stevegrant

If I remember rightly, it was a text-to-enter competition, and the club with the most entries won the £250k. The individual winner was drawn at random from all the winning club's entries, I think.

This is the first time I've come back to this thread since I started it. Bloody hell Memcached is installed, but not activated at this stage. I tried it on our dev site but I couldn't get it working (basically just output a blank page every time!) so put it on the back burner for a while. Once we've got the new DB up and running properly, I'll revisit that as it should provide a benefit for the site. Very good point. I knew about the avatars being loaded via PHP rather than direct from the filesystem, but the thought hadn't crossed my mind that that could probably be made more efficient. It might be an absolute ballache to modify it, mind you, so I might just have a look at image.php itself and add a cache expires header (if there isn't already one - the dateline parameter would need to be removed, mind you)

Evening all As I'm sure you're well aware, we've been experiencing unacceptable amounts of downtime during matches over the last 4-6 weeks. We did think we had solved the problem back in September when a number of system changes were implemented, but it seems as though they only had a temporary effect. As a result, we have decided to change the way the infrastructure is set up. Rather than have the web server (i.e. the bit that handles everyone accessing it and sends the web page back to your browser) and the database on the same server, we are buying a second server whose sole responsibility will be to handle the database. This new server has more than double the power of the current one, and as we believe the main problem has been the resources taken up by the database, it's obviously hoped that lightening the load on the main server in this way will provide a long-term solution. Naturally, while we migrate the database to the new server, the site will experience a further period of downtime, which is obviously regrettable but we'll do our best to limit this to off-peak times as much as possible. We aim to have the new server in place before Saturday's game at Colchester. Baj and I have been as frustrated as you have with the frankly ****-poor performance at crucial times, and hopefully this will correct that. Any (sensible and on-topic) questions, let me know. Cheers Steve Update: 4th March, 3.05pm Just as a prior warning, I will be testing various aspects of the new setup this afternoon and evening, so there may be intermittent periods of downtime, particularly of the "Database Error" message variety. Many connection failures will show up instantly (i.e. without the loading page hanging for ages and then deciding it can't connect), this will be where the database process isn't actually running, as when I make changes to the DB configuration, the whole DB needs stopping and restarting. Summary: you will probably see occasional "Database Error" messages between now and midnight. It's not a fault. I'm testing stuff. Update: 5th March, 11.55am We are now running the site on the new server, with the database remaining on the old one. So far, everything looks a lot quicker and smoother, but the real test will be when there are 700-odd people online at full-time this afternoon. I haven't made any config changes to the "web server" bit of the new server yet, so it's possible there may be some further adjustments needed, but it's difficult to test that without actually being in the real life situation of loads of people adding posts to the database. I've tested concurrent users online with decent success, but the process of writing to the database is much more resource-intensive than reading from it. In short, we'll see how we go this afternoon...

That was probably mine, Matt made a bit of a mess of writing my number on the form

If they've got any common sense (a bit of an assumption, I know...), they'll have been sorting through all the applications as and when they've arrived over the last two weeks or so, working out the average number of away games per application and putting them in order. Then when they start allocating tickets, they just start with the top of the list and work down until there are no tickets left.

My parents bought tickets in the home end with some friends who live round the corner from Dean Court when they first went on sale. For some odd reason, their money was refunded last week. Needless to say, they're not overly impressed.

Definitely, but their fans hate him so there wasn't really ever likely to be a way back for him even after Ferguson was sacked.

I went to Preston v QPR. An interesting game but one lacking in consistent quality from both sides really, as expected the difference was the class of Taarabt and Routledge in the first half. Preston were so poor in the first half that QPR clearly thought they didn't have to bother turning up after the break, which let Preston back into it. Cracking finish for the equaliser by Nicholson, but every other touch he had in the game went straight to the opposition. A very determined second half effort from Preston, but they're so impotent going forward, I can't see how they'll get out of the situation they're in. They brought on an 18-year-old with 8 minutes to go and he had more of an impact than Nathan Ellington, Eddie Johnson and Paul Hayes - their other "strikers" - put together.

Summary, for those of you who can't be arsed to read through the rest of the thread: there is an agreement (which has never been hidden), but the sole beneficiary is this forum. The club receives nothing in return.

A rather hilarious "accusation" when you can read on the footer of EVERY SINGLE PAGE of this site: I make no apology for having made a very one-sided agreement with the then-commercial director more than two years ago, in the interests of this site. The agreement was literally as follows: SFC agrees to allow SaintsWeb to display photos and images relating to the football club, i.e. club staff, the club crest, etc, which would otherwise be subject to copyright. I should point out to Stu (who I know can't actually read this, but I'm sure one of his plebs will pass the message on) that, actually, SaintsWeb does not enjoy "Official Nominated Fanzine" status, which would entitle the site to obtain the fixtures licence for a nominal fee (£1 + VAT) rather than the full licence fee (somewhere in the region of £350 + VAT). That was a choice we made right from the beginning, to ensure the site's independence was maintained. Also for Stu's information, the fixtures and live text licences do not amount to "around £10,000 per annum" as he stupidly, and without research, claims. The photos cost us nothing. Zilch. It also makes me laugh that Stu and another poster (strangely, another one who has been banned from here multiple times... go figure) both have this bizarre fixation that I'm somehow "in bed" with the club. Suggest you go back through my post history in the last 12 months, where you'll find countless examples of me voicing my disapproval at decisions taken by the club. As was suggested yesterday, the fact that both Nick and Stu approached me with the "Ted Bates Memorial Trophy" idea instantly raised alarm bells. Whether their intention is/was to antagonise the club, I don't know and, to be honest, don't care. As Nick rightly said to me, it comes to something when fans don't feel they can do something in memory of a club great, but as it turns out from a discussion with someone at the club, they wouldn't necessarily have an issue with SaintsWeb being involved in such an event if it was organised correctly. I'll leave you to insert your own Silverspoons-related gag there

You really are a strange creature, aren't you?

Ticket prices up to £60 http://www.football-league.co.uk/footballleaguenews/20110218/play-off-final-prices-announced-_2293334_2296575

Nothing I'm going to put on here until I've discussed them with Nick and Stu personally.

Well the goalposts have changed already then, it would seem

I was approached recently by both Stu and Nick with a proposal, but I'm not entirely comfortable with certain aspects of it, which they are both aware of. I'm happy to discuss it, but until they come back to me with a revision, the idea's dead in the water as far as I'm concerned.

Waddon Croydon, basically

The general rule is that if you can be bothered to send in an application, you'll get a ticket. Even for Pompey away, that's been the case. I'm intrigued by this system of averaging out the number of away games across a multiple-ticket application, so in theory a season ticket holder with 0 away games to their name this season could jump the queue ahead of someone who's been to 5 away games, if they applied alongside someone with 12 games.

The problem for Orient with West Ham moving to Stratford is that West Ham won't even come close to filling it for most games, so they'll introduce thousands of discounted tickets for local schools, etc, to bump up the attendance figures. If locals have a choice between free/cheap tickets at Orient or West Ham, who are they going to choose?

I don't think that's going to be the problem (would have been with Spurs, less so with West Ham), as West Ham's not actually that far from Leytonstone anyway. Apparently not. It amazes me that there were no plans put in initially to allow for retractable seating like they have at Stade de France, for example. Karren Brady's claiming that the furthest seat from the pitch at the Olympic Stadium will be 10 metres closer than the furthest seat at Wembley. She's obviously forgetting that Wembley is 50% bigger in terms of seating capacity than the West Ham-adjusted Olympic Stadium will be, and that the depth of each row of seats at Wembley is huge. I can't imagine the Olympic Stadium will have as much leg room.

Home games are now a 150-mile round trip for me, so that's nearly 3500 miles already

Just about ended up with a profit in the end. Went for: Huddersfield to qualify by any means - £5 @ 9/1 Huddersfield to win on penalties - £1 @ 50/1 Carlisle to win on penalties - £1 @ 50/1 Huddersfield to win 3-0 - £1 @ 11/1 Huddersfield to win 3-1 - £2 @ 10/1 A whole £2 profit

Not convinced there, they barely got an above-average attendance for their home playoff semi-final (first leg) last season.

Very much so. Also 50/1 for the tie to go to penalties!

Priceless :lol: :lol: :lol:

Yeah, god forbid anyone ever having a bad word to say about anyone or anything relating to SFC. Strangely, I didn't see you "getting behind the club" much in its hour of need...