* * * Search Engine Questions * * *

[beerguy]

Reef Central currently serves approximately 350,000 unique page views per day; making it one of heaviest trafficked bulletin boards on the Internet.

Members that have been here a long time can recall "the old days" when the board would yield to a high user load by essentially going off line. We resolved the issue by limiting search access when server load was too high to support it.

Since that time, we've gone from having one computer plugged in at an ISP to having a rack full of machines, hosted by an enterprise class provider, on a dedicated fiber connection to the Internet. Advertising dollars and support from users have facilitated that ongoing upgrade path.

In an effort to reward those who have helped, monetarily, with the enormous task of staying ahead of our growth curve we implemented Premium Membership some time ago.

As a premium member, you will receive the following benefits:

• A spell checker integrated into your posts, replies and private messages
• Increased picture storage space from 2 MB to 5 MB
• Increased picture size limits from 50 KB to 100 KB
• The ability to backup your private messages and have them emailed to you
• Higher server load availability (less server busy messages)
• Higher search engine availability (less search disabled messages)
• The ability to post events on the RC Calendar
• The I support RC logo as part of your profile

As you can see Premium Membership is often mentioned as the way to get better access to the search engine but there is much more too it.

For searching Reef Central's resources you have several options:

• Load limited access to our primary search engine.
• Priority access to our primary search engine via Premium Membership.
• 3rd party search tools such as Google

If you have a search related question, not already covered in this post, please feel free to post it in this forum or contact a moderator or staff member.

Thanks