WHAT is it going to take to make these forums run smooth? - Page 2 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

brucebeh · 02-15-2006, 07:30 PM

i don't know if this stuff is already installed but.....

Zend Optimizer (i guess you have this since you guys are on vbulletin)
PHP Accelerator

And a few others i seem to have forgotten ATM, but they help a LOT.

Oh, have you guys spent some time tweaking your mysql server, that can improve things by a LOT.

scottie · 02-16-2006, 12:19 AM

brucebeh: done and done!

photon · 02-16-2006, 09:05 AM

And done on the MySQL and Apache tuning as well.

brucebeh · 02-16-2006, 11:46 AM

woops, i lied, i just looked through my emails with my own server noc, its actually called, "eAccelerator"

Sorry.. but they both do essentially the same thing.

What you guys should also do is, get a shared hosting account somewhere and host your main site on that, and use the vps JUST for this forum.

Buff · 03-01-2006, 11:00 PM

My company started to host a new website. It was getting so many hits that it was working slowly and all the other sites on that server and one other server we have was running slowly.

My boss bought a brand new server just for that new website, and delivered it to a place with a fiber connection and everything worked itself out. No more performance issues.

If somehow you could get the cp server on a fiber backbone...

scottie · 03-02-2006, 10:31 AM

Buff,

No kidding!

Oh, was that an offer?

scottie · 03-04-2006, 01:20 AM

Realistically it'll take US$150 - US$200 every month.

brucebeh · 03-05-2006, 12:02 AM

^^

yeah, that's a good price point to get a very decent server dedicated to this forum.. it'll mean, fast speeds even with about 500 people online

Flash Walken · 03-05-2006, 09:11 PM

I'm just going to take a guess, but I think that's a little bit out of the budget, and to be quite frank, I think it's above need.

KevanGuy · 03-06-2006, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

I'm just going to take a guess, but I think that's a little bit out of the budget, and to be quite frank, I think it's above need.

How do you know what is or isnt 'above need'?

Flash Walken · 03-06-2006, 01:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevanGuy

How do you know what is or isnt 'above need'?

Just speculation, like speculation on the budget, I could be horribly horribly wrong, or I could be closer to correct than I ever imagined.

The point I was making was, I don't think the traffic levels are a problem at any other time than game-day when everyone is constantly refreshing the gamethread/gameday thread/threads after the game. Paying for all that increased bandwidth and hosting for a 5 hour period out of 48 doesn't seem like a realistic option to me, maybe I'm wrong, and if I am, I'll shut my mouth.

Again, just my $.02 as a new poster here.

photon · 03-06-2006, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Just speculation, like speculation on the budget, I could be horribly horribly wrong, or I could be closer to correct than I ever imagined.

The point I was making was, I don't think the traffic levels are a problem at any other time than game-day when everyone is constantly refreshing the gamethread/gameday thread/threads after the game. Paying for all that increased bandwidth and hosting for a 5 hour period out of 48 doesn't seem like a realistic option to me, maybe I'm wrong, and if I am, I'll shut my mouth.

Again, just my $.02 as a new poster here.

There's been some other times where the traffic has had a significant impact. If it was only game threads I might be inclined to agree, but this week trade deadline is another perfect example. I'll know the Flames picked up Jokinen from Florida not because I read it here, but because I won't be able to get in to even see what the server load is let alone read the thread :/ Given a choice, personally I want as pain free a experince as possible for users.

Plus if we go deep in the playoffs it'll be even more. PLUS if the main site doesn't have a forum, they're ALL going to come here.

*shudder*

Flash Walken · 03-06-2006, 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by photon

There's been some other times where the traffic has had a significant impact. If it was only game threads I might be inclined to agree, but this week trade deadline is another perfect example. I'll know the Flames picked up Jokinen from Florida not because I read it here, but because I won't be able to get in to even see what the server load is let alone read the thread :/ Given a choice, personally I want as pain free a experince as possible for users.

Plus if we go deep in the playoffs it'll be even more. PLUS if the main site doesn't have a forum, they're ALL going to come here.

*shudder*

heh, ya, I thought about that for playoffs too, it's going to be nuts.

Might I be so bold as to ask about the front page's stats compared to the forum? I think it's probably likely that atleast a few users go to www.calgarypuck.com/ and then click the forum link...I don't know any of the hosting details, or how the ad traffic relates to the calgarypuck domain but I'm wondering if maybe a sort of 'shell' start page hosted on some throwaway webspace (like a $5 a month startlogic host or something) could be used just for www.calgarypuck.com and have the server hosted somewhere else? Hell, it might already be like this and I'm just looking like a doofus, but maybe that would be enough to compensate?

Another thing I thought might be nice would be java applet for IRC. Might be nice to maybe replace game threads (or atleast, if the server dies/overloads) to be done on IRC. When CP went down a couple of weeks ago for a day or whatever, I thought of setting one up on dalnet or efnet, buuuutttt then I just got lazy and didn't do it. Not like it's difficult or something special, but I sit on IRC all day anyway, so if you thought it might be prudent, I could go ahead and register the chan and Idle there as op all day or what-have-you.

brucebeh · 03-06-2006, 08:14 PM

Admins, I found a great reliable place for great dedicated servers, the cost range is about $80/mth just a little higher than what you guys are paying now for your VPS.

AMD Sempron 2600+
512 ram, 1000GB Bandwidth
80 gb hard drive
10mbit connection ($10 more for 100mbit)

PM me about this or add me on msn... i think it will greatly suit your needs and not blow your budget at the same time.

photon · 03-06-2006, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

heh, ya, I thought about that for playoffs too, it's going to be nuts.

Might I be so bold as to ask about the front page's stats compared to the forum? I think it's probably likely that atleast a few users go to www.calgarypuck.com/ and then click the forum link...I don't know any of the hosting details, or how the ad traffic relates to the calgarypuck domain but I'm wondering if maybe a sort of 'shell' start page hosted on some throwaway webspace (like a $5 a month startlogic host or something) could be used just for www.calgarypuck.com and have the server hosted somewhere else? Hell, it might already be like this and I'm just looking like a doofus, but maybe that would be enough to compensate?

Another thing I thought might be nice would be java applet for IRC. Might be nice to maybe replace game threads (or atleast, if the server dies/overloads) to be done on IRC. When CP went down a couple of weeks ago for a day or whatever, I thought of setting one up on dalnet or efnet, buuuutttt then I just got lazy and didn't do it. Not like it's difficult or something special, but I sit on IRC all day anyway, so if you thought it might be prudent, I could go ahead and register the chan and Idle there as op all day or what-have-you.

The front page of course sees far fewer page views (because it only takes one page view to read an article and digest its contents, while each thread will have hundreds to thousands of page views over its lifetime, and there are hundreds of new threads each week), and it's not very resource intensive so it's really not a big issue. It's the forums that consume the resources.

As for an IRC channel if there's one out there that people use that's ok, but we don't want to have any sort of official or sanctioned CP IRC channel at this time.

scottie · 03-07-2006, 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brucebeh

Admins, I found a great reliable place for great dedicated servers, the cost range is about $80/mth just a little higher than what you guys are paying now for your VPS.

AMD Sempron 2600+
512 ram, 1000GB Bandwidth
80 gb hard drive
10mbit connection ($10 more for 100mbit)

PM me about this or add me on msn... i think it will greatly suit your needs and not blow your budget at the same time.

Hi brucebeh,

Thanks for your suggestion. However, the price is less than our current hosting and the server is less powerful (well, less suitable). For example, we can currently (and regularly do) burst up to 2Gb of ram ...

habernac · 03-09-2006, 08:45 AM

getting hammered by "server is busy" errors. Anyone else?

photon · 03-09-2006, 08:53 AM

Yeah, I put a cap on the server load... That cap is probably 25 times what a normal server should be running at but it's still capped.

habernac · 03-09-2006, 11:16 AM

very frustrating today. I've pretty much given up trying to read a thread as it takes 5 minutes or more to access.

In fact, it took me 5 minutes just to post this...

photon · 03-09-2006, 11:59 AM

I don't know why but it's actually been pretty smooth for me. But server loads are running super high and we've come very close to breaking 500 concurrent users.