We’re all using the client.
And we’re all having this issue, with the master volume down, the voice in Discord is still minimal.
@Rhinosaurus, @adlabs6 @Prof can probably add their own things they tried to get it to work.
I’m inquiring with my Discord expert…20 year old daughter lol. She actually does run a pretty active 350+ server.
adlabs found the solution on a forum!
start discord. then right click on the sound mixer in the lower right (the amp symbol)
There should be a column for Discord. If you’re having problems, it will be way down. Move it up to the same volume as your overall system sound.
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Sorry to hear that Discord didn’t get much activity on Mudspike.
As mentioned earlier, it can replace the forum functions and that is what i did at SHQM.
If anyone wants to talk racey-car stuff, our permanent link is here: https://simhqmotorsports.com/discord-chat/
When you enter, you’ll have access to a couple of rooms only. But then we check to make sure you don’t have rabies and give you the open door after a few minutes.
Anyhow, stop by if you feel so inclined and/or have sim racing questions.
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Actually, Discord is really popular here, but more in individual private groups. I think @Wes runs a public one for Hollo Point DCS flying, but that’s about it in terms of people prepared to open one up.
Just like simhq sort of got retired by things like reddit.com, this place is seeing a big traffic drop-off from Discord. We should probably look at moving the forums over there as well, as at least it would save @BeachAV8R some cash each month. Ultimately that’s where I think we should head.
The money isn’t a problem (yet), but I’m very conscious of the maintenance time these forums require from the volunteers. If there is an alternative that works all-around, I’d certainly entertain it. The only Discord channel I’m at all familiar with is the VTOL VR one, so I’m not sure what level of functionality that showcases (or not).
Correct, I started one for HP at the end of December as I hadn’t heard of the one Fridge was running at the time.
While discord allows for many channels, friends list and PM’s, tags and mentions - it lacks threaded conversations like a forums does. Forums are far friendlier to allowing numerous conversations to exist at the same time, as well as be created at any user’s whim. Could a large amount of the conversation move to discord? Perhaps, but not all of it. Large, single topic threads such as the screenshots thread could be made into a discord channel without much headache (and that would save Beach’s bandwidth and/or disk space, whichever is the concern).
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I think that is our greatest and growing expense I believe. At least, based on my AWS bills…they steadily go up each month and I assume that is due to us keeping local copies of most of the images we upload to prevent dead links. By greatest and growing, I don’t mean to make that sound it is prohibitively expensive, but if I draw the line out into the future, I can see where we’d have to do something (either solicit for additional donations or accept some form of advertising).
To be fair to @Fridge 
it was more a case that he got it dumped on his lap, rather than he set it up. The alternative was just to close it, but my thinking was at least people could use what was there to invite people into their own private ones that were appearing.
For Discord, it would certainly be different, but where this forum is weakest is more of the ‘stream of conscious’ -like chat that tends to happen on most topics. A more chat like format might be better. We have the ‘articles’ site for long-form, so anything else is just a bonus. The forums were originally just for a nicer way to manage comments/chat for that side.
If we set one up I think the plan would be to set up a series of bots to enhance it a bit, but do a lot of channels to map the small amount of ‘categories’ we have here etc. One other plus factor would be that it could be unmoderated (as ad/spam bots could be caught), which would save a lot of work and wear & tear. Because Discord would ‘own’ the words, it wouldn’t really be our problem
A lot of that is the CDN side called ‘AWS Cloudfront’, in that we can run a very small server because the bigger content (images) etc is cached on edge locations. What we save on server costs, we get pinged for ‘per access’ costs on the CDN side. It is not the number of images being stored, it’s the amount they are being viewed. A popular topic that gets high in the google rank for search, or gets hoards from reddit probably account for a good chunk of the costs. It’s a side-effect of being a public board, rather than member-only etc.
We use Cloudflare as well on the main site, and for now that is free, but we can’t use it for all images unfortunately. AWS used to be a lot cheaper as we enjoyed their ‘free limits’ plan, but it got to a tipping point (over the first 75GB) where now it charges.
Ads or Patreon have always been an option, but it sort of smelled bad. Ads would bring in very little money, basically just because the base payments for those has collapsed unless you are really big. People don’t seem to mind Ads on things like reddit or facebook (and they will come to Discord too, it’s just honey-time), but for here it just seems funky, and personally makes me shiver. We get accused enough of being of evil intent, so running ads would just pile it on.
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I’d be more willing to help pay for the forum space rather than switching to something like Discord. No offence to those who like Discord but the ‘stream-of-conscious’ thing is difficult for an ADHD person - I find it hard to pick up a thread and read it for information.
Socialization, yeah Discord is great. Information transmission, in my mind, not so great. I could see the discussions (aka F-16C love/hate thread) on something like discord but AARs or discussions about how a particular thing like CASE I landings work would not be great (for me).
So it is a balance between moving conversations to something like Discord versus having information in something like the forums? Then again, maybe this is all just me and I’m becoming that ole curmudgeonly lad who doesn’t want to change. I would miss AARs and such.
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Oh wow…I did not know that was how it worked. Very interesting. I though it was pure storage “rent” as it were. So in a way, it really is bandwidth tied. We are going to have to get our members to start speaking in code so the wider world won’t know what is going on over here… 
Agreed. Never want to do it. I don’t want to be beholden to anyone and I pretty much buy everything I review anymore just to make sure people understand I’m a customer reviewing things. I’m tempted to also forego early access stuff too, but I do sort of like to have that once in awhile to get the jump on my long 2-month lead time for magazine articles. It doesn’t affect my opinion on things, it is just convenient (sometimes, and sometimes it is a nightmare of timing).
The money isn’t a problem right now…and even on its current arc, I think I can maintain for a few more years since it is my hobby and hobbies take money. Heck, it is cheaper by far than many other hobbies. Moreso than the money, I just hope it continues to interest those that visit, and those that help keep it running. If those things are OK, I’m OK with the money side.
I also DO enjoy the forums layout. After those initial weeks when we first stood it up, I started visiting other old forums and couldn’t believe how user friendly and feature rich ours was. And now that I’m using the Airbus layout, I don’t think I could ever give it up… 
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I had no idea we could change layouts, Just changed to Airbus and I love it!!!
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Same here. I think Discord can do what this forums does and more but I dont like the layout so much
Airbus was great. I mean I went back to standard ’ dark ’ as my television browser wasnt able to handle it. All my other devices were just fine.
This is for @fearlessfrog Can this forums recognize what device I am using and change the theme acordingly ? If I am asking too much, just let me know 
tia
Haha… @fearlessfrog mentioned it to me a few weeks ago and I’m in love with it now too. He slipped it in there sometime in the past and I must have missed it.
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Things have been a bit busy for me recently, so not found the time for researching this properly but generally here’s what I think might work:
(1) We (I mean me) add a Discord integration to the forum that allows the ‘Chat’ to be powered by Discord. As in, a UI widget that allows members here to ‘free talk’. Your trust level there would be hooked in to how Discord works, in that it wouldn’t be ‘public’ but trust 1 and upwards would get membership. The ‘Regular’ group would get moderator permissions, in a ‘Lord of the Flies’ fun flat democracy. If you haven’t read the book, let me assure you that ended just great, so don’t worry about it.
(2) I personally feel there are lots of people (including me) that would feel better about paying $1 a month via Patreon to make the site sustainable long term. It is not really a matter of the costs, it is more a case of being a community thing. When people say ‘My 2 cents’ then they can mean it. Mudspike would be an .org as a non-profit (I’ve set up plenty of those before, sometimes even intentionally ) and it could be a model that works here perhaps? Essentially we would provide complete transparency of the hosting costs, and then only gather that amount.
To put it into perspective, if we divided up the costs by active 7-day users last month then we’re talking about 0.00680364675466 cents USD per person per month. Cash or credit card accepted lol, and for any Canadians out there, 0.0068 US cents is about $10 Canadian dollars or two beaver pelts (I’M KIDDING!).
Those two things would let whatever works out to ‘win’ while providing some firm grounding long term. I don’t think anyone has any doubts you don’t mind paying for it Chris, it’s more just to throw that out there.
Discuss? 
(I’ll put the flag for Grenada, as we don’t have a ‘hand grenade’ emoticon so that was the closest a search turned up).
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Yes, you just set the theme per device and it remembers. Just untick the box to make the default the same for all devices when you change theme.
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So the Mudspike merchandise isn’t selling well? 
I got no issues paying $1 but I would rather pay like a yearly fee if possible hell Id pay $20 a year no issues.
Maybe open up donations to start with?
Can we have a conch shell to pass around?
On #1 - Discord integration sounds good - but I thought you were looking at it as a replacement rather than an augmentation of the forums? Or are you saying that we could continue via funding at some point with your points in #2 and just have a Discord enhancement? Again, it is less about the money than your time to balance the house of cards, and I didn’t want a Discord tie-in to be another thing that you would have to manage on a technical level as it updates and new features are added.