Eastern Railroad Discussion > 8th anniversary upgrades coming

We are now into our 8th year of operation and our 3rd year of the premium membership program. I want to thank all our membership for not only joining and renewing, but spreading the word about Trainorders.com to world. For without you this site would not be here today. We have enjoyed over a 20% growth rate over the past year and all indications are toward continued growth.

Saturday we moved our equipment to a better equipped network facility in Downtown Los Angeles. We are excited about this new location as it will provide us with high quality bandwidth and more reliable power resources than we enjoyed at our previous site.

Over the next six weeks we are going to be doing a lot of work around Trainorders.com. I have green lighted several projects to improve the site experience.

1. The most requested feature is a way to shut off the warning when linking off the site. We are going to add a switch in the forum options so members can shut this warning off permanently.

2. We are going to be modifying the webcam software to accept movies from Tehachapi. It appears we found a solution for our internet access issue in Tehachapi and we may have it online within two weeks.

3. We are going to upgrade the webcam software at all the remote camera sites.

4. We have a new dual processor web server coming online with 300 gigabytes of online storage.

5. Premium users will have their web hosting space increased to 50 megabytes from the current 40mb.

6. We will be creating a 100% redundency system so in the event of a failure the site can return to service on backup equipment. This would allow us to return back to service within an hour of a hardware failure. We had a backup server, but it is not powerful enough to operate the site as we have outgrown it.

7. We are upgrading our membership management system.

8. Minor modifications to various features on the site.

Also on the list, but may not be completed with this round of upgrades:

9. A web directory listing members who have their "Public Profile" information completed.

10. Displaying of thumbnail images for videos uploaded to the video sharing area.



Thank You,
Todd Clark
Trainorders.com
Founder/Webmaster

Hello Todd,

I must say that I am looking forward to these new modifications to the website. They will make participating here even more enjoyable. Especially, the option to remove the going off-site warning.

You say that the webcams will be improved. Does that mean perchance that they will be converted to streaming video?

Overall, I consider my money spent for the premium membership an excellent investment.

Sincerely,

BaltoJoey

BaltoJoey Wrote:
> You say that the webcams will be improved. Does
> that mean perchance that they will be converted to
> streaming video?
>

I have no plans of streaming video. Considering that trains only pass every hour or so we would be looking at blank track most of the time. That would not be very much fun. If we had streaming video we would have to downgrade the system to one or two low quality frames per second and no sound to keep bandwidth down. From surveying users I think most people prefer an on demand sort of function for the cameras as they do not need to stare at their computer for hours waiting for something to arrive.

The upgrade will allow for us to present the time the train was captured and not the time the video clip arrived on the server. We'll have much more accurate dates and times this way.


Todd

webmaster Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> BaltoJoey Wrote:
> > You say that the webcams will be improved.
> Does
> > that mean perchance that they will be
> converted to
> > streaming video?
> >
>
> I have no plans of streaming video. Considering
> that trains only pass every hour or so we would be
> looking at blank track most of the time. That
> would not be very much fun. If we had streaming
> video we would have to downgrade the system to one
> or two low quality frames per second and no sound
> to keep bandwidth down. From surveying users I
> think most people prefer an on demand sort of
> function for the cameras as they do not need to
> stare at their computer for hours waiting for
> something to arrive.
>
> The upgrade will allow for us to present the time
> the train was captured and not the time the video
> clip arrived on the server. We'll have much more
> accurate dates and times this way.
>
>
> Todd


Okay, I was just curious and I can understand needing to keep a grip on bandwidth useage. Captured video is good. If we hadn't had it, we would not have seen that runaway car at Hyndman.

I just thought of something else. Are 2 cameras feasible at Hyndman? At present we can only see the Westbounds as they are going away. Kind of hard to make out the motivre power like that.

Thanks for the prompt response to the previous post.

BaltoJoey

Inquring as to the possibility of returning the chat room that once was here?

Spel Chek

:-)

Script that randomly converts "it's" to "it is" so those with apostrophe fetishes will look stupid. Just kidding. Well...maybe not. LOL

I'll second filmteknik's proposal!

More seriously, two "if I was running the world for a day" suggestions to deal with personal gripes:
- Add a spell-check function. I've seen it on other sites, such as livejournal, and I'm sure we'll all agree that nobody is perfect (yes, myself included, flamers can go away now).
- A function that automatically senses when, say, 75% or more of the characters in a subject or post are in caps and queries the user before they post, "Change caps to lower case?" One of the more annoying things is a long, attention-grabbing subject that screams, "J708 DERAILS TWO CARS AT END OF YOUNGSTOWN SPUR!!!!" Problem here is that "Youngstown Spur" should be capitalized, so you'd end up annoying users who have to go back and edit proper names and such. Anyways, it's a suggestion.

If functions like these were provided, hopefully they'd be well-utilized and reduce some of the petty sniping that goes on (such as less-than-polite posts "reminding" folks who made a mistake about the correct form of something-or-other).

Keep up the good work.

-Dave

To thee spell checkers of the world!
Fu` Twa`

Dont worry bout someone else's spelling, Nobody is perfect, just you are!

Disgusted at the spell checkers, when an inquiry was made.
Plain Stupid is what you are.
Ranting

Could there perhaps be a clear policy FAQ given which explains what we are forbidden to talk about so that one doesn't post something and then come back and find that it's been deleted?

Oh yeah I wanted to add that I wish I didn't have to re-login between visiting the site from work vs. at home. I inquired about this once and was told it was normal. I would have thought that cookies would identify me from either machine as they do with other sites.

Maybe but you need to remember that your IP will be changing from
your work vs. home connections so that already makes you another
user to the server.

Just a thought...

Ac440cwgevo


filmteknik Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh yeah I wanted to add that I wish I didn't have
> to re-login between visiting the site from work
> vs. at home. I inquired about this once and was
> told it was normal. I would have thought that
> cookies would identify me from either machine as
> they do with other sites.

Well yeah I know that but I thought that's what cookies are for. Any number of other sites have the cookies ID you if you wish to be "remembered." I'm not sure why they should care what machine you're on (aside from maybe logging them to catch closely spaced logins from widely disparate locations where account sharing is suspected).

Also, when I log in using the entry on the main screen the next screen I see says (approximately) "you've requested a page that requires membership" with another request for name and password. I know to ignore this and just go back and click whatever link I want. But it seems to me it ought to maybe replot the main screen but now as a logged in user or give a message that the login was successful or something. Surely requesting login all over again is an error in the way the pages are laid out.