I would like to cast another vote for using CSS. It keeps the HTML lean-and-mean, and probably your PHP code will become cleaner as well. With recent browsers, CSS support is reasonable as long as you don't do too tricky things. Netscape 4 should disappear off the face of the earth, it's just too horribly broken, don't spend your precious bandwidth trying to support it. I've made pages with CSS that display fine in IE, Mozilla, Konqueror and Opera.

Try the gzip compression that Sean suggests. You can decide whether to feed gzipped content based on the HTTP headers, so you can give older browsers a non-compressed page and modern browsers a compressed page.

Please do not use frames:

• As you said, problems deep-linking. Can be worked around with JavaScript, but that defeats the purpose (smaller pages) and is error-prone as well (JavaScript behaves subtly different in different browsers).
  
• Problems with non-linear navigation. For example if you open a link in a new window/tab. I often browse that way, in fact right now I have 4 msx.org windows open.
  
• Problems with focus. You want to scroll using the cursors, but nothing happens, because a different frame has focus.
  
• Less effective use of screen space: navigation frames are always present, so less space for content.
  

By the way, I think that with HTML 4 it is possible to embed HTML files in other HTML files. That could save some space on repeated elements. But I'm not sure how browser support is.

Another way to save bandwidth (and go easy on the database) is to cache recently served pages. You can version those pages (HTTP feature). If a browser reloads a page, it can query whether the version it has already is up-to-date. If the answer is positive, you don't have to transfer the content again. Should save a lot of bandwidth when people refresh the front page or an active forum thread, to see if there is a new post there (very typical usage pattern, I think). It's not trivial to implement this, but with good design and some studying of the HTTP spec it is certainly possible.

You should profile your log file to see what makes up the largest part of the traffic. If you run Apache, look in /var/log/httpd/access.log, most succesful retrieves have a line ending in "200 N", the "N" is the number of bytes transferred (content-length). Using a script (Python, Perl, whatever) you could summarize the traffic of, say, last month and split it into categories: news, forums, images, software downloads etc. When you know which category is taking most bandwidth, you know where you can get the highest gain from optimizing.

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Please do not use frames:

we don't use frames. We're did U get that idea?

it was one of the suggestions in page 1 of this thread

Anyway, enough about datatrafic, lets talk FUTURE people.

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>>Please do not use frames:[/edit] we don't use frames. We're did U get that idea?

I know you don't use frames, and I appreciate that. But one of the reactions suggested using frames.

I don't know about this one, but other fora, I regulary attend, have members who aren't aware of the netiquete of quotes.

I don't remember exactly how often and how much MRC users quote, but if ppl quote a whole msg, then that's where to gain space.

Ok, about the future of this site: what kind of functionality would you like to see on msx.org? Enhancements? Put your thoughts here!

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Anyway, enough about datatrafic, lets talk FUTURE people.

But CSS is the FUTURE (and the now, too!).

Just some ideas that popped into my head:

• E-mail or IM notification if someone posts in a forum thread where you have posted as well. It's a bit like the "subscribing" idea, but probably easier to implement, since you can make it an account setting (1 boolean to store per user). Probably there should be a limit to the number of notifications per day, otherwise active threads will overflow your mailbox.
  
• Making a "mobile devices" version so people can read msx.org on phones, PDAs etc. Maybe not full-featured, but read-only news posts would be useful already.
  
• Special emulation section, containing links to emulator home pages, news items in the emulators category and the emulator comparison. So actually presenting only info you already have, but organized differently (by topic, instead of by type). Could be made for other topics as well (games, music).
  
• Feedback on software from the download section: rate a program (1-5 stars (penguins?) or "x/10" points), post reactions (can be implemented as forum thread dedicated to some software title).
  
• RSS feed, so PIM software and tickers can display msx.org headlines.
  
• Name change: MRC->msx.org? I think most people refer to this site as "msx.org".
  
• Ability for registered users to keep an MSX-related journal/blog hosted on msx.org.
  
• A cartoon. Maybe featuring Snout? (the elephant) Or any other character, as long as it's entertaining.
  
• Online MSX Quiz. Maybe one with 10 questions (random from DB) that can be done on demand. And/or a quiz with 1 really hard question, same for everyone, that runs for a week or so (like the polls) and keep a ranking of the best-scoring members (running competition). Maybe "get the picture" kind of image, where you see part of a big image and have to guess which MSX game / machine / etc is in the picture. And/or something similar with short sound fragments (MIDI or MP3, if they're only a couple of seconds you don't even have to ask permission of copyright holder).
  

That should keep you busy in the summer holiday...

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I don't remember exactly how often and how much MRC users quote, but if ppl quote a whole msg, then that's where to gain space.

The recent megapolls must be responsible for ALOT of bandwidth ^^;

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Name change: MRC->msx.org? I think most people refer to this site as "msx.org".

True, but the foundation is called MSX Resource Center. Ofcourse that can be renamed too, but seeing how many people already think MRC is an official MSX information site, imagine how it would be if MRC was called MSX Organisation! ^^;
Would be cool tho, MSX Organisation and MSX Association

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>>>>Please do not use frames:[/edit] we don't use frames. We're did U get that idea?<< I know you don't use frames, and I appreciate that. But one of the reactions suggested using frames.

ah sorry about that mth. Was kinda tired last night

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E-mail or IM notification if someone posts in a forum thread where you have posted as well. It's a bit like the "subscribing" idea, but probably easier to implement, since you can make it an account setting (1 boolean to store per user). Probably there should be a limit to the number of notifications per day, otherwise active threads will overflow your mailbox.

Interesting, but will take some time to add this in a way that makes sense (esp. not sending too many notifications a day)

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Making a "mobile devices" version so people can read msx.org on phones, PDAs etc. Maybe not full-featured, but read-only news posts would be useful already.

I can only start implementing this after a lot of PHP-optimization. Because we were quite in a hurry to get the new MRC online in december, quite some things are hardcoded that should/could be done in a better way. A thing of the future, but a thing we will very likely do.

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Special emulation section, containing links to emulator home pages, news items in the emulators category and the emulator comparison. So actually presenting only info you already have, but organized differently (by topic, instead of by type). Could be made for other topics as well (games, music).

Already working on this one, and nearly finished too. (Apart from the contents, but the code is there ). This part of the website has been named 'Knowledgebase', and will indeed contain basic information on the MSX Revival and Emulation. Perhaps we'll add other topics later on.

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Feedback on software from the download section: rate a program (1-5 stars (penguins?) or "x/10" points), post reactions (can be implemented as forum thread dedicated to some software title).

In fact, this option was originally there in the downloads and weblinks module. Since we had bad experiences with rating systems before, we decided to remove them.

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RSS feed, so PIM software and tickers can display msx.org headlines.

Here we have a topic on RSS feeds, but I might implement it in the end anyway

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Name change: MRC->msx.org? I think most people refer to this site as "msx.org".

Like GuyveR stated, MSX Organisation could lead to quite some confusion. Besides our official name is and always has been MSX Resource Center. Since we also visit MSX Fairs, are a foundation and perhaps do other stuff in the future, MSX Resourc Center is a more appropriate name than just an URL

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Ability for registered users to keep an MSX-related journal/blog hosted on msx.org.

I'm not keeping anyone from starting a blog on the MRC forums And everyone's allowed to send in news, too

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A cartoon. Maybe featuring Snout? (the elephant) Or any other character, as long as it's entertaining.

Nice one...

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Online MSX Quiz. Maybe one with 10 questions (random from DB) that can be done on demand. And/or a quiz with 1 really hard question, same for everyone, that runs for a week or so (like the polls) and keep a ranking of the best-scoring members (running competition). Maybe "get the picture" kind of image, where you see part of a big image and have to guess which MSX game / machine / etc is in the picture. And/or something similar with short sound fragments (MIDI or MP3, if they're only a couple of seconds you don't even have to ask permission of copyright holder).

Nice one as well...

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That should keep you busy in the summer holiday...

AS if we were short of work already ^_^

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By the way, I think that with HTML 4 it is possible to embed HTML files in other HTML files. That could save some space on repeated elements. But I'm not sure how browser support is.

This sounds interesting. Tell me more! (or give a link to a HOWTO).

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Which amazing sites do you know that are fast, slick designed while eating not to much bandwidth? (clear your browsers cache, load the site, look how much kb you´ve lost on your harddrive)

As so many other people said, the answer is clean HTML 4.01 STRICT code, in combination with CSS. Example? Take a look at the MSX Assembly Page. You can't get any lower-traffic than that. Well, actually you can, using the earlier mentioned gzip compression . But that increases the server load during each page request, don't know if that's a problem.

~Grauw