Forum site

[dkerr]

The forums are now on a dedicated IP, separate from the main self help and more site, however even though the forum site is accessed through its own ip address, we still remain on a virtual (shared) server. Having its own ip may help some in accessing more simutanious tarffic to the site. Only forum related software is on the forum site, the archives (threads prior to Nov 1, 2003) have been left as a link and remain access from the self help and more site so that only vbulletin software reside on the forum site.

I mentioned in the announcement that the domain name will be propagated properly / completely by monday. Since I updated the name servers last evening, I will be able to use the domain name by Saturday evening, and at that time the links will be changed to the domain name rather than the ip address and everyone should start using the domain name at that time instead of the ip address.

The domain name is http://www.selfhelpforums.com

Start using that as of Saturday evening. I have to change a reference in the forum setup to designate the home page for the forums, and pages may not reference the home page properly is the wrong thing is enetered here. Right now the forum home page reference is the ip address but will be changed to http://www.selfhelpforums.com by Saturday afternoon or evening and the links changed on the main page of selfhelpandmore will be changed at that time, users will also have to change to the domain name or pages may or may not reference each other in relation to the root forum home properly.

Any problems after Saturday, post them and I will address any issues with the host.

Don Kerr

[mdshunk]

Something's still hosed up with the site. I have noticed several times since you changed to the dedicated IP that new posts to a thread show up on the index page, but they never show up to be read when you click on the actual thread. Conversely, there are new posts to threads that have taken as long as 6 hours to actually make it to the index page. What gives? There is a post that just was made about 15 minutes ago that shows up on the index page, but it's no where to be found.

[dkerr]

CHANGED / SET THE FOLLOWING

Update Thread Views Immediately - CHANGED TO YES
Option to update thread views immediately, or once an hour. If you have a large forum, you will probably want to disable immediate updates, since they are quite server intensive.
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Duplicate Search Index Information on Thread Copy? - CHANGED TO YES
Setting this option to yes will cause search index information to be copied with each post in the thread. This allows the copied version of the thread to be searchable.

However, on larger boards, this may cause significant delays in copying a thread. If this is a problem for you, we recommend disabling this option.
---------------------
Update Attachment Views Immediately LEFT IT SET AT NO AS IT WAS BEFORE
Option to update attachment views immediately, or once an hour. If you have a large number of inline graphic attachments, you will probably want to disable immediate updates, since they are quite server intensive.

May also work better with the domain name than with a direct IP

DON KERR

[mdshunk]

Dandy, but look at the "electrical code-canadian" forum area. The last post(according to the index page) was at 12:48 by 'mr fixit', but when you click on the thread, the post isn't there.

[mdshunk]

Dandy, but look at the "electrical code-canadian" forum area. The last post(according to the index page) was at 12:48 by 'mr fixit', but when you click on the thread, the post isn't there. I posted a message last evening that never showed up until late this morning.

[dkerr]

RAN THE FOLLOWING MATENANCE QUERIES ON THE DATABASE

Rebuild Thread Information
Rebuild Forum Information
Fix broken user profiles
Rebuild Post Cache

I notice this did fix some wrong forums thread displays on the main forum, for example your last post wasn't being indicated until these queries were run. There are others that can be run, but see if these fix it first.

Also added forum jump.

Also subtracted one more hour from GMT to correct for the chaneg from daylight savings time so the forum defaults to EST time zone. Those that are registered and logged in can set there own time zone in their user profile.

Don Kerr

Don Kerr

[dkerr]

The think these rebuild routines, may have to be run from time to time, especially as our user numbers grow on the forums.

This is the first time I had to run these routines

The "12:48 by 'mr fixit'" is now there.

Don

[Jacksnap]

Forum is running great this afternoon. Thanks, Don! :)

Jack

[dkerr]

Tomorrow morning (Saturday Nov 6 / 04), I will be changing the links to the domain name, and will leave an announcement at that time. I would ask everyone to be using the domain name to enter the site instead of the ip address at that time, The dns seems to be stable here for the domain name, as well as at work when using the domain name.

I also can't get any web site statistics with the ip address as the host doesn't track visitors data when entering via the ip, so I can't keep track of that data until we are entering only via the domain name.

The domain name for the forums is...

http://www.selfhelpforums.com

By 9 or 9:30 EST tomorrow morning it will be changed to the domain name,will post an announcement when it is done.

Don Kerr

[mdshunk]

I am not a violent person, but I nearly smashed my mouse and keyboard. The site is as bad as ever this evening. I can't navigate for squat. I've been on the site on and off all day without trouble. Starting at about 4:15 or 4:30, the site slowed to a scheeching halt. Things are fine on other sites. I have to click on links 6 or 8 times to actually get it to "take" (times out the other tries). My posts don't update to the index page. When I included a picture with a post, it never presented the picture. I had to "edit" the message, detete the picture, and re-upload it- twice! before it would "take". I had to try for 3 or 4 minutes just to get in to type this message.

[Homer]

It's really strange. The site was almost completely unusable from 4:45pm to 5:15pm EST. Now it works perfectly just like it did before the trouble.

Homer

[Wgoodrich]

Don private mailed me asking for confirmation I also was having these problems. I didn't get to reply to him and he mailed me again telling me he found and corrected what he thinks was the problem. Lets give it a day or so and see if Don found the problem. Time will tell and we can hope.

WG

[dkerr]

There is a lot of variables that can affect the ability to access a site.

1. File server
2. Database server
3. Your internet connection
4. Your providers demand load at any given time
5. Overall internet demand load at the time.

I have noticed on occasions in the past another popular forum site to slow down at times, although recently I haven't check them.

Next you must compare oranges with oranges, when comparing accessablity with other sites on the net, compare forums with forums, and not file servers (regular web pages) against a forum page. Forum pages in most cases are intacting with a database. If the main http://www. selfhelpandmore.com is loading and responding normally, and the forums are responding poorly, most likely the file server is ok, but the database is responding poorly.

In our case the database server is a separate entity from the file server. Either the file server or the database server can cause the forums to respond poorly. I suspect the 4:45pm to 5:15pm period followed a return to normal, may have been a reboot of the database server around 5:15pm. The database server does not just have our databases but others as well, and an overdemand or someone with poor code could have slowed it down, memory leaks at the server, or it simply hung (never seen a computer yet that hasn't crashed and servers are likely no exception).

The question is at what point is the server too problematic, an occasional server crash or reboot, we live with, we are on virtual shared unix servers, dedicated servers is at the moment out of the question (because of cost)

I have given the forums back to a decicated IP address, this won't in itself fix server crashes or demand on the servers that are being used, but traffic will be routed via an IP going only to the forums, and the main site also now has an dedicated IP. Your ebay servers for example are on dedicated servers and likely several servers working together that automatically route traffic to a different server if a slowdown or problem is detected on a perticular server, that kind of system rarely goes down as traffic is routed away from the problem server or a rebooting server. We don't have that kind of setup.

Tomorrow morning I will disable the forums for about 10 to 15 minutes, make the final link changes and we will be on the domain name, and I ask everyone to use the domain name only http://www.selfhelpforums.comI have been using it for the last day, and has been working fine, I know it can take up to 72 hours for dns propagation, but it appears to be stable at the moment. I will also run some maitenance routines at that time.

What I would say is just to post any problems as you have been, just gives the times and duration (time zone you are in my also help) and see if we can develop a pattern, like same time every day, or number of times a day, durations, etc., Info I can use to address the situation and send to the host.

Don

[selfhelpadmin]

Please use the domain name now and not the ip address to enter the forum site. DNS seems to have completed and stable.

http://www.selfhelpforums.com

You may also have noticed that I have enabled an additional column on the forums main page to list any moderators of each forum.

Don