Ridiculous long load times during games

[Looch City]

I've only noticed the slow downs and timeouts when using a desktop browser (Firefox/Chrome).

Never had any issues through Tapatalk app...

[CroFlames]

I've had slow load times with both desktop (Firefox) and mobile (tapatalk). Seems random, but GT threads are obviously the worst.

Is it an infrastructure problem? Maybe increase the fee for the forum sponsors and do a community fundraiser drive for new gear? I am certain there would be some folks who would contribute. I would.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Is it an infrastructure problem? Maybe increase the fee for the forum sponsors and do a community fundraiser drive for new gear? I am certain there would be some folks who would contribute. I would.

That's pretty dicey IMO. We have no idea what the site brings in in terms of revenue nor what the costs are to operate. The forum is free but we deal with obtrusive advertising and sub forums that really cluttered up the off topic forum. How can a forum sponsor be asked to pay more when the forum was working properly half the time the past month?

We've had donation drives in the past and I've willingly donated. This time I'm not so sure.

As a total outsider I can only make assumptions but I would love to see a more open discussion among Bingo, the admins, moderators and a select group of users to set goals and the future of CP as a group. Have no idea what the openness is now but involving everyday members could be illuminating. The site has really stagnated the past couple years in many ways. Users, design, features and usability are all either stayed the same or taken a step back and the site can't trot by on past glory.

Awkward post to make and despite what many think I am not the true butthole I may come across as. This is all said without judgement, cynicism or any baggage attached. This post is only a concern over the website and forum I've long been apart of and most importantly enjoyed.

[Titan]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

I've had slow load times with both desktop (Firefox) and mobile (tapatalk). Seems random, but GT threads are obviously the worst.

Is it an infrastructure problem? Maybe increase the fee for the forum sponsors and do a community fundraiser drive for new gear? I am certain there would be some folks who would contribute. I would.

Not sure what the economics are but a "GoFundMe" type deal for the site would certainly raise a fair bit of cash. I know I would contribute. Hell, I just threw Wikipedia $20 and I am on that about 1 billion percent less than CP.

[photon]

The disabling of thanks is only a temporary measure.

I already have two new server virtual machines going (thanks Vox!) that have better specs and updated software so no need of a funding campaign.

I'm just in the process of building them up and installing all the necessary software and configurations to have them run the sites, I've been incredibly busy for quite a while so haven't had the new servers as a high priority but since the performance issues have really seemed to ramp up I've made them a higher priority for myself.

I did spend a good chunk of Saturday working on it and managed to get past the difficult part (or I guess the part I didn't know how to do), so the rest should be straight forward. Will continue to chip away at it as I can.

[longsuffering]

Originally Posted by photon

The disabling of thanks is only a temporary measure.

I already have two new server virtual machines going (thanks Vox!) that have better specs and updated software so no need of a funding campaign.

I'm just in the process of building them up and installing all the necessary software and configurations to have them run the sites, I've been incredibly busy for quite a while so haven't had the new servers as a high priority but since the performance issues have really seemed to ramp up I've made them a higher priority for myself.

I did spend a good chunk of Saturday working on it and managed to get past the difficult part (or I guess the part I didn't know how to do), so the rest should be straight forward. Will continue to chip away at it as I can.

Thanks photon

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Much better for me. Still trying to decide which is worse, losing the Thanks or the long load times.

Both, and more. I can't say enough about the Thanks button. It is a valuable tool in the message board environment for the user's experience, as well as for the forum's functionality. Certain search and query functions have also been scaled back, including the thanks stats/searches a couple years ago, post history searches, and users viewing threads/forum lists. These were also useful and user-friendly tools.

If the user experience is being rolled back with the loss of these features, I think that CP should do one or both of the following to improve it:

1. Scale back advertising on the forum. Advertisements are always ideally minimized for users, but they have been getting increasingly annoying and intrusive (maximize and hard to get rid of if you mistakenly scroll over them, or sometimes don't function properly and interfere with loading the forum)

2. Get rid of the sponsored forums. These are intrusive, firstly and simply. While certainly they vary in their usefulness and functionality, they undermined a long existing history of business among CP members having grown organically through long-standing posting history and community involvement. Furthermore, some (but not all, mind you) of the sponsors were not, and are still not, involved with the community in more than a superficial way.

Now, I'm certainly not opposed to having things of this nature as nothing happens for free, but it's a bit head-scratching when the user experience is then hindered in the first place by the sponsored forums, and then scaled back when the demand grows.

CP's membership is of not-insignificant size and has some well-known particular demographics (heavily rooted in the Calgary area, predominantly male aged 20-50). Internet advertising can be fairly valuable for traffic of that scale. If the community's involvement is leveraged to bring in revenue (this practice very visibly and significantly ramped up with the sponsored forums), then the user experience should ideally improve a bit, and at the very least remain as good as it was. This is certainly not the case. Some of the advertising and sponsorship revenues should be reinvested into the forum's infrastructure. From another perspective, if I had paid for a sponsored forum and then a few months down the road, the forum experienced chronic problems with load times and the users had funtions disabled, I'd question things a bit.

I'd hate to see the moderation and administration team see any scaling back of any stipend, bonus, appreciation, etc. that they receive. Speaking for myself, their work is appreciated and certainly must involve a not insignificant amount of their time, and I would argue that they certainly deserve some appreciation for their efforts.

I hope that I'm not alone in my thoughts and also hope that there can be a more open discussion about this issue. I don't mean in a "let's see the books and where all the dollars and cents are going" type of way, because that's not reasonable. I'm thinking of questions like: "Could money possibly be re-invested in the community as demand grows, and presumably so do advertising revenues?" or "What does CP and the community that has grown over the years mean to us all, and what things drive that?" "Could those things be enhanced or improved?" "In order to keep or improve the user experience, would you be willing to have some sponsored forums and advertising?"

cc. Bingo

[V]

Well, there's an example of where the thanks button is sorely missed. Exactly my feelings without the snark or impossible to read innuendo.

[photon]

Originally Posted by frinkprof

Certain search and query functions have also been scaled back, including the thanks stats/searches a couple years ago, post history searches, and users viewing threads/forum lists. These were also useful and user-friendly tools.

Thanks searches were scaled back because the code of the thanks feature itself was not designed well enough to scale up with the number of users and posts we have, regardless of what kind of server you throw at it. You can only compensate for bad design so far.

As an aside, that's a significant downside of community written plugins for software; they are frequently done by volunteers that don't have the time or the knowledge to build code that will handle the large scenarios (this is actually a common problem with developers in general hence the emergence of DevOps).

If someone wants to step forward to rewrite the thanks plugin to allow for those searches I'll gladly install it.

I'm not sure what you mean by post history searches (search was only turned off for a short time as a test to see if it was a significant contributing factor), but users viewing threads and forum lists are, like thanks, only temporarily disabled until we get on the new servers.

Originally Posted by frinkprof

If the user experience is being rolled back with the loss of these features, I think that CP should do one or both of the following to improve it:

As said previously in the thread, the features aren't being rolled back, only temporarily disabled until the migration to the new servers is completed.

Originally Posted by frinkprof

but it's a bit head-scratching when the user experience is then hindered in the first place by the sponsored forums, and then scaled back when the demand grows.

As said above, it's not being scaled back, it's being disabled until the new servers are ready to host the site. And the root cause has pretty much nothing to do with demand (or increase in demand anyway, if the site had 5 viewers it would perform pretty awesome).

EDIT: Reading back over that kind of repeating myself there, sorry I should have maybe combined all those into one response.

With respect to any advertising or sponsorship, those are Bingo's domain and I don't even know if he's aware of this thread so if anyone wants their input to be seen by Bingo then they should probably let him know directly, or at least point him to your post. You mentioned cc. Bingo so I assume you already did that, that last part was for anyone else.

[btimbit]

Came to ask how much money I need to donate to get 'Thanks' back Got my answer.

Thanks for all you do photon

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by photon

With respect to any advertising or sponsorship, those are Bingo's domain and I don't even know if he's aware of this thread so if anyone wants their input to be seen by Bingo then they should probably let him know directly, or at least point him to your post. You mentioned cc. Bingo so I assume you already did that, that last part was for anyone else.

I can't speak for anyone else, but that seems like part of the problem to me. I appreciate what Bingo has created and invested in maintaining over the years but it seems to me that there's a pretty big disconnect between him and the userbase at this point.

[sun]

Originally Posted by photon

With respect to any advertising or sponsorship, those are Bingo's domain and I don't even know if he's aware of this thread so if anyone wants their input to be seen by Bingo then they should probably let him know directly, or at least point him to your post. You mentioned cc. Bingo so I assume you already did that, that last part was for anyone else.

I think the fact that Bingo isn't reading the Help/Suggestions forum during this two-week-long performance blip kinda sums up the problems that some of us are having with CP lately.

[photon]

I don't read every thread by a long shot, I simply can't, if someone wants my attention they have to get it specifically by either PMing me, posting in a thread they know I read, or posting in this subforum (because this subforum is specifically about help, technical issues, etc). That's all I meant by that.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by photon

I don't read every thread by a long shot, I simply can't, if someone wants my attention they have to get it specifically by either PMing me, posting in a thread they know I read, or posting in this subforum (because this subforum is specifically about help, technical issues, etc). That's all I meant by that.

Well, that's fair but this is the Help/Suggestions area, not the Season Two of Mad Men thread. That's a little surprising the guy who runs the joint isn't active here.

And I'm not asking you to defend anything or anyone, I'm not saying there is anything to defend per se.. but this board is better now and long term when the owner, Bingo, is an active part of it. Not trying to judge, we all have busy lives and I understand he is too, just thinking from a forum aspect. The game writes up are fine but I'd imagine the traffic there pales in comparison to what the forum gets, the forum is the heart of the entire site.

You run the technical side, Jiri and his band of merry mods run the disciple.. where's the owner? Polls of the Day?

I have nothing against Bingo, I've been apart of this place closer to 20 years now (god damn) so this is all about care and concern about Calgarypuck a place that has outgrown just talk about the Flames but to Calgary entirely.

With places like Reddit's r/calgary and the twitter universe it would be good to get this place.. IMO.. back on track. It's been faltering the past couple years.

[Roof-Daddy]

Really missing the "Thanks" feature.

I'm a skimmer, and posts that were thanked got skimmed a little more closely. Now I find myself opening threads and skimming all the way to the bottom without really reading much anymore.

The thanks feature really helped separate the wheat from the chaff.

Just MO.

[jayswin]

Yeah, for me too. I never realized how much it shaped the forum and how we use it until it got removed.

[calgaryblood]

Forum unusable. Safe to say it wasn't the thanks feature.

[photon]

Originally Posted by calgaryblood

Forum unusable. Safe to say it wasn't the thanks feature.

Safe to say I never claimed the cause was the thanks feature.

Also safe to say not everyone has been a jackass about it, good for you on bucking the trend.

[photon]

Update for anyone who's interested in technical stuff, worked on things while the game was on.

I said I was past the hard part, apparently not though I'm using php-fpm to handle the PHP processing rather than the basic mod_php for Apache, I've read using php-fpm and FastCGI and proxy pass and Apache 2.4 in a certain way is just as fast as nginx (since speed and efficency are the goals).

Anyway, I was working on the CPHL site and got everything moved over, but the content wasn't displaying properly... if I used an explicit URL it worked, but the rewrite rules in Apache weren't working. I don't know rewrite rules well and it worked on the current server so I thought maybe it was an Apache version thing, so fought with that for a while. Finally dawned on me that I'm using php-fpm, so I took PHP out of the equation and the rewrites started working.

So did some searching and finally found a recipe for making a rewrite rule that works properly with php-fpm and things I'm using.

So the CPHL stuff seems to be configured properly now.. was hoping to get further tonight, but learned a bit more about this stuff so that's good. The main site and the forum software are next.

[frinkprof]

Originally Posted by photon

Thanks searches were scaled back because the code of the thanks feature itself was not designed well enough to scale up with the number of users and posts we have, regardless of what kind of server you throw at it. You can only compensate for bad design so far.

As an aside, that's a significant downside of community written plugins for software; they are frequently done by volunteers that don't have the time or the knowledge to build code that will handle the large scenarios (this is actually a common problem with developers in general hence the emergence of DevOps).

If someone wants to step forward to rewrite the thanks plugin to allow for those searches I'll gladly install it.

I'm not sure what you mean by post history searches (search was only turned off for a short time as a test to see if it was a significant contributing factor), but users viewing threads and forum lists are, like thanks, only temporarily disabled until we get on the new servers.



As said previously in the thread, the features aren't being rolled back, only temporarily disabled until the migration to the new servers is completed.



As said above, it's not being scaled back, it's being disabled until the new servers are ready to host the site. And the root cause has pretty much nothing to do with demand (or increase in demand anyway, if the site had 5 viewers it would perform pretty awesome).

EDIT: Reading back over that kind of repeating myself there, sorry I should have maybe combined all those into one response.

With respect to any advertising or sponsorship, those are Bingo's domain and I don't even know if he's aware of this thread so if anyone wants their input to be seen by Bingo then they should probably let him know directly, or at least point him to your post. You mentioned cc. Bingo so I assume you already did that, that last part was for anyone else.

Originally Posted by photon

Safe to say I never claimed the cause was the thanks feature.

Also safe to say not everyone has been a jackass about it, good for you on bucking the trend.

Photon, I will agree that some of the responses do have an edge to them, but I don't think that you should take it as a commentary on the work you're doing and your efforts. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do sense a bit of sensitivity that way. The work you put in is clear to most anyone that spends some time on this forum, and I don't think anyone is upset with the explanations you've given, nor the efforts you continually make. Speaking for myself, it's appreciated, as are the quality of your replies like your reply to me above.

My post was mostly intended to speak to long term issues with the forum, that are likely beyond your capacity or control and into the realm of investment in infrastructure as well as ongoing operations and direction. I can appreciate that some of the features were disabled on a temporary basis only, but many of them are disabled often (busy times of year such as trade deadline, etc.), nevermind that the crashes and load times that spur these measures happen frequently in the first place. The loading and crashes are the main source of most people's frustration, I'm sure.

To clarify with the post history searches, I mean the search that is performed when you click on a user's name and the option to view that user's past posts. It used to return, I believe, 5 times the number of results than they do now. Noticed that change a couple weeks ago maybe.

Also, I did indeed PM Bingo with my post above, although I do have to echo the concerns of others above that the owner doesn't peruse the Help/Suggestions section of the forum, especially in light of a persistent technical issue such as this one. Surely you shouldn't be left to answer for everything. I haven't received a reply yet.

I wouldn't otherwise presume to be so entitled, but the era of sponsored forums especially has ushered in a different paradigm where the users might come to expect some reinvestment in the community and experience after having their patronage and involvement sold as a commodity. I'm sure the new servers will be great and all, but that it has gotten to this point (and likely will again), raises some questions.