Advanced warning: some NSC disruption likely in the short-medium term

[hitony]

Hi - we're not looking for donations. NSC is still quite flush, but I want to ensure that remains the case before funds diminish too far.

All the post's about donations, funding etc etc, did'nt anyone read the above?

This topic comes up on a regular basis, whilst I don't doubt my opinion counts for little, the problems that would be encountered by members paying for access to NSC would become massive, as Hiney quite rightly states above, can you imagine if a paying member gets banned for some reason? then there would have to be clear rules which is close on impossible, the interpretation of any set rules would cause more arguments / binfests than a top 3rd round away draw for tickets!! in short it just wont work.

I am sure Bozza will sort out whatever needs to be sorted and if help was required he will ask for it.

 

[adrian29uk]

A lot of the bandwidth is down to the photos for the stadium. So like I have said before if people want to email me the photos to pics@countdown2falmer.co.uk I will put these on countdown2falmer. You can then add the photos to NSC by specifying the URL to the photos.

 

[Bozza]

A lot of the bandwidth is down to the photos for the stadium. So like I have said before if people want to email me the photos to pics@countdown2falmer.co.uk I will put these on countdown2falmer. You can then add the photos to NSC by specifying the URL to the photos.

And as I've said before, our costs have nothing to do with bandwidth. I remain happy to host all direct attachments on NSC.

 

[adrian29uk]

I ran a big site a couple of years back. You could upgrade the server a million times, but usually if you look at your database you can improve performance overnight. The site I used to work on was getting around 44,000 - 60,000 page views a day and was hammered much like forums are. As you know, MySQL gets most of the hammering. I don't know what sort of visits NSC gets, bet we too had hosting with Rackspace with two servers. We hosted the files on one server and database on the other.

How we improved performance was to get all the descriptions, or in your case threads converted .html format. This meant the load is taken away completely from mysql database when inserting and updating and viewing records as all the server has to do is serve .html docs.

We also got the developer to convert some of our tables over to Innodb format. Innodb only locks the record on MySQL and not the whole table when inserting or updating MySQL. I presume the forum has MyISAM tables?

We then got Rackspace to monitor our queries to see what was taking longest to complete. With this info, they then added some indexes to the tables and the site was transformed overnight, it was like a new server without having to upgrade. Loads on MySQL where minimal which is where your problems lye if its not bandwidth.

 

[willyfantastic]

have an appeal stuck on the banner near christmas time?

 

[beorhthelm]

after reading adrian29uk's post and considering other points raised about database, i'm wondering if there has been a sharp increase due partly to the way the newer BB software works? i know we can't go back, but somthing to think of.

In particular, how the board is viewed and layed out. im not conscious that i used to do this, but i now always click "new posts" to get refreash - this hits the DB for a search since some time point. im sure i used to go straight to the Big Board page, which is just that, a page. in fact i've just tried it and its quicker to click "forum" then "big board" and get two pages to load than click "new posts" and wait for some database return. so i wonder if inserting a "Big Board" link at the top or removing the "new posts" might help. maybe a static, hourly/10 min updated "Today's Posts" link might serve better?

 

[Acker79]

in fact i've just tried it and its quicker to click "forum" then "big board" and get two pages to load than click "new posts" and wait for some database return. so i wonder if inserting a "Big Board" link at the top or removing the "new posts" might help.

Just under the 'new post' button you'll see:

[a house icon] Forum > Albion > The Big board > the thread title.

You can click 'big board' and it's one click, rather than two.

 

[adrian29uk]

Nearly all sites that are busy hit a brick wall. Especially forums, auction sites because the records get stored in the database. It comes to a point when there are only so many server upgrades you can go within the budget, at this point you need to look at other ways to reduce the loads on the server. And from my own experience since MySQL did all the leg work we looked at ways of keeping the loads off it, which is why converting the descriptions to .html documents meant there was no need to use all of MySQL.

I would not like guess how big MySQL database is on NSC, but when I finished my job the database finished off at 2.5GB in size, that was after 3 years as we kept all records for accounting and customer queries.

 

[beorhthelm]

Just under the 'new post' button you'll see:

[a house icon] Forum > Albion > The Big board > the thread title.

You can click 'big board' and it's one click, rather than two.

doh! funny how you can literally miss something right in front of you. i use several sites with the same software, wonder if im missing that on them all, or one is got me in the habit of using "new post"?

 

[Bozza]

Typically, I've done nothing with this yet, but assuming the worst when the next hosting bill arrives, I'll be ready to act almost immediately.