Firstly, you don't have to be a junior member - go in to your profile and there is an opportunity to be whatever you want, have a look at some of the other members' details.

As far as flicking pages goes, you can change how many posts per page you have up to about 50, so although you may have to flick pages occasionally you should have to do it a lot less.

Funding is not a problem, the generosity of members in the recent fundraising drive was immense and the war chest is very healthy. The problem is time. There are a huge number of things that can be done to the site but Rob has been working flat out since the switch just to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Cosmetically the front page will be radically changed, but it won't be done immediately, Rob actually has a degree to get through and needs to devoe a bit of time to it once in a while.

Why not use this thread for peopleto make suggestions as to what they would like to see on the front page, and if it's possible and agreeable you may just find it happening - just a wee bit later.

I hope that's answered your queries, any morjust drop'em here or in Help and Suggestions.

The fundamental problem is that the nested view required every single reply to be fetched from the database each time the page was loaded by every single person.

No matter what we do there is no way around this being extremely intensive and just not possible any more.

There are various things you can do to get some way there.

You can set your posts per page setting to 50. I can even up this limit if people really care but it certainly can't be the default or we start getting into the problems I described above.

You can change your Thread Display Options to nested or hybrid modes which is somewhat similar to the old view but I appreciate it's not the same.

Over the last week we've had hundreds of new members join up.

Just a few weeks ago we were having problems with 100+ users online and hence the change of software. We were confident of accomodating that easily with the change, even double would be fine but now we're seeing 500+ people online and posting at a time and it's not something we'd counted on so we're having to concentrate on the technical stuff and not the "cosmetic" changes but I promise that if you stick with us, at the end of process we'll have a site a million times better than what we had.

I think it's actually a LOT faster than the old site, apart from when we're very busy and then the old site would have just crashed on us.

As for the navigation, we do still need big changes but I don't think it's any harder, just different and will take time to adjust to.

You're right to an extent.

The changes weren't thought through as we just needed to get it done or there wouldn't have been a site come the 9th December. Pretty much anything that worked we'd have been happy with.

As it happens, how we have things now from a technical point of view are a whole lot better and if you can get past the cosmetics there isn't too much of a difference to how the old site worked.

We do still have huge plans for how the site works and now it's "safe" we do have the time needed to think things through carefully and any input people have to that would be superb.

To try and put this into context, when we started thinking about moving the site it would have been at least a 2 or 3 month process just for the very basics to happen. We got an email saying our account was being closed and we managed to get a new server and the site moved in a week. This was a minor miracle that we managed it how we did and I know a lot of people aren't in love with it yet but now we have the time to do it how we want and it will be a 2 or 3 month process.

I've asked this of quite a few people but not really had a response. How does the current nested and hybrid views on here compare? Is there potential there if the cosmetics were changed to use the mechanics to get things how people want them?

I'm not even sure if people realise that the old site had the option to display comments in different ways.

As has been said by GDG and Rob themselves, I think some need to realise that the staff in the background had a helluva lot to deal with. And nothing has been done at the drop of the hat, and on more than one occasion it was almost SC RIP. Luckily we had lots of donations to keep the site going, lots of dedication from the mods and admins and a super beyond the call of duty performance from Rob the Site Owner (posting above).

So for the sake of having a functioning site with a million times the potential of the old unreliable site, can you all just wait a while and post your "moans" more constructively and hey, why not explore the rest of the site. The Forums have a lot to offer discussionwise, and not just about Spurs. Come and venture in and see the Community in full flow. You might just love it.

The reason for the change was due to the fact we were served a notice to quit by our server - not cosmetic and not overly wanted. Forced change. Rob is forgetting the cosmetics, trying to get everything sorted, study, manage misbehaving forum posters and even re-school staff on how to use a vBulletin Board. All we ask is a bit of time, and considering the circumstances I don't think that's such an onerous ask?

I'd just like to add a few statistics to the above:

The old site used to crash with more than 100 or so people visiting at one time. The new site has had up to 570 members online at one time before it packed up, most annoyingly, for me during the 2nd half of the Boro game.

Since yesterday morning we have had over 200 new members signing up.

The number of "active users" has gone up by over a thousand in the last two to three weeks.

COYS are closing up shop to lurkers and low average daily posters until after the transfer window, so I expect more people to be drifting this way in the next couple of months.

What does this all mean for us? It means we have a very popular and easily accessible board, which is being swamped with new members. It means that we are seeing way more traffic than we were anticipating, which is slowing the site down and even crashing it on occasion. I will leave Rob to talk about the technical side of things and whether the site can be tweaked or enhanced to increase the number of people online and improve stability, but if not it means that decisions may have to be taken in the near future regarding new members joining, especially during the transfer window.

The discussion has just started in the Mod Forum, but it would be interesting to hear the thoughts of those of you on the front page who rarely venture in to the forums as to how you think we should deal with this issue and how best to ensure that core posters maintain access to a site to which they have contributed a great deal of time, thought and, in many cases, money.

You do know that you can change the "Junior member" bit in your profile, don't you? Though you're stuck as Frode until you add more posts, if ever there was a motivation to get posting....