[ukmicky]

Chris in stead of a chat facility how about a private message service.[]

Michael

[neilep]

How about a chat and a PM service ?....one thing that has been a long standing slightly frustrating tool is the search facility tool at the top of the page.

Although, the search facility on the left is quick, it would be nice if the forum specific one worked too !

Whajafink ?


Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[another_someone]

I would have thought, given the instability of what we have, it would be more important to stabilise what we have before thinking about adding more to it.

The extras may be nice, but put them on a stable system, and don't simply add more burden on an unstable one.

George

[neilep]

Well at least we know another_someone is working perfectly ![]

Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[chris]

Hi All

yes, we need to stabilise this forum urgently. I have a way to do it, but it's quite involved (because we want to minimise disruption to people during the changeover).

I'm on the case, but please try to grin and bear it for a bit longer.

Search-wise, although the function appears to time out, if you hit the page refresh button after your search times out, suddenly all the results will appear!

Chris

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx

[neilep]

Thanks Chris,

Yep, I forgot to mention the refresh button trick...and you know me...I'm all grins and love to bear it !!

[neilep]

The site is intolerably slow, it's unusable !!

[elegantlywasted]

this site is ridiculosly slow latley, im glad im not the only one experiencing problems... chris please help us!

-Meg

[Hadrian]

What data base engine is being used? Perhaps the size of some of the diet sections could be slimed down. They seem to be a site within a site.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

[neilep]

quote:Originally posted by Hadrian

What data base engine is being used? Perhaps the size of some of the diet sections could be slimed down. They seem to be a site within a site.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

I wish it was as easy as that...the zeta thread once stemmed to over 90 pages !! (yes it really did) and the site was still working reasonably well... I do not believe that this is the cause at this time. It must be something more fundamental in it's technicality with the site


Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[Hadrian]

It could be a DB server issue. did you reboot it?

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

[chris]

I'm sorry about this. I think it stems from the fact that we had a bit of a run on the podcasts because we published the first one since easter and immediately 10,000 copies (200 GB) went flying off the shelves in about 6 hours. It seems to have slowed everything down enormously.

I think it's lots of computers all trying to download the podcast simultaneously. iTunes is probably the cause because it touches the rss regularly to see if there's been an update and as soon as it detects one it tries to grab the files...

Hopefully we're over the worst of it now.

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx

[ukmicky]

It must be the podcast downloads as it happened all of a sudden, and because me and neil have been quite ruffless recently and slimmed the database down by quite a lot.

Michael

[chris]

Thanks Michael.

Obviously please try to preserve content where possible when spring cleaning...the questions and answers are very valuable, but some of the intervening chat is less useful and can go...

Chris

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx

[ukmicky]

Did i say ruffless i mean't rufeless [] Dont worry though nothing of value has gone.

Michael

[neilep]

quote:Originally posted by ukmicky

Did i say ruffless i mean't rufeless [] Dont worry though nothing of value has gone.

Michael

lol...actually chum..I think you meant ' Ruthless '...unless you're speaking from a house with no top which would then be ' Roofless ' []...or you mean a world with no girlies called Ruth...which then applies to my first item too []

Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[ukmicky]

quote:Originally posted by neilep

quote:Originally posted by ukmicky

Did i say ruffless i mean't rufeless [] Dont worry though nothing of value has gone.

Michael

lol...actually chum..I think you meant ' Ruthless '...unless you're speaking from a house with no top which would then be ' Roofless ' []...or you mean a world with no girlies called Ruth...which then applies to my first item too []

Men are the same as women, just inside out !

oh my god, i'm totally embarrassed. (Correctly spelt with two arrhs and two esses i might add . I cant believe i did that, and i can't change it now either.

Welcome back neil. []

Michael

[neilep]

Know worreez Michael, I do eet orl the time two.

4:20am Report........

........The site has picked up a little speed but is still very slow. I am pleased that the podcasts are such a success but I wonder if we should be expecting regular periods of this instability ?

Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[neilep]

WOW !!

06:20am Report!!..My Word !!..a complete transformation !!..the site is behaving itself very well at this moment.

Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[chris]

Thank god, back to normal.

Seriously guys I'm looking into ways around this. The problem is that:

1) The bandwidth for this operation is now about 1.5 Terabytes (TB) a month - that's 300-500 GB per week. Most hosting plans offer you about 50 GB a MONTH!

2) This forum is ASP driven and is running a notoriously unstable access DB. We have done tests and can migrate it to a mysql database, but it still requires ASP. That way we also keep our incoming links and all the content. But mysql is much more stable.

3) If we wanted to move it to another forum platform we'd lose our links and it would also mean users would lose their logins / passwords. We've tried to get round this and it's not possible.

4) Moving hosts is a nightmare so we really want a UK based company so that we can phone them up and sort out any problems.

5) We're about to do a radical site overhaul anyway (because this version is archaic and totally static (excepting the forum), making it very inefficient. With this in mind we're sourcing the best CMS that fufills our needs. Once we know what the server requirements will be we can find a host and then move the whole shooting match across.

If anyone wants to help / knows someone who could help, please ask them to drop me a line.

Best

Chris

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx