Hello dGeeks!

The time has come to say farewell to dGeek.com in its present form and welcome to dGeek!

The good news is that dGeek is more popular than ever. The bad is that my existing hosting, configuration and administration skills can't handle all this flattering new attention (twitter-y is perhaps a better word for it)! I feel that I have tried your patience enough!

From here on in existing dGeek content will continue to be available in archived form. New postings will be done atdGeek.typepad.com!

I'm afraid that I see no other choice than to shutter the dGeek forum and the dChat for the time being. The plan is to archive, organize and streamline the existing posts...I'm sorry to say that there will be no further posting on the forum until I feel we've have a new, bullet-proof system to offer you.

All of the many comments, posts and emails agree on one thing. The most important change for the future of dGeek is more content. But fret not little squirrels, your suggestions and moderating mobs from the New dGeek postings have not been ignored and will not be forgotten! Instead they will be forged into the blueprint for dGeek 2.0!

Without the time-consuming technical challenges of overseeing the site, I'm hoping to give you all the dGeek you can handle... all this and in a stable and less error-prone environment too?! Yes, more blogs, more articles and less errors and frantic reconfiguring...what more could any dGeek want! ...at least until the new Hewlett empire is complete! ;-)

Thank you for joining me on this, my next great web adventure!

All the best,

David Hewlett
dGeek

...I know it's called "administration" but Geek Fiddle sounds so much more exciting...naughty even!

Hello all,

Just wanted to mention a few things that the more nerdly web geeks amongst you might find of interest...

We've been poking around in Joomla 1.5 ...here's what we're trying:

Turn offs

We've turned off the Search Engine Friendly URL's in the hopes of speeding things up and stopping some of these irritating error messages...the downside is that some of your links...and mine for that matter...aren't going to be working.

Turn ons

We've turned On the cache...it's set for 15 minutes and it might mean that some changes don't show up right away...but the hope is that it'll take some of the strain off the system and keep everyone logged in and having fun...or lurking and having fun as the case may be!

Dirty Hands

We're also digging deep into the guts of dGeek.com in the hopes of removing any modules or plugins that aren't needed.

Bits and pieces

All of dGeek.com's database tables have been optimized.

Traffic Jam

I've got two options as I see it right now in regard to traffic and response time of dGeek.com.

1. Bite the bullet and get a beefier hosting plan. I'm currently hosting with Siteground and I LOVE their customer support...The only problem with going dedicated servier is expense...my concern with going with something that automatically scales to demand is unexpected bills for bandwidth (had that issue way back when with the CUBE website and it scared the bejesus out of me!

2. Split the site into various different "sections" that are hosted on other sites...for example: Blogger.com or Wordpress.com or that kind of thing for the blog, and Forumer.comor Lefora.com or somewhere similar for the forum, the chat etc. etc.

I know which way I'd rather go...because I'm a nerd and love the idea of my own dedicated server!

Anyway...as always, you'll be the first to hear about whatever gets decided! In fact, feel free to weigh in at the http://www.dgeek.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=68&func=showcat&catid=51

As always, thanks SO much for your patience and support while we try to bring this beast with us into the future!

Cheers,

D!

PS. I keep getting asked about what I'm reading on my iPhone kindle app...currently loving Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time and no, NOT just because I'm a cheap bastard and it's a FREE download!