thebrowncoat Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 There are 2 issues at work here. One is that we still use shared servers through Dreamhost. We could purchase a dedicated server, but the cost for this is much more significant than our current plan - you're talking hundreds to even thousands of dollars per year vs. what we currently pay. Despite what's been posted here, we don't make even close to that off the Google text ads that we run. Those basically cover our current server costs and other maintenance and that's about it. The other issue with slowness is due to the large size of our PHP database (which runs the boards.) As has been noted, we really need to do a massive cleanup and delete a lot of the old Game and Off Topic threads - but when we do that, it's going to eventually affect the post counts of a lot of users. So it really comes down to what's more important - having the site work well or having your post count reflect everything you've ever posted. I'm open to whatever people think is best. My personal preference would be to clean up a ton of old threads to reduce the database size and then we can look into better servers if we need them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EasyTarget Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 I've already said I don't care about my post count so feel free to delete any useless threads that I've taken part in! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 Post counts mean nothing anyway, plus you can just change a person's post count anyway if they care that much, delete the old crap threads and then edit their post count amount to what they think it should be Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SalsaC Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 Brent, it's good to think about the "clients" as well, but you are the admin. Here's a moment where you need to take it to your own hands. This place needs the cleanup or else it will be rendered useless, sooner or later. You know what's best to this board better than anyone else, and I think members here know that, so don't worry about triggering an uprising. No one is going to climb to the barricades if you do a massive cleanup and people's post counts drop significantly. Members will notice the benefits, I'm sure. As for a new server, if it will cost that much, then it's probably out of the picture. Donations are a possibility, but not a realistic one I think. And when there's a free way around this problem without having to change the server, you know what to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EasyTarget Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 It's kind of sad to grow attatched to post counts anyway.. It's quality not quantity!! Yes, says the girl with 22K posts, but that's because this is my favourite "place" and I have so many friends here, not because I want a big number. I'd be reall upset if this site went bankrupt or whatever so I don't care if my post count does right down! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 How selfish would you have to be though to complain about losing posts when it means the forums will run better? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EasyTarget Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 How selfish would you have to be though to complain about losing posts when it means the forums will run better? Exactly! It doesn't really need discussing in my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SalsaC Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 Inderdaad. The threads in the games-section might be a good way to waste time/have fun/put a pressure on the keyboard/whatever but no one is going to be shuffling through them one month from now on. It's a no-brainer. Some people here have giantastic post counts, but that's just because they like to post, not because they want to increase their post count/have no life. No one's attached to their post counts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebrowncoat Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 There was another issue that was really impacting our server load that I just fixed as well - some files that were apparently being streamed without our knowledge and eating up a TON of bandwidth (and yes, I know - we should upload everything as .zip, not .mp3, but sometimes we screw up Anyway, that's been corrected and I think performance should dramatically improve. If you're still having problems, let me know. On another note, in trying to prune old threads - it's very difficult on our shared server - Dreamhost tends to time us out before the request can complete unfortunately. But again - I think the issue I fixed above should improve performance with everything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EasyTarget Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 PF has actually been working great for me tonight! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 PF has actually been working great for me tonight! Same here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwik-silva Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 PF has actually been working great for me tonight! Same Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
watchthesky Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 it's been working well for me too aaand i come with a suggestion would it be possible to make it an option to hide your post count? if you can't see it you can't care, right? i do that on most sites i post on if the option's there just an idea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebrowncoat Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 it's been working well for me tooaaand i come with a suggestion would it be possible to make it an option to hide your post count? if you can't see it you can't care, right? i do that on most sites i post on if the option's there just an idea I can take it off everyone's profiles, but I don't see an option to allow people to choose whether they want to hide it or not - granted, I just did a quick glance through the vBulletin settings, so it might be in there somewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SalsaC Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 Call me weird but I'd like to see people's ages in their profiles. I got used to it being visible in another forum and I'm always interested in how old people actually are when compared to the image they convey. It's tiresome to shuffle through people's profiles everytime. The forum has worked fine BTW! Do you have any idea how big the database can grow before it becomes a problem, anyway? As it seems right now, it isn't big enough to cripple the server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EasyTarget Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 Yeah.. ages would be pretty cool. Another forum I kinda use has ages but not real names. Weird haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SalsaC Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 Yeah, different facts for different audiences I suppose I'm only getting used to addressing people with their real names here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
watchthesky Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 i like the ages idea too i don't know why new idea since we're cleaning out old threads i'm sure there's quite a few in the welcome section that don't need to be there anymore Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thebrowncoat Posted April 13, 2009 Report Share Posted April 13, 2009 Call me weird but I'd like to see people's ages in their profiles. I got used to it being visible in another forum and I'm always interested in how old people actually are when compared to the image they convey. It's tiresome to shuffle through people's profiles everytime. The forum has worked fine BTW! Do you have any idea how big the database can grow before it becomes a problem, anyway? As it seems right now, it isn't big enough to cripple the server. Dreamhost has never given us a database limit and at about 600mb, so far, I think we're ok in that regard. They've always been willing to move us to a new server in the past when performance started to degrade as well. The real problem was that the site was getting hit for 20GB of downloads/streams a day from Chinese mp3 search engines and the like. I've fixed that problem now by making all our media files zip files instead of mp3, which we should have done in the first place. As for making ages and the like visible, I'll have a look in the vBulletin settings and see what we can do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paint the sky grey Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 it's slow to me again and the errors are back. :/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STOPthissong! Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 ^ same here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reptar Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 ^ yup same here and from time to time internal server errors Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 It's been like this with me for a week or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WayneFarro Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 very slow today. unusual cos i've never had problems with speed on this site before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WayneFarro Posted May 19, 2009 Report Share Posted May 19, 2009 very slow today. unusual cos i've never had problems with speed on this site before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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