[JRP3]

Site is loading really slowly lately again. Any other solutions, besides more bandwidth?

[JRP3]

Wow, don't know what happened but since I made the above post the site is loading faster again. I have magic powers

[mmasters]

Been having troubles with the site lately, threads that wont load (I can't even open the thread about threads that wont load) and terrible lagging on the server.

Could it be about time to upgrade the board software/server? Of all the message boards I frequent this one ranks lowest on performance.

[davep]

Agreed. We could all chip in.

I hear it's the MySQL server that can't handle the queries as the site increases in size. If Aaron knows what the bottleneck is (CPU, Disk I/O, too little RAM) it would be cheap to get the thing going better in the short term, with a view to a longer-term replacement.

It may also be worth going to the latest version of the software, as it may have better-formed queries for larger boards.

[mmasters]

Yeah, I was thinking it was a scalability problem as well.

Fund drive sounds like a good idea, I would chip in 20 bucks.

Be nice to have a slick visually appealing board that could handle a big user load.

[Aaron]

It's a funding issue primarily.

And we hate begging for money...

But yeah, we could all benefit from another upgrade. (There have been several)

[mmasters]

How about a fund drive for a complete overhaul? That way no more tactical fixing is necessary and people can be happy their contributions are going towards a significant improvement.

[JPL]

MySQL is a bastard for running a high-trafffic web-site with. It mainly falls down when you are running big cross-table searches at the same time as you are doing frequent updates. The big queries lock the DB and then everything falls over from that point on.

If you are on a tight budget on a big MySQL DB the best solution is to slice old data out of the tables. Some of that crap from a couple of years ago that nobody reads (grin). This will make the 'killer' queries a lot faster.

If you have more budget - upgrade the memory & the HDD - the most & the best of both that you can afford. This can blow through some (if not most of) of the memory swop-out issues that MySQL seems to be prone to.

(I'm sure Aaron knows all this already...)

JP

[jedinvest]

Sure. I am good for $20-$40, considering how I am wasting my life waiting for the PeakOil site to refresh -- never mind waiting for peak oil to strike.

How about we print up some T-SHIRTS that say Peak Oil and distribute them as complementary gifts for $40 plus shipping. But we need a killer graphic. Any suggestions??

[mmasters]

How about we print up some T-SHIRTS that say Peak Oil and distribute them as complementary gifts for $40 plus shipping. But we need a killer graphic. Any suggestions??

Here's some good ideas:
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic31146.html

[PeakOiler]

It's a funding issue primarily.

And we hate begging for money...

But yeah, we could all benefit from another upgrade. (There have been several)

I see no problem with having a "donate to peakoil.com" link on the main page. You already know that there are several willing members that will donate for the service this website provides.

[DantesPeak]

I'd be glad to contribute.

I find that sometimes that my posts won't take (I just get server not found message), which is very frustrating when it happens on a busy day.

[davep]

The donation link is there, so it's time to put your money where your mouth is...

[BrownDog]

My experience isn't with web forum software specifically, but it occurs to me that moving older posts to an alternate (archive) instance would be useful. Archive searches would still be slower, but current activity would be faster. Of course, this involves an archive process, which increased the administrative tasks. And yes, money, too.

It's not a surprise that successive upgrades only help in the near term. The data will grow to match the capacity. Or something like that...

[grink1tt3n]

The slowness/complexity is the reason I built http://bravo9.com/peakoil/

1. Where was I?: I got tired of figuring out which page I was on, b9/po shows the last
20 or some posts, which is all you usually need anyway.
(Load the topic, jump to the bottom, automatically most recent post)

2. Page complexity: I like to read the forums on-the-go, for a mobile device phbb is way to complex. Too much cruft on the side of the screen.

3. The forums are slooooow: For browsing (read-only) there's no reason the server should have to regenerate the page every time, for every person; that's silly. b9/po makes a cached copy and serves that out.

Aaron, I've mentioned this before, but if you want help setting something like this up on peakoil.com proper, let me know.

[Aaron]

The slowness/complexity is the reason I built http://bravo9.com/peakoil/

1. Where was I?: I got tired of figuring out which page I was on, b9/po shows the last
20 or some posts, which is all you usually need anyway.
(Load the topic, jump to the bottom, automatically most recent post)

2. Page complexity: I like to read the forums on-the-go, for a mobile device phbb is way to complex. Too much cruft on the side of the screen.

3. The forums are slooooow: For browsing (read-only) there's no reason the server should have to regenerate the page every time, for every person; that's silly. b9/po makes a cached copy and serves that out.

Aaron, I've mentioned this before, but if you want help setting something like this up on peakoil.com proper, let me know.

Indeed... let's get on PeakSpeak soon and discuss... I'll PM you in a few.

[admin]

Thanks to everyone who donated - you know who you are.
It costed us plenty of blood and oil but the site should be much faster now.

[Last_Laff]

Within two to three years, the servers becomes Jeavons Paradox'ed.

[mos6507]

It does feel faster, so far. Posting was always the slowest. Now it's quite zippy. Hopefully it will stay that way even under load.

[waegari]

News story posting is a breeze now. Thanks!