I am about to do a hack where I can give members special ranks for donating. My question is whether it would significanlty slow may board with the added code. I hope to have at least a few hundred members who donate to get special members titles. The special member title will include a link to a webpage. Below is my hack

if ($ThisStatus eq "Administrator") {

$ThisStatus = "Administrator";
}
elsif ($ThisStatus eq "Moderator") {

$ThisStatus = "Moderator";
}
else {

$ThisStatus = "Newbie";
if ($thisprofile[7] > 4) {

$ThisStatus = "Insane Poster";
}
if ($thisprofile[7] > 999) {

$ThisStatus = "No Life";
}
if ($thisprofile[7] > 4999) {

$ThisStatus = "Freak";
}
if ($thisprofile[7] > 9999) {

$ThisStatus = "God";
}# End Normal Members
# Special Members
if ($thisline[2] eq "Billy") {
$ThisStatus = "href="http://yourodmain.com">Donating member";
}


What do you guys think? Will it significantly tax the server if I have 200-300 special titles? I have a dedicated server, but am near my limit and trying to raise funds for an upgrade.

It won't increase load on your server, plus there are a few Custom title/status hacks available for v5.xx but that ones a little different.

Is this hack efficient? I already have 7 levels of rank (I shortened the one above), but I want to be able to honor those members who donate. All the others I have seen involve special graphics (stars, avatars, etc). I do not want to add graphics as this would be sure to take more bandwidth. Have you seen any others that are more efficient?

Had another idea for a different method to do this hack.

What about this:

if ($ThisStatus eq "Administrator") {

$ThisStatus = "Administrator";
}
elsif ($ThisStatus eq "Moderator") {

$ThisStatus = "Moderator";
}
else {

$ThisStatus = "Newbie";

if ($thisprofile[7] > 4) {

$ThisStatus = "Veteran";
}

if ($thisprofile[7] > 99999) {
$ThisStatus = "href="http://yourodmain.com">Donating member";
}


Then I could manually download each member and manually increase their post total to over 100,000, thereby giving them all a custom name and link. What do you think of this method? Would it be more efficient than the one above. It certainly would be less code added.

Or would it not matter between the two.

The page will load faster if you don't want to use any images in your Custom ranks. But if they are small images they won't do much harm.

Neither of the two proposed hacks have images. Of the two which would be more server freindly?

There would be minimal difference, load wise on the server, but Id think option 2 would be better as there are less if/else statments that need evaluating.

Thanks Bass

WHOA!!!!! Why waste your time downl;oading each members profile and manully editing their post count??!?!?!?!? Look at "Jimbo's Custom Title" hack...it is a control panel addition that lets you do everything you want to do (AFAICT) and it is EASY! You can give them titles, ALL HTML code works so you can add images.....Have a look, you won't be disappointed!