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About the new forums
admin
Member, Administrator Posts: 1,079 admin
We made a very large change a few days ago and I figured that I would write you all a short note to tell you about what was changed and why.
The why should be obvious to anyone who has been using these forums in the last year: performance. The old forum was cgi scripts that we licensed from a third-party company running on a linux system. The cgi scripts did not use a database; everything was stored in flat files. The combination of cgi scripts and no database caused scalability problems that simply could not be resolved. We constantly had to prune messages older than a few months just to keep the site up.
The biggest problem was amount of traffic on the forums. I have not had time yet to check the exact count, but I am guessing that the forums were serving up around one million page views per month.
The new software is also licensed. We made some minor modifications to the software but it is more or less an out-of-the box solution. The biggest task was writing a utility that read the old messages and imported them into the new database.
I have seen a few of you complain about the speed of these forums. I have been using them for the last few days and find them typically very fast with the exception of the opening page. All of the statistics on the opening page (member count, latest member, etc) take a long time to generate. We could turn the stats off to increase the speed but it seems like people like that info.
These forums scale extremely well. The change in performance from no load to full load is very low so the perforance level is basically constant. After a couple of heavy days they have had no time-out problems like the old scripts.
One feature that is abysmally slow is the Search. We are looking at ways to fix it because the implemntation in the software simply is not intended for the number of users and posts we generate.
There has been a lot of talk about the stars and the Member/Junior Member/Senior Member/etc rankings. This feature is setup out of the box and we didn't even give it a thought. Rankings and Stars can be turned off but we don't see any reason to do so. Hopefully no one is actually offended by whatever ranking they have.
The forums are a work in progress. We are hoping to setup some archives so that we archive messages instead of deleting them. Search is being worked on. And at some point we will add a reloading forum and possibly some other forums for those of you who have asked.
The why should be obvious to anyone who has been using these forums in the last year: performance. The old forum was cgi scripts that we licensed from a third-party company running on a linux system. The cgi scripts did not use a database; everything was stored in flat files. The combination of cgi scripts and no database caused scalability problems that simply could not be resolved. We constantly had to prune messages older than a few months just to keep the site up.
The biggest problem was amount of traffic on the forums. I have not had time yet to check the exact count, but I am guessing that the forums were serving up around one million page views per month.
The new software is also licensed. We made some minor modifications to the software but it is more or less an out-of-the box solution. The biggest task was writing a utility that read the old messages and imported them into the new database.
I have seen a few of you complain about the speed of these forums. I have been using them for the last few days and find them typically very fast with the exception of the opening page. All of the statistics on the opening page (member count, latest member, etc) take a long time to generate. We could turn the stats off to increase the speed but it seems like people like that info.
These forums scale extremely well. The change in performance from no load to full load is very low so the perforance level is basically constant. After a couple of heavy days they have had no time-out problems like the old scripts.
One feature that is abysmally slow is the Search. We are looking at ways to fix it because the implemntation in the software simply is not intended for the number of users and posts we generate.
There has been a lot of talk about the stars and the Member/Junior Member/Senior Member/etc rankings. This feature is setup out of the box and we didn't even give it a thought. Rankings and Stars can be turned off but we don't see any reason to do so. Hopefully no one is actually offended by whatever ranking they have.
The forums are a work in progress. We are hoping to setup some archives so that we archive messages instead of deleting them. Search is being worked on. And at some point we will add a reloading forum and possibly some other forums for those of you who have asked.
Comments
This seems to be working well. I like it.
A couple of things I miss is the ability to look at anothers edit feature to see how something was posted. Also I liked to look at profiles to see where someone was from if they had that information listed.
wundudnee.............junior
....................
AD ASTRA PER ASPERA
To the stars through difficulty
Regarding the edit thing, like I said we didn't write the forum software. These forums have a lot more features than the old cgi scripts but if something is missing there isn't anything we can do except wait to see if more features are added by the publisher.
Guns! Guns! Guns!
It is not so much what a man possesses, but what possesses the man which determines his quality of life.
THANK YOU for the upgrade.
Lord Lowrider the LoquaciousMember:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets She was only a fisherman's daughter,But when she saw my rod she reeled.
Lowrider, the star challenged.
Lord Lowrider the LoquaciousMember:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets She was only a fisherman's daughter,But when she saw my rod she reeled.
Thanks for the effort. I appreciate it. Without this forum to vent and pontificate, my dog suffers.
Well done.
Clouder..
As everybody knows, if Mikey likes it, it must be good.........
Thanks for your efforts in our behalf. It is appreciated.
-Charlie
"It's the stuff dreams are made of Angel"NRA Certified Firearms InstructorMember: GOA, RKBA, NJSPBA, NJ area rep for the 2ndAMPD. njretcop@copmail.com
B - BreatheR - RelaxA - AimS - SightS - Squeeze
Now...if you want to do something REALLYconstructive, put in "spell check".
All in all....GOOD SHOW
I can't come to work today. The voices said, STAY HOME AND CLEAN THE GUNS!
YEAH....4 edits....told ya' I was still learning.
Edited by - mudge on 04/14/2002 10:49:42
Edited by - mudge on 04/14/2002 11:06:53
Edited by - mudge on 04/14/2002 11:08:07
Edited by - mudge on 04/14/2002 11:10:52
Thieves in 3 piece suits = Politicians,Doctors & Lawyers
Edited by - Alpine on 04/14/2002 12:48:51
Margaret Thatcher
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
Mark Twain
KIMBER: Pistol du jour
I really like the new format; but agree that spell check would be an improvement.
"If you can do it, it ain't braggin'".
JR Ewing - "Dallas"
I agree with Mudge that a spell check function would be nice but I suspect that your volume will preclude that.
One other thing that would be nice would be a REQUIRED location in the profiles, just the state but it would help when answering some of the 'what law' questions.
Again, the improvement is great, thanks.
Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem.Semper Fidelis