I understand very well how cache works. I use Squid as proxy server for my network and THAT'S how a cache should work. At least with squid I define how much space it occupies.(*hint*)

What I was saying was that with Cache enabled our UBB seemed to have hallucinations. We WERE pruning topics to save space. But how can you do that, if the topic you've just deleted keeps showing up, uh? I looked for it in /ubb/Forum#/ directory and it wasn't there... Where was it? Guess... In Cache!

I've installed a test version of UBB 6.1.0.2 locally, to see how it works. I saw the PHP Accelerator and the compression functions it uses. Well, that proves my point! Dear CACHE was getting outta hand and we needed something to straighten it out. Like a compression routine...

Quote
From Accelerator.txt
The UBB scripts can be very intense on your web server. In order to reduce the potential load, the scripts create cached copies of many commonly requested pages, such as topics, forums, and the forum summary. The UBB Accelerator uses a shortcut to get to these cached copies faster
than the UBB scripts.

For additional speed, the UBB Accelerator may use zlib compression. The majority of web browsers can accept zlib compressed pages. Normally, zlib compressed pages are between 50% and 75% smaller than uncompressed versions. This can save your board quite a bit of bandwidth.
Actually you are right. The problem has started a long time ago, with processor intensive UBB (we've had to change hosts because of it). Then Infopop reduced the load adding CACHE. But then CACHE misbehaved, taking a lot of webspace and bandwidth so they added PHP Accelerator to compress it... What's next?

Already dear PHP Accelerator proved it has a personality. I upgraded the test board from beta to latest version, followed the instructions by the book, reopened the forum and... surprise! Only the frontpage was showing up. Trying to enter the "forums" themselves presented me with a "sorry, forum closed" message. And guess what scripts said that? PHP Accelerator! It worked only after I closed the board, disabled it, opened the board then re-enable it... Phuah!

So, yes, I agree these gimmicks improve speed, but to what cost? The text with "prune posts or buy more webspace", sorry, but sounds too much like "you need a intel Pentium processor to run Windows 95"...

We have less than 1000 users, with about 10.000 posts. And UBB has grown at 110-120 MBs... What when we have 10.000 users? One Gigabyte of webspace for UBB would be enough?

We are stuck with UBB from the times when it was the best forum around. Now we either lose all our members database and posts and move to a free board, or we pay for more and more space... Doesn't seem a fair treatment for a long-time customer.

I guess that how Infopop sees the future. We see it different. We see it with a small, decent board, running on our small fansite without getting fat as a whale. And we don't want anyone near our /cgi-bin, so don't even say Open Topic. Well, I guess I took it off my chest. There's no resolution to this matter except maybe better programming and new commercial strategy at Infopop. But I won't hold my breath...