Yahoo strength/weakness

[Bruce Morris]

Dan, I have gone through all the things you pointed out or questioned and offer
the following response:

Regards, Bruce Morris in Raleigh, NC (919)872-7635
1983 WL FC35RB
FMCA: F7142s Ham Radio: KI4ME
Vietnam Vet: 3rd MarDiv Corpsman('66-'67)

Webmaster - Wanderlodge Owners Online

From: Dan Weaver

To: WanderlodgeForum@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 8:48 AM

Subject: [WanderlodgeForum] Yahoo strength/weakness


Yahoo weakness is the format and the ads.

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Response:

Our Format has no ads and does run a multi-faceted format (custom designed for
userneeds)

Differences being:

§ Until now, the web based bulletin board or forum systems existed
completely separately and isolated from existing email based mailing list or
list serve systems. Each system operated independently. Separately, each system
has its own advantages and disadvantages.

§ Electronic mailing lists are very simple and convenient for the end
user, no harder than using the email he or she already uses. The disadvantage is
there is little history or organization of past discussions. Emails tend to get
lost in time and an email's content is only available to the original
recipients. While some lists servers have the ability to keep a history or
"archive" the email messages, the archiving is usually non-intelligent and
non-categorized leaving the user with a mess of unorganized messages.
Additionally, "archiving" is only uni-directional, meaning you may only go back
and view the archives. (YAHOO FORMAT)

§ At the same time web based forums like V-bulletin are very well suited
for organized bi-directional discussion. Users may view or contribute to a
subject by posting to a new or existing "thread" of information in any category
now or in the future. Unfortunately, this requires the user to use the web based
interface, for some this may be less convenient than email.

Although, web based forums and email list servers both have the common purpose
of communication, each system achieves this very differently.

As we progress, it will be easier to adapt the e-mail to forum dialogue than for
them to adapt to a format such as ours as they are non categorized.

We have already succeeded in categorizing the entire set of old messages and
converted them to a forum formatted for the end result of a truly searchable
database.

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Yahoo strengths are 24-7 multiple administrators, multiple hardware
backups (multi servers etc), auto file and message backups. In other
words, there are many people on tap with big money resources to stay
running on the hardware, software, and message restore year after
year, for free to users who in turn put up with the ads.

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Response:

Yahoo is a horizontal portal just as MSN and addresses the needs of a broad
spectrum of users. They are large but are supported by ads and stockholders.
Over the years they have transitioned their site many times.

If you do your homework you will find out how many groups have left there and
why ?/ Our group got there right after their last change up on groups. However
they do offer other services if you choose to pay at above the market prices.
But any customization is another matter entirely.

As to our new site's network:

· We have and host a horizontal portal.

· We host a network of 375 cities Vertical portal network As well as
several other vertical portals (vertical portals = Specfic needs and interests)

· We pride ourselves on a track record of 99.97 uptime over the last
seven years.. Our biggest asset is personalized service.

· Our site service offers personalized service and you can talk to a
human when you need to. For as long as I was the owner of our site on Yahoo I
was never able to reach anyone to try to resolve a problem.

· Our host service also hosts many large corporate accounts as well as
thousands of customers worldwide

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My question is on the new pay site: is there redundancy on file
servers, admins, auto backups, etc? I'd hate to see a valuable
historical site go down the tubes if Bruce becomes unavailable to
manage the new site. We are already losing THIS site, could the loss
of the new pay site to be next one to go?

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Response:

· We have servers located worldwide to handle Our clientele

· We have Techs on duty 24-7. all servers are in secure, a/c humidity
controlled facilities- with deisel generator backups.

· We never had a server go down at our Florida facility even when we
lost public power during last years hurricanes for 12 days..

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Question: What are the long term safegaurds for admin, hardware, and
software on the new site?

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Response:

During site development we have been running the site on a server with great
capacity and room for growth

however it will always remain here as a mirror site as we now transition it to
its permanent home on the one of the servers we use primarily for database
driven websites.



The site as well as the converted messages from yahoo are redundantly backed-up


It's primary server's (as we finish the beta test) specs are as follows:

· AMD Athlon 3000 Processor

· 1GB Memory (Ram)

· 2 x 80 GB Hard Drive (2 separate hard drives)

· With raid card (auto-backup to the minute)

· All servers run c-panel 9.98 stable 6 Apache Linux systems with Mysql
4.0.22 PHP 4.3.9 and perl 5.8.0

· All Software is the Best the market offers and most current versions.
That is why Vbulletin was chosen for security and robustness. The host forums
with 9,000,000 posts 60,000 members and 3,000 users on them at one time without
a hitch.

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Dan
Old time (in the past) programmer and computer facility manager


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