000GB of bandwidth. The costs however are about $200 a month.
4. Yes we are also looking into a site sponsership as well, though my biggest concern is not turning RCNT into some biased company - I like the fact that everyone is allowed to say Company XYZ is awesome, Company XYZ is the worst company ever. I like truth, and I'd hate for that to change.
Just a little FYI and I'll keep everyone updated.
-Michael