New Signatures
- Thread starter thatbloke
- Start date
Re: [DONE] vBulletin Upgrade
Ya, I wouldn't rely on auto-resizing, and it only works for signature images that you submit to THN, rather than ones linked to from other places.
Ya, I wouldn't rely on auto-resizing, and it only works for signature images that you submit to THN, rather than ones linked to from other places.
Re: [DONE] vBulletin Upgrade
[mod]Split thread off for a little more discussion about signature byte sizes.[/mod]
[mod]Split thread off for a little more discussion about signature byte sizes.[/mod]
Re: [DONE] vBulletin Upgrade
That's 44KB?!
That one's just about 20KB and substantially larger in terms of format.
Ah, I see now. Try that one as a GIF and see how you do. PNG is a moderately weighty format.
That's 44KB?!
That one's just about 20KB and substantially larger in terms of format.
Ah, I see now. Try that one as a GIF and see how you do. PNG is a moderately weighty format.
. The Gif version is 16KB which is still more than the limit
Re: [DONE] vBulletin Upgrade
Yeah, I'm thinking of bumping to 20KB... let me do some maths on it. Signatures can be a hit on bandwidth over time, and higher limits equals higher transfer requirements both for the server and clients. It's small, but it adds up, especially when you're on a crappy connection (don't imagine Bart gets decent broadband, for example...?).
Yeah, I'm thinking of bumping to 20KB... let me do some maths on it. Signatures can be a hit on bandwidth over time, and higher limits equals higher transfer requirements both for the server and clients. It's small, but it adds up, especially when you're on a crappy connection (don't imagine Bart gets decent broadband, for example...?).
Re: [DONE] vBulletin Upgrade
The maths looks something like this:
Maximum Signature Image Size * Average Number of Uncached & Server Stored Signature Hits Per Day = THN Server Transfers Per Day
Maximum Signature Image Size * Average Number of Uncached Signature Hits in a Thread = End User Transfer On First Thread Visit
End User Transfer On First Thread Visit / Download Speed = Time To Download Signatures
Maximum Signature Image Size is currently 10000 bytes.
I guess that we have perhaps 30 posting users, of which 50% might have signatures, all of which are likely to be maximum size. So, that's 15 signatures.
We have a daily visiting community of 51. Let's guess at 40 of them reading threads.
15 * 40 = 600 uncached signature hits per day.
So, for the first formula, looking at server load, the maths is:
10000 * 600 = 6000000 bytes per day (5.7MB per day)
Conservatively, let's guess that their cache is invalidated three days, account for longer and shorter cache staleness, and assume that they visit 24 times in a month to make the maths a little easier. That's maybe 45.6MB per month. Not a lot, by itself.
Of those 15 users with signatures, I guess that half of them might post to any given thread. Let's say 7 signatures per thread.
10000 * 7 = 70000 bytes per thread on first visit (68KB, 544Kbit).
On a 512Kbit connection you maybe get 400Kbit of download bandwidth for real. That's a mere 1.3 seconds page time to download the signatures.
On a 56 modem, you might get 40Kbit of download bandwidth at best. That's 13 seconds to download signatures.
Now, 10000 bytes does indeed make for very small signatures. Simple userbars fit in that, as do the small Xfire banners (I believe).
We can start scaling those up.
So, our starting metrics are for a 10000 byte signature maximum:
Put size up to 50000 bytes?
Double the number of users, then?
Scalability is my issue with larger signatures. That's nearly 0.5 GB of transfers per month just on signatures, and a whopping 13 seconds just for a bit of fluff. Less fortunate people suddenly find our forum unusable unless they disable signatures (which, fortunately, they can do... but then they disable all signatures, not just image-based ones).
These numbers aren't huge, I admit, but for a tiny piece of self-expression the price is fairly high.
That said, 10000 bytes is barely enough to do anything useful. I'll up it to 20480 bytes.
The maths looks something like this:
Maximum Signature Image Size * Average Number of Uncached & Server Stored Signature Hits Per Day = THN Server Transfers Per Day
Maximum Signature Image Size * Average Number of Uncached Signature Hits in a Thread = End User Transfer On First Thread Visit
End User Transfer On First Thread Visit / Download Speed = Time To Download Signatures
Maximum Signature Image Size is currently 10000 bytes.
I guess that we have perhaps 30 posting users, of which 50% might have signatures, all of which are likely to be maximum size. So, that's 15 signatures.
We have a daily visiting community of 51. Let's guess at 40 of them reading threads.
15 * 40 = 600 uncached signature hits per day.
So, for the first formula, looking at server load, the maths is:
10000 * 600 = 6000000 bytes per day (5.7MB per day)
Conservatively, let's guess that their cache is invalidated three days, account for longer and shorter cache staleness, and assume that they visit 24 times in a month to make the maths a little easier. That's maybe 45.6MB per month. Not a lot, by itself.
Of those 15 users with signatures, I guess that half of them might post to any given thread. Let's say 7 signatures per thread.
10000 * 7 = 70000 bytes per thread on first visit (68KB, 544Kbit).
On a 512Kbit connection you maybe get 400Kbit of download bandwidth for real. That's a mere 1.3 seconds page time to download the signatures.
On a 56 modem, you might get 40Kbit of download bandwidth at best. That's 13 seconds to download signatures.
Now, 10000 bytes does indeed make for very small signatures. Simple userbars fit in that, as do the small Xfire banners (I believe).
We can start scaling those up.
So, our starting metrics are for a 10000 byte signature maximum:
- 45.6MB per month of server downloads
- 1.3 seconds per uncached page to download signatures on a 512Kbit connection
Put size up to 50000 bytes?
- 228MB per month of server downloads
- 6.5 seconds per uncached page to download signatures (65 seconds on the modem)
Double the number of users, then?
- 456MB per month of server downloads
- 13 seconds per uncached page (2 minutes, 10 seconds on that modem)
Scalability is my issue with larger signatures. That's nearly 0.5 GB of transfers per month just on signatures, and a whopping 13 seconds just for a bit of fluff. Less fortunate people suddenly find our forum unusable unless they disable signatures (which, fortunately, they can do... but then they disable all signatures, not just image-based ones).
These numbers aren't huge, I admit, but for a tiny piece of self-expression the price is fairly high.
That said, 10000 bytes is barely enough to do anything useful. I'll up it to 20480 bytes.
Re: [DONE] vBulletin Upgrade
You did make it as far as:
???
You did make it as far as:
Ronin Storm said:
???