Big changes are on the way for ATS, some you'll notice, and some you won't. The first will be a small change that provides a minor benefit for a few members, Forum Subscriptions in Recent Posts. Within one week, members will have the option of applying their subscribed forums from their MyATS specification to the threads displayed in the Recent Posts page. This way, you can easily omit forums you're not interested in form appearing in the recent posts page. This feature should be available within one week. Next, for our political junkies, we will be launching a new Politics spin-off board, similar to BTS, exclusively for the discussion and debate of political ideologies. The new board will contain several topical forums for the discussion of ideologies and political happenings in regions throughout the world. But something tells me our core user-group of conspiracy-junkies will enjoy this change the most. This new feature should appear in about two weeks. Finally, the biggest change of all comes just a bit more than a year since the last time we made a similar change, a completely new technology platform. Over the next 60 days, we'll be obtaining and preparing a new load-balanced platform beginning with two Dual-Xeon 2.8 GHz, 4 gig ram, RAID 5 servers. The new system represents a 5x increase in performance capacity, and more importantly, a long-term solution for increasing technology needs easily, simply by adding more servers. Look for a cut-over to these new systems in 1 to 2 months (the cut-over will be complex and in stages as we have a broad-range of custom features that will take time to transition to a new platform). Our growth has been near-meteoric in the past six months, and shows no sign of slowing. These three improvements are a combination of responding to the needs of our members, understanding the evolution of the discussion topics of our members, and ensuring that our performance can support current and long-term growth.

Ive seen a massive up turn here ever since the Aussi Bloke Asteroid Hoax back in April/May the war in Iraq and the Elections in the US and there is no end to all the fun in sight.

You have no idea how much im drooling over that server!!

The SpinOff board is a good idea. And the subscribe to forums idea, I was gonna suggest that yesterday in chat when Surfup was talking about too much politics. Can this also be done to the ACTUAL forums? So we dont even see them on the index?

lol, same here

Anyway, I think the new board is a great idea, I'm looking forward to the changes! Thanks, SO

ALL RIGHT ATS!!!

glad to see that we need to update because we are so big!!!

one question:

who pays for all of this???

Oh, I agree 210%... that sounds so powerful and lovely.. I'd love to just LOOK at it...

I'm such a tech-geek... I LOVE THIS STUFF!

The new forum sounds good as well, with a special place for the politically-minded to go over and spill their guts.

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, ATS...

...and another valid question by tsA... who DOES pay for all this?! This is so insane! It must call for lots and lots of money and resource! It's amazing if all of the revenue comes from advertising and donations... cause that simply ROCKS.

{STAY COOL)
-prophetmike

The finances of ATS is an amazing thing. While it took 18 months of growth and planning to get to this point, the fact that we are here is astounding. In essence, our members are paying for these upgrades and ongoing costs simply by posting. Let me explain: 1) We've reached nearly 1 million posts on almost any topic within the core mandate of ATS -- conspiracy and alternative issues. While no one will try to presume that all posts are of optimum quality, the collective totality of content combines for an exceptional resource of unparalleled quality and uniqueness. The efforts of our members over the past two years (the age of the current board database) and the careful management of the community has made this accomplishment possible. 2) The quality of content attracts 30,000+ unique users every day who come here to research and learn more about everything from Area 51 to Nick Berg. Because of code optimization and depth of content, it's nearly impossible not to find ATS within Google searches on most current events, conspiracies, aliens, and all other related "alternative topics". Of those 30,000+ visitors roughly 27,000 are non members, and about 22,000 find ATS for the very first time. 3) About 90% of all advertising is delivered to non-members so that our valued members do not need to be interrupted by ads. This experimental advertising concept is the first of its kind on the Internet as every other large board delivers all available advertising "inventory" to members and guests alike (few boards have our high guest-to-member ratio). So, the people who contribute (members) content that attracts the guests are not burdened with interruptive advertising banners and pop-ups. 4) Our advertising revenue is on the verge of supporting operations and hopefully, soon no one will be required to dig deep into pockets to help fund this beast. The new dual load-balanced servers are a bit of a gamble, as they're expensive and we're switching to a best-in-class managed hosting provider. But the platform is a solid solution used by some of the largest websites in existence (but with far more than 2 servers), and we'll now be able to easily scale up as demands require. However, as has been the case with each increase in ATS technology, traffic and posting has followed suit, so we're certain the advertising revenue will increase to support the new systems. 1+2+3=4 So you see... while over the past 18 months, there have been some costly gambles by those of us footing the bill, it's finally about to reach a self-sustaining point. All because you, the members, are posting the kind of material that people on the Internet are looking for. A simple idea, that seems to be working.

Bah! Dual AMD Opterons 250 @2.4GHZ w/ 4GB DDR 3200 ECC REG. RAM 128 bit Bus will beat the living crap outta that setup so bad it ain't even funny.

Indeed it would...but you cant lie that Quad Xeons @2.8 doesnt kick ass...and over my 2000+ Palomino with 384mb of pc2100....id take anything.

Well...not exactly Quad...since its Dual for 2 different servers for 2 different purposes.

[Edited on 21-11-2004 by dreamlandmafia]

I'd love to go AMD, but dedicated server solutions based on AMD are hard to come by and usually with "lower-tier" providers. Our decision to go with the best-of-the-best was based only in part on the type of equipment offered. Service, support, monitoring, backups, etc. all were considered.

Exactly two Servers with Dual AMD Opteron 250's ..... now that's some processing power for your ass! LOL! AMD 2000+? Damn dude its time to upgrade.

Yeah it sucks that many providers don't offer solutions based on AMD processors, since they are more powerful and cost effective than Intel Xeons ( yuk! )



[edit on 21-11-2004 by Ocelot]

While I agree that Dual Opterons would definately do some kicking (in fact I have an overclocked Athlon XP 2400 right now), you must admit that the new server does indeed do the job and kick some you-know-what as well

And its a PALOMINO!!! First ones released under the XP line.

Yeah yeah yeah...i need CASH to upgrade. I have no MONEY! Now is the time to upgrade tho, since Athlon 64 3200+ are 190$ while the XP 3200+ is 200$, talk about weird? I need about 500$ to do a good upgrade., and I have a total of.................a shoestring.

[Edited on 21-11-2004 by dreamlandmafia]

Yeah that server will get the job done indeed.

cool. Do we get more smileys?

Hey with that upgrade Im sure they could add a couple more smileys. Who doesn't love smileys.

I hate smileys...

another milestone.

one more question:

where are these servers located???

in SO's house???