Tapatalk And File Attachments: Opinions Needed?

[Supero100]

As mentioned in the other thread, I like the alerts tapatalk pushes to my alert/system tray... No great affection for tapatalk but that's the thing I'd miss the most.

Edit: if everyone uploads photos, will the increased bandwidth and system requirements eventually be paid for by the premium members?

 

[Rustpot]

Yeah everything can be better, but it will be with time.

Made me think of this;

 

[OakleyFrankFMJ]

Editor looks waaaaay better now.

I'm sure I could probably think of a couple Of more things. Just way too beat right now to figure anything out. By the time I do you'll probably have a LOT more people who have chimed in on what I could think of.

I still have to manually scroll if I type too much in the editor to see what I've typed though.

 

[OakleyBoss]

As mentioned in the other thread, I like the alerts tapatalk pushes to my alert/system tray... No great affection for tapatalk but that's the thing I'd miss the most.

Edit: if everyone uploads photos, will the increased bandwidth and system requirements eventually be paid for by the premium members?

Understandable. The push notifications may be available at some point in the future, but that is a large undertaking involving us relaying the alerts with apple servers to push them to phones/devices.

Not sure exactly what your asking? The costs of uploading are offset by the premium membership subscription. If everyone was able to upload without paying, it would probably cost more in server resources. Did I answer it?

 

[digi7alph0enix]

As mentioned in the other thread, I like the alerts tapatalk pushes to my alert/system tray... No great affection for tapatalk but that's the thing I'd miss the most.

Edit: if everyone uploads photos, will the increased bandwidth and system requirements eventually be paid for by the premium members?

Premium member page says the price is set in stone for life once you sign up so whatever the cost it'd just come out of that same fund I'd imagine, and I highly doubt that's enough to pay for the monthly costs of this site even in it's current format. I don't know what kind of hardware this server is using, but even the cheapest dedicated servers in a data center usually start upwards of $250/mo with small amounts of bandwidth. When you make the jump to enterprise level hardware and the amount of bandwidth this site uses it isn't uncommon to see sites like this paying $500-$1200/mo or more for their hosting. A lot of that cost can be lowered by managing your own hardware but that requires access to a data center or something similar. Adding a gallery and upload seems simple enough of the surface but it can really go out of control cost wise with a site like this where everyone is posting pictures of themselves every day, pictures of everything they bought, ate, etc.

 

[Supero100]

Not sure exactly what your asking? The costs of uploading are offset by the premium membership subscription. If everyone was able to upload without paying, it would probably cost more in server resources. Did I answer it?

If the additional service of hosted photos are offered to all non premium members, is there a revenue stream that offsets the extra expenses (besides premium member fees)?

 

[Rustpot]

Dig it so far on mobile.

 

[Rustpot]

Only thing I would add is a small set of navigation links at the bottom of the page before the editor. I think someone asked for this before and we discounted it as trivial, but having to use the browser back button doesn't refresh the previous page.

One thing I dislike about tapatalk is not being able to go forward to a topic I just left

 

[OakleyBoss]

Premium member page says the price is set in stone for life once you sign up so whatever the cost it'd just come out of that same fund I'd imagine, and I highly doubt that's enough to pay for the monthly costs of this site even in it's current format. I don't know what kind of hardware this server is using, but even the cheapest dedicated servers in a data center usually start upwards of $250/mo with small amounts of bandwidth. When you make the jump to enterprise level hardware and the amount of bandwidth this site uses it isn't uncommon to see sites like this paying $500-$1200/mo or more for their hosting. A lot of that cost can be lowered by managing your own hardware but that requires access to a data center or something similar. Adding a gallery and upload seems simple enough of the surface but it can really go out of control cost wise with a site like this where everyone is posting pictures of themselves every day, pictures of everything they bought, ate, etc.

If the additional service of hosted photos are offered to all non premium members, is there a revenue stream that offsets the extra expenses (besides premium member fees)?

Yeah so as long as you are a Premium member and subscribed, it will never go up. We may raise the price in the future, but anyone who signed up at the $35 level and is subscribed via PayPal, will only ever pay that amount.

Currently, Ad Revenue and Premium Fee's and any other revenue is just pooled together and gets pretty close to covering costs. When we have a surplus, we like to save it up and either re-invest in the site, or run a giveaway for a pair of sunglasses. Now, if we offer file storage, its tough to say how much it would cost since we don't know how much disk space, resources or bandwidth it would need. Disk Space has become more affordable in recent years, but Server CPU and RAM still commands a premium, while bandwidth can get expensive too.

On the pro side, I think allowing members to upload photos would help grow the site and could potentially offset the costs. This would be done by having all photos linked to our site, so any linking would drive traffic. In addition, we could set attachments as only visible by members, meaning guests would register more to see them. Thats not quite as bad as a private forum, but is a pretty good incentive to join. Also older threads won't die out after the hot linked photos expire.

Honestly, I don't know the exact number of linked images currently, I will have to run some queries to find out, then run the numbers on server resources. I just brought it up since I know a lot of members use Tapatalk for its ability to upload photos.

I also wanted to gauge how premium members would feel if everyone had the ability to upload photos. I might look at making it a quota, say 250mb per user, while premium is unlimited. But 250mb per user x 10k users is still 2 terabytes of photos. Although that is an extreme case.

 

[OakleyBoss]

Only thing I would add is a small set of navigation links at the bottom of the page before the editor. I think someone asked for this before and we discounted it as trivial, but having to use the browser back button doesn't refresh the previous page.

One thing I dislike about tapatalk is not being able to go forward to a topic I just left

So you are looking for a back button hardcoded into the site? Just want to make sure I understand what you want before attempting anything.