Ah … thanks Chronos. Yeah, I’m an anti-cookie person. I’ll watch out for that, should I need to use the function.
sigh Now I feel less of an outsider …
There is, of course, another change which may help…
“Thank you for searching” should be changed to “Searhing again, you selfish bastard?”
I really had no idea until I read this thread that searching caused such a strain on the server. May I suggest that we all print out or save to disc any threads we want to save as soon as they are no longer active?
It seems like that would help. And I have never been reluctant to use the search engine before. I will try to refrain now that I know it is contributing to problems.
Scotti
I would assume this means talking with the vBulletin folks. I’m sure that with their help, and the help of their community, we could have the SDMB running faster in no time. It’s interesting to see how much time and effort has gone into making this board faster when the most obvious thing to do hasn’t been done. Also, has any sysadmin checked to see if this server is running the latest Apache, PHP and MySQL versions?
This board gets very little upgrade.
We are fortunate just to be here and even more fortunate to get even basic maintainance.
For those of you that might have joined us late, let me explain something here:
The Chicago Reader lets us have this site pretty much out of the goodness of their corporate hearts. We make them no money yet – we’re not even earning our keep. (Such is the way of the new frontier in publishing.)
They’ve spent quite a bit of money to get us up and running and they do maintain the site, but there’s no time or money in the budget for ANY kind of upgrade. What we have is what we have to work with and we have to make the best of it.
No, we can’t pass the hat to pay for upgrades (though I’m sure most of you would be incredibly generous) because as a corporate entity the Reader cannot accept charitable contributions.
We’re trying to muddle through as best and as inexpensively as we can. It’s not a perfect system, but thems what prevails at the present time.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Whatever happedned to selling SDMB merchanidise at slightly inflated prices? You know, hats, mugs, and stickers. Stuff like that, with the profits going into an upgrade fund. I know it has been proposed before and I’m pretty sure either Tuba or Lynn said it was a good idea. Or maybe it was a dream.
Does that rule out an IPO for Straight_Dope.COM as well?
Not at all. Please see the Straight Dope Store for your opportunity to buy all manner of Straight Dope necessities for life.
At the present time, we have no strictly SDMB items for sale, I’m sure our members could come up with some lovely ideas. And also some frightening ones. I await your suggestions with great antici [pause]
pation. 
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Frankly, the world is not yet ready for Crunchy Frog thong underwear. Though I’d love an Anthracite opera cape.