435 replies to this topic

[ICE CROW]

For the last several months the board has been running beautifully, almost no SQL errors and all profile functions active all the time. Considering how things were running in those regards when i first became a member, the smoothness in which the board has been running has really been great.

The last two weeks or so i know from talking with others that i am not the only one who has noticed, but many of the old problems seem to have resurfaced. In these last 2 or so weeks there has been a rise in SQL errors and other issues such as unintentional double posting, Posts not being posted after hitting the post button and a frequent inability to not be able to edit ones posts without having to refresh the page sometimes more than once.

My question is are these problems resurfacing do to some changes that have been made to the board or is this merely a symptom of increase server load. I know getting close to season 2 of the TV show and the recent Trailer have probably increased the amount of people visiting both the Forums and the Wiki, are we gonna see reduced functionality in our personal profiles again if server load issues is the problem?

Edited by ICE CROW, 10 February 2012 - 12:41 AM.

[Ran]

It's the increased server load we're getting. These last two weeks in particular have seen the new trailer and the new character photos, so... it'll start ramping up. WE're still hoping to sort out server isses before April, but if not, yeah, we'll be cutting back on services such as profiles to try and keep things lean and mean.

[Xray the Enforcer]

The board has been nigh-unreachable for hours this AM (and has been sporadically showing the Pink Bar of Death for days), so it's probably time to shut off search, profiles, etc.

[naz]

Damn, just when I was getting used to View New Posts again. Is there any way to disable general search and still keep View New Posts (and maybe even My Content)?

[Ran]

I think the problem this morning was unrelated to overall load on the server, as such, and was probably due to a bad bit of PHP code or a bug with our caching.

[ICE CROW]

I was pretty sure that it was load issues again it's just good to know for sure, thanks for letting us know. Actually i have one further question, if we have reduced profile functionality again will that affect the PM system?. When i first became a member that function was disabled as well, but i noticed that after some tweeks you did and the nameserver change a few months back even when everything else was disabled, PM was left untouched and didn't seem to affect board stability at all.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Whatever it is, it's still acting up. Layouts are b0rked completely for me. OSX/Chrome.

[Ran]

Two things going on:

1) We're working on the wiki in a way that requires us to flush the cache every time to make sure changes take... which means that there's an initial surge of heavy load on the server each time as people browse pages. As the most commonly visited pages get cached, that surge slowly peters out. Once we're done with the work, caching should resume as normal...

2) We're tweaking CSS on the forum. Make sure to do a complete re-load to get the newest style sheets.

[Alexia]

Ran, is this a good place to mention that the link to the Board FAQ in your signature is redirecting to the main page of the site and I have no idea where else to look it up?

[mormont]

The link in Xray's sig works and I think the one in mine does too (I'll test now). Otherwise, the FAQ is linked at the bottom of the main page under the 'Online Now' list on the right.

[Alexia]

Aha!  Thank you Mormont.

[LiamBridge]

Not a big issue, but for the last few days im not geting any notification's when somone quotes my post. I checked my settings and I should still be geting them.

[LiamBridge]

Wait nvm the problem fixed itself now, just a few hours there where it was not working.

[Ser Robin Hill]

I don't know if this is a board problem, or I've gone brain-dead.  I replaced my forum picture/avatar.  That worked, but when I saw it live, I wasn't thrilled, so I tried to replace it, again.  While it appeared to work on the profile page, as soon as I went to the forum, it changed back to the previous one.  I tried different images, removing the image first and then uploading.  No luck.  I decided to upload the original image.  Surprise.  That worked.  All the images were jpegs of similar size, so I don't know why some would "stick" and others wouldn't.

Not a big issue, so if no one else has it, I can live with it.

EDIT:  Just to advise, that I was able to change the photo, by grabbing one from a URL, rather than uploading it from my computer.

Edited by Robin Hill, 19 February 2012 - 12:42 AM.

[Gingerly Grumkin]

I cant "view new content" or check "my content" or view other people's (and mine) profile

[Ran]

We have had to turn those features off temporarily. Spikes in visitors are making the forum bog down, and we're trying to reduce overhead to keep it working as smoothly as possible.

[Jadiecat]

Ran, on 06 March 2012 - 05:37 PM, said:

We have had to turn those features off temporarily. Spikes in visitors are making the forum bog down, and we're trying to reduce overhead to keep it working as smoothly as possible.

Temporary disabling of profile view and search function is worth it to keep the site working for visitors.

Sure, it takes away from the conversation and community when you can't check out friends' content via their profile, and some people are bound to get annoyed if not being able to search leads people to repeat questions or comments more often.

But it's much, much better than getting error messages every time you try to read a thread or post.

So thank you to the site runners for keeping on top of it and turning those features off, when necessary, and back on, until the site can handle surges in visitors more smoothly (and that's easier said than done).

I wonder if it might keep anxieties and questions at bay if some sort of small banner could be posted, when appropriate, specifying that functions like search and profile views are temporarily suspended to keep the site running smoothly?

When I first got the "you are not permitted to view member profiles" message, I thought someone didn't like me.  

[Onion Smuggler]

I post on another forum, which allowed guests to view it's boards, and there were constantly problems with the server being slow or pages not loading. so they made the forum available to members only, they didn't have to cut back on any search functions or profile management/viewing. It has improved the site a lot.

I'm not sure if you can view the forums in here as a guest, I think you can. Just a suggestion but you could make the boards available for member's only to view, I think this would allow the server to run better. Anyways just a possibilty, it might go against the philosophy of the board.

[7V3N]

I have changed my avatar picture and it shows as if updated when I go to change my photo, but for some reason it has not changed on the boards. Anybody else having this issue? I thought it might be connected to the profiles being disabled.

[Francis Buck]

But if I can't look at people's profiles, then how I can ever stalk them properly?