WHAT is it going to take to make these forums run smooth? - Page 3 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

4X4 · 03-09-2006, 11:53 PM

In the interest of avoiding redundancy, I'm not going to post that I just simply couldn't access the forums (for more than 5 minutes here and there) the past couple of days. I'm not going to speculate that the influx of noobs and the trade deadline pushed the server into territory that it can't handle. I'm not going to complain that my crack has been watered down with icing sugar (and I'm not going to give credit to whoever (probably fotze) first made that remark). And I won't bother wondering out loud whether the playoffs will be even worse that the trade deadline.

What I am going to do is suggest that one time donations are handy, but they probably don't teach the 'new' server to fish.

Is it possible to have accounts that are connected to paypal or something, that we could voluntarily pay a penny a post? Really, it's not much to the addicts, but it's gotta add up for the admin. If 100 of us addicts actually signed up for this and between us we made 200 posts per day (that's 2 posts each, Einstein).... 60 bucks per month for the server, a buck twenty is what is cost the addicts. For a month of crack. Even heavy posters wouldn't be spending more than a couple bucks a month.

OR... As previously suggested... Just some kind of flat rate per year. Fawk... You know that at least a a quarter of us will pay it. 10 bucks per year. No big hit to our individual pocketbooks, but with 300 of us paying it, thats 3 grand a year or 250 a month...
Give the paying guys a shiny star by their name and they're happy. Better yet, give them the ability to have avatars or sigs and watch the money roll in.

Hell... Forget all of what I just said and do this... Let me pay 10 or 20 or fricken 50 bucks right now and guarantee that my IP is front of the line. (ok, that's probably impossible, but if it were possible, the sign-up rate for this would be phenominal. Heck, you'd have enough cash to buy a top of the line server that could handle so many posters that you'd never have to tell any of us that we are a bunch of morons who ALL think that we are front of the line.).

But please do something. I need this place for my hockey fix. NHL isn't exactly front page news over here...

scottie · 03-10-2006, 12:46 AM

4x4 -- execellent post. Even though I just got up, bleary-eyed 'cos I tuned in for the Dallas game, I'm laughing away to myself.

Anyway, your last point was this:
"But please do something."

And here's your (and everyone else's) answer: we are. We have some options, we're costing them out. Once we answer how much, we'll be able to tackle how. We have a bunch of ideas, which we'll be trying on for size over the next wee while. And then? You fine people find out what the shake-down will be. Fair enough?

Flash Walken · 03-10-2006, 01:05 AM

as was mentioned previously, I'd much rather have it capped and tell me it's busy than just hang forever.

I'm actually pretty impressed at how well it held up for the last couple of days, and don't see server downtime as such an issue, really.

This is a very well run forum.

theJuice · 03-26-2006, 02:02 PM

Hrm..stupid question, but was that "Win a Game Date thing" with Shawnski supposed to be the "Money drive" type of thing for the servers, or merely just one of many ideas that your kicking around. IE, you have another large donating type of plan, that you are currently considering.

KevanGuy · 03-26-2006, 09:56 PM

That was just a preliminary thing. We will do a larger drive before the playoffs

Shazam · 03-27-2006, 09:36 PM

Q: Are the DB and Web servers on different machines?

Q: Do you have a separate Apache process just for static content?

Shazam · 03-27-2006, 09:38 PM

And Semprons absolutely suck for servers.

photon · 03-27-2006, 09:54 PM

Lol.. yeah we'll probably go with Opterons.

To answer your questions currently no to both, we're on a VPS.

For what we are planning, we'll still have a single machine for the DB and web servers.. it'd be nice to seperate them but it's not necessary at this point. It'll likely be a dual core box as well.

For Apache, that's probably something we'd set up, though we really don't have that much static content (the front page will be moving to a CMS).

Or do you mean even having a seperate apache instance serving up the static components like images and stuff?

Shazam · 03-28-2006, 11:34 AM

Quote:

it'd be nice to seperate them but it's not necessary at this point.

I will tell you unequivocally that the best thing you can do is to separate the the DB and web servers.

Anything else you do will be a sub-optimal solution.

Quote:

For Apache, that's probably something we'd set up, though we really don't have that much static content

I highly recommend it. Apache is very poor at releasing memory from third party processes (like PHP), and what happens is serving static content from the same process that serves dynamic content actually starts to slow down the dynamic content response.

There's lots of tutorials on the web about how to set it up. It's a very easy win for you.

photon · 03-28-2006, 07:20 PM

Cool, we'll look into the Apache thing then.

Unfortunately putting the two on seperate boxes is the only soluation at this point. As we grow it may become an option. I've seen significantly larger forums run on a single box though.

Shazam · 03-29-2006, 07:33 PM

Also, try turning off HTTP keep-alives. Every keep-alive requires a handle in memory.

And, are you running two VPS processes? Try switching to just one.

photon · 03-29-2006, 11:38 PM

I'm not sure how they have the server configured, but I believe we are under just one VPS process.

scottie · 04-03-2006, 01:58 AM

Yup, one process.

Bobblehead · 04-11-2006, 11:51 AM

A little late, but why isn't the Server Fund thermometer linked to the donation thread?

I wondered about that when I could see the .png but was still getting the "Server Busy" message. It is when that error pops up that I really want to donate (even though I already did).

photon · 04-11-2006, 12:58 PM

Sorry about that, I have to change a forum template and just haven't had a chance to go in and do it.. though kinda late now

calculoso · 04-11-2006, 02:50 PM

You know how there is the first line or two of a thread that pops up when the mouse is placed over the thread name? Has there been any experimentation with disabling that and seeing if that speeds things up?

photon · 04-11-2006, 04:03 PM

That's a REALLY good suggestion! I've never even noticed it but yeah it pulls the first post of every thread!

On the new server this stuff should all be no problem though.

evman150 · 04-14-2006, 01:03 PM

Wow this reminds me of RFD with the no mouse over preview. Very annoying.

I realize it's not for very long. I'll live.

4X4 · 05-02-2006, 02:25 PM

Is the torture over? I haven't been able to surf CP for a couple weeks now. The odd time, I managed to get into a thread, but it was taking a long time to load.
Like a true addict, I kept trying... And to my pleasent surprise, the forums are running great right now. Is the new server up or something? Or are the bandwagoners all gone...
I thought it'd be impossible to check the board today with an assumed influx of grease fans bragging about their dragon slaying.

Whatever the case, the forum is nice and fast. Grazie.

photon · 05-02-2006, 03:27 PM

Nope, still working on securing colocation. The cutover to the new server will hopefully take place after game 7 but before the start of the next series (God willing).