Another Saturday, more problems...

[mdshunk]

Saturday 12-11-04 from Noon to present EST the site is real hard to navigate, and only brings up the threads on a hit and miss basis. Jacksnap's earlier observation that this seems to occur mainly around noon seems to be accurate. Don, I'd encourage you to see if you can try nosing around the site on a Saturday between noon and 1 EST to see what you can make of this. The problem is typically evident during this time.

[joed]

At the present time I am not having any problems.

[Homer]

The site was unusable from 12:00pm (noon) EST until about 12:45pm EST.

Now at 1:15pm EST it's at full speed.

Also, I've noticed that during these 'spaz attacks' the site index won't update the latest post. I've resorted to adding a 'BUMP' post and then deleting it!

Homer

[kgendrich]

It seems you have a lot of members that are "electical professionals"
But there are some of us that are not "electrical professionals", are wannabees or are simply homeowners or other contractors wanting to do our own work.

We depend on you "electrical professionals" to educate us to so we
1: Don't electrocute ourselves or burn down the house doing uneducated stuff (seen by you as being stupid)
2: Understand the concepts so we get the job done with minimal issues to haunt us later.

Just maybe, there are some of us our there that are "computer professionals" or in our terms "IT professionals" that can return the favor and help out a bit.

I happen to be one of those.... want some help?

I have noticed that your site is chock full of features, but navigation doesn't always work [frustrating to your members and guests]. This was not isolated to Sat, but seems to happen <almost> every other time i use it.

Either your site designer/web expert spent a "LOT" of time building software for this site (some of it is REALY top quality/nice), or you purchased the software somewhere (or even perhaps found it for free). In any case, web site users get frustrated when they either "can't figure out a site" OR "it just doesn't seem to work" and then "Leave becuase it's too hard to get any info". I have to admit, if the member advice wasn't so good, i would have given up.

Why does this happen?: As software designers, we sometimes get too excited building "really nice" features and we don't work hard enough on "reliability".

If you have a site administrator who is a web server expert, get him/her engaged in your problems. If he/she doesn't know how to proceed, find yourself a web server expert (not a web page designer) who can get you to the next level. I'd hate to see you lose members just because it's hard to use the site. If this is too expensive, ask your user base if they have any expertise to help. Just like the electrical contractor business, there are IT professionals with huge variation in skill, experience, and reputability.....

Hint: Computer systems are just complex wiring scenarios, most of the diagnostic processes are the same, just require a different knowledge set. So, anything an IT professional tells you should make sense. If it doesn't, ask him/her to explain it, since ALL of you experienced electrical contractors understand complex diagnostics.

If you know how systems work "behind the wall/under the hood", you can dig into what's going wrong. Most often it's just one wire that's slipped off a terminal, or an overloaded web server, but sometimes it's structural....

[Wgoodrich]

Kenny, You are right about tech help with the web site needed normally. In Homewiringandmore web sites it is a bit different than most web sites. Many web sites are built to make money as a business for that owner. Many web sites are people trying to help and are experts in a certain field such as electrical.

In this web group we have a special combination. I am co owner of this web group. My partner and I met on a different self help forum and wished for better more quality information available to help anyone and everyone throughout the world.

This web group is owned by two individuals with a desire to help and no desire to make money from that help. That is a unique combination that is seldom found. Then looking at that history of these two owners it becomes even more unique. I [Warren Goodrich] am a guru throughtout the building industry carrying 5 national certifications in three trades with soil science, environmental science, mechanical science and more all built into one person with experience approaching 40 years in all three major trades. I am the building industry technical expert. Then the second owner [Don Kerr] is a communications engineer working with large industry experience from radio, tv, and computer code writing. His expertise is about as extensive in the communications industry as my expertise in the building industry. That is a very very unique combination of partners owning this web grouping Selfhelpandmore.com .

The skills to answer the problems being normal operation problems is pretty well self sustaining between the two partners. However money is supported by our own pockets in the sense of giving to others without asking in return. That creates a limitation of money available from Don and my pockets donating to all in this web grouping reading my writings and using Dons communication designs for the web sites. We do provide an outlet where people can provide money to give back some of what they received by donating to our site as a form of support. That money is slow and limited as a resource to support our web grouping. Our desires are to make all we have available to the greatly rich as evenly as the greatly poor all needing that knowledge to understand and do the building projects they desire. We never want to say sorry you can't enter this web site grouping because you didn't pay to enter. This is contrary to the entire desires of both Don and I.

Then we have an outstanding group that have joined our grouping as those that contribute in replying using their extended knowledge on the subjects they know also donating their time as freely as Don and I. That is a great and powerful web grouping of people giving without question to others freely and gladly. This I am very proud of. If you notice often I refer to those many also in our group that donate much time in answering as replies but never name them. I am reluctant to name those donating so much of their time to help others in our web grouping because if fear I may forget one person. That I fear so much not to leave one out that I hesitate to try to name them. These people are obvious in our forum by seeing their name so much. We truly respect and appreciate their help. Without them we would not enjoy such a diverse variation of opinions in helping others. That differing advice is what helps those seeking knowledge most.

The problem we have is providing most we can with money we are donated and the limited amounts given out of our personal pockets. What we need is a dedictated server just for our web grouping due to the number of people at one time entering selfhelpandmore.com at peak times. We just can't afford that dedicated server to do as we need.

Growning problems ya know

Thanks for you offer. If Don can think of something you can help by donating your skills he will contact you. I appreciate you desire to help.

Wg

[mdshunk]

Growning problems ya know

It's your site, so you can certainly do as you please. I have to admit that I don't buy the "growing problems" explanation, especially since I've been the only soul on the site many times and have had trouble navigating. At other times, the site has been absolutely loaded and it's run fine. I did a quick web search for web site hosting companies and found many that have been tested and awarded for 99.99% uptime of their sites for the same price you all pay. I think that the growing problems lie with the host and not the site. They should be whipped. At a minimum you should get a couple of months of refunded money for all the troubles.

[Homer]

Just like clockwork, once 12:00pm (Noon) EST arrived the site became unusable again.

Now at 12:27pm it's improved but still 'crappy'.

I say tell the host to fix their problem or switch to another host.

Enough of being polite with them, it's time to demand the services that have been paid for.

Homer

[Wgoodrich]

You know Homer just hit a questionable fact that confuses me about the problem being on our site or our hosting.

Homer surprised me saying he has had trouble at this given time. While it is true it took me some extra time due to long replies I have recently typed at this same time frame he mentions having trouble, I was not having trouble with the site the same time frame.

Wonder what that does to our thoughts centering down on the real problem of hangs in the site.

While I too have been experiencing no advancing or no ability to travel within the forum web site from time to time and seem to have the same time frames as others are speaking, I did not have trouble at the time frame Homer is speaking of in his previous post.

Do you think the problem could be on the world wide web instead of the hosting we are blaming now? I am curious now. Thought for sure it is the hosting but then I did fine at same time frame Homer reported problems,

There is a ping program that you can trace all the servers you are going through to get to our site. Maybe it would be worth while to ping the routes we are having to go through on the world wide web to get to the forum. Seems to me if Homer had trouble at the same time frame I was doing fine it leads me to question the linkage how I went on the web to get to the forum versus the different locations Homer had to link to in order to get to the forum at the same time frame.

Just a surprise timing of Homer having trouble and I wasn't. Sunday 11:30 Am to 12:00 am is when I am picking up Homer experienced locking up not able to navigate forum. That time frame I did fine. Any other reports concerning that time frame from you other guys?

Homer I am connecting to the web by a DSL satellite connection and weather was clear at that time frame for me. Are you by modem, DSL or other web connection? Curious your net speed and type web connection. May make a difference if we add type web connection we are using and our location per State to our reports of forum locking on us. That may help center on the problem. What type web connection were you using and connection speed at the time frame of your report?

Curious

Wg

[Homer]

Just a surprise timing of Homer having trouble and I wasn't. Sunday 11:30 Am to 12:00 am is when I am picking up Homer experienced locking up not able to navigate forum. That time frame I did fine. Any other reports concerning that time frame from you other guys?

Curious

Wg11:30am to Noon EST was fine for me too. It was Noon to 12:30pm that was the problem.

Homer

[mdshunk]

I had the same problem as Homer. It was substantially druing the period of time that you spent typing your first reply today, and got better right after that. I spent time trying to navigate from about 11:45 to 12:00 while you were typing your first reply, and couldn't. Shortly after 12 it got a little better (but still bad) and by 12:15 it was still a little cranky buy okay.

[Wgoodrich]

Oops time frame depends on location also. Homer right now in my location it is 12:45 Pm. I have been on the forum since about 10:30 Am with no troubles. You just posted so I am taking you to be same time frame as me. Is that right?

Wg

[Wgoodrich]

Mdshunk, I just reposted and found you jumped in also right ahead of me. Looks like you to are having problems same time frame but I still have not experienced any right now. I also have been noticing many times we are posting right on top of each other on same forum subject like we are doing right now. At the same time I am noticing the posting showing 2 pages but only one page actually there when clicking on the second page first page reloads. Wonder if this could be a problem also.

Many things to look at and as long as we keep hitting on the symptoms we should be able to center on the diagnosis. Keep up the posting replies for a bit reporting what we are experincing right now. I am doing fine navigating still but music seems to be locking now and then but mostly smooth music.

Curious

Wg

[Wgoodrich]

I just experienced advancing problems at 1:05 on this forum subject. Posting again to see if my last two replies show up after MDshunk posted.

Wg

[Homer]

The host for selfhelpforums.com is Webair and is located in the New York City area. I have high speed cable modem access and NYC is only one 'hop' away from my provider's router.

I have no connection issues whatsoever with any other site that I visit throughout the world and my throughput is well above that promised by my provider.

At the moment as I type (1:12pm EST) the site is as fast as ever.

Homer

[Homer]

Very strange indeed WG.

I posted at 1:12pm EST and all was very fast. Now at 1:19pm EST it's hit and miss again. It takes two or three attempts to 'find the server'.

And, yes, I'm in the Eastern Time Zone.

Homer

[Homer]

...I am doing fine navigating still but music seems to be locking now and then but mostly smooth music.That music is a whole other issue. If you have several windows open, VBulletin isn't smart enough to only play it in one. You get a chorus of out of phase music (noise).

Homer

[Wgoodrich]

Sorry Colts came on for football and the fireplace was yelling where is the chili pot. Had to answer by priority ya know. Colts, then chili then forum as usual. Ha. Now 2:45 all is working fine. Only experienced one glitch as reported about an hour ago just as the second page of this post was created by my reply. Two of my replies did not appear then until about 5 minutes later when I posted a reply to advance. Then second page appeared with all three of my replies all at same time second page appeared. Other than that is working fine all day.

Now 1:48PM

Wg

[dkerr]

1. The music can easily be removed with only a minute or two of work on my part, just thought it would nice during xmas. The embed sound command is at the head of template script, therefore it will run whenever the the template is loaded which is part of every page display on the forum.

2. kgendrich - we are always looking for new ideas, if you have any specific ideas or susgestions, I will consider them. However hiring expetise in web page design or search engine friendly design is out of the question. We operate on a non-profit basis with the help of free will donations from our users, with the owners taking up the shortfall in funds.

3. Demand load, is not solely depended on actual load from users to our site, but to the virtual servers that we are on as a whole, both on the file server and database server. As far as hosting companies claiming to have 99.9% uptime, most hosting companies try to claim that, and not all can always hold it in reality. We had problems in relation to compatability issues on previous hosts in regards to our forum software, both with phpbb and vbulletin. The compatibility issues have disappeared when we moved to webair.
Reliability isssues include...

a) overall load on the virual file server we are on (not just our site)
b) overall load on the virtual database server we are on (not just our database)
c) virtual servers cpu / memory , etc. resources & crashes
d) datalink from the virtual servers to their main hubs that connect to the main high sopeed optical datalines servers the hosting company.
e) dns server loads (from varuious locations around the planet)

4. Sites such as ebay are making millions, they can afford to be on top of the line high output multiple dedicated servers, nothing but he very best of everything on their servers, no second fiddle for them, and even with all that top of the line servers, they occassional have gone down, rarely mind but it can happen, but nevertheless they are certainly have reliability that we can't match.

5. There is some reasonable down hicups that we will ultimately have to live with, the price that webair charges is very reasonable, and in my opinion we are doing wonders with what we have.

6. I would be very cautious about moving to another hosting company, you really don't know how well it will work until you have completely changed over and have been with them for awhile.

Webairs cheapest dedicated server is $ 199 a month ($ 99 setup fee), (a pentirm 4 - 2gig processor), up to their top decicated server with dual 2.6 gig procesors - 4 gig of ram, etc - $ 1499 a month (all US funds)., even the cheapest dedicated server is far exceeds what Warren and I can pull out of our own pockets each month.

I will bring up my concerns to the host, but there is not total consistency here, some are ok while others are not during the same time period.

Don

[Homer]

...I will bring up my concerns to the host, but there is not total consistency here, some are ok while others are not during the same time period.I would disagree with that assessment. If you read the replies in this thread you will see that WG was talking about a different time frame than MD and myself.

Also, I am not trying to criticize the administration of the site. I just feel that since the site ran flawlessly for so long we should be able to at least get it back to that point. I think that's why the long time members here are getting a little bit frustrated.

It seems that these troubles are related to only the forum portion of the site. Did these problems coincide with either an upgrade of the VBulletin software or with a changing of the hosting company or both?

Homer

[dkerr]

The only place that we ran vbulletin ran on was with the current host, the previous host was not running vbulletin, in fact that was part of the reason that we changed hosts, was because vbulletin was not compatable with their configuration. Even our previous forum software phpbb was having problems with some changes that the former host had made.

I will submit a trouble ticket to the host and see what they reply with.

Don

[dkerr]

Support ticket to host submitted as follows...

-----------------------
Date Opened: Sunday December 12th 2004 09:17:54 PM
Date of Last Action: Sunday December 12th 2004 09:17:54 PM

Ticket Status: Pending
Subject:
slow downs & accessability problems
Message:

Server: (none) (48274)
Category: Server Problem

www.selfhelpforums.com

At certain times of the day the forums run on this site seem to be severely slugest and unusable. It can be anywhere from 11am (EST) up to 6pm (EST), often the most troublesome peak can happen from 11:30am to 2 pm, but can occur anywhere from the 11 to 6pm range. It appears to be a database accessibility problem. Html file servers seem to be ok, and the problem area seems to be with the database servers. This in the past has performed well, but in very recent weeks it seems to be plagued with troublesome periods.

Can anything be done to improve this ?

Thank You
Don Kerr

[dkerr]

Reply from webair support

########## Begin Message ##########
Hello,

What is your database hostname, db name, username, and password. I will copy your database to another server to see if this will help the performance.
Thanks.

Have a nice day,

[kgendrich]

wgoodrich

It is an amazing feat really to create such a valuable service for "free" to the industry. This is truly a tribute to your comittment to your industry. And you are correct, it is a unique combination to have the industry expert and a technical expert on such a team, not to mention the vision and service to the community.


dkerr

I attempted to read the threads on poor service, but was only able to see the last post at the time. So, I didn't see any of your conversations. Since receiving these responses, I can see from the content that you are an accomplished web master and are web technology saavy.

2 suggestions to consider:
--- Have you contacted your web engine provider and asked them if other customers are having similar problems after upgrading? They may have some clues for you.

--- Do you have an SLA (Service Level Agreement) with webair? If so, it should spell out the performance you can hold them to. You are correct about the fact that most hosting sites profess high availability and performance, but the facts are that if they don't have performance in reserve, all their customers will suffer at high load periods. In fact, they can even limit your bandwidth and priority. They should have statistics on the load your site generates (Web and DB Server), and the % loading of all process on those servers at that time. You should be able to ask them for these time specific statistics to prove that your issues are or are not host related. They may be reluctant to give them to you, especially if they are at fault, but just the fact that you know these statistics exist may prompt them to be a bit more forthcoming. Once you are sure it's a hosting issue, complain, complain, complain: Web services companies are reactionary by nature and will respond to the most persistent input.

Sorry for the earlier assumptions, I was unaware the site had it's own technical resource. I'm sure it's frustrating to you as well that the site has functional problems with basic navigation.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
members:

I have 20 years building high performance networks and real time software systems. I say this only to validate this next set of statements:

Be patient with dkerr, diagnosing a "flaky" web engine or host is very challenging and time consuming, becuase there are lot's of issues "under the hood" to dig through. However, keep letting him know when the site has problems. Every clue will contribute to his ability to track down and solve the problem.

I agree that the host is your most likely culprit. However, since you just upgraded your web "engine", that is now also a target. Having said that, I support the decision to upgrade. Software companies support their latest upgrade, and customers should only stay on old software if it is solving all their problems with no issues. Otherwise, you would be running on unsupported software which will never improve.

Here are some facts:

1. These guys(dkerr and wgoodrich) have built a very advanced site to aid the industry. It's possible that it's features contribute to it's instablity, but it's also VERY likely that the hosting providor is having problems.
2. They run it on a minimal budget, which makes it even harder,because you can't assign resources to manage it, or "throw" equipment at it so solve issues.
3. The performance of the site is 150% dependent on the equipment, web engine and hosting site provider.
4. This can be minimized by paying the hosting providor to put your solution on dedicated servers. However, It's VERY costly to get dedicated equipment from a hosted site provider (The quoted 199/month is very reasonable from a hosted site provider, but is VERY expensive for a "donations" site to commit to). It's also VERY hard work (labor) to move everything to another site, so that should be the last resort.
5. You have on your team a very technical web master, most sites do not (My last post was targeted with the assumption that you did not have such a resource).
6. Since you share the eqiupment with other webair customers, you can be the only user and still have performance problems, particularily if the hosting company has for some reason lowered your priority, or is having problems accross the entire server "farm" that you're site is assigned to. This is a very common model for free sites, but has it's assocated problems.

Finally, send $$$, if you want the site to improve, they need $$ to invest in analysis tools and maybe occasional paid help.

[kgendrich]

Darn,

This morning (sometime between 10:30 and 11:30 am CST) I wrote a really nice reply that said some great things about wgoodrich and dkerr. But, sadly they did not actually get posted.

Summary:
Don: Since the site wasn't nav correctly when I posted my first set of "suggestions", I had never seen your posts. From reading several, I know am glad to hear that the site has a resident web saavy expert.

I do have a couple "suggestions" to "consider"
1. Have you tried to post a question to the vbulletin.org support site asking if there are similar issues with the upgrade for any other customers?

2. Most of the problems I have are navigational related. Sometimes it takes 3 or more times to get to the desired link, but only in forums (and not today). This seems suspiciously like the DB server is busy. I would have expected a timeout error, but perhaps vbulletin traps those.

3. Do you have an SLA (Service Level Agreement) with webair that spells out service expectations? Whether you do or not, you might want to ask them to provide statistics on db and web server performance around the time in question. They may refuse, but the model of most service companies is resolve the complaints. So complain, complain complain, just be professional at all times or human nature can kick in and backfire.. It doesn't seem to be a webair bandwidth issue, or other links would have problems too.

Members:
We are very lucky to have a tech saavy web master, most web sites don't have this skillset. Please be patient, you have just upgraded to a new site engine. Upgrading is a necessary process to keep the site healthy, but often there are problems in the transtion. Let's not beat up the web master....

Having said that, I'm sure Don needs as much input as possible regarding problems. Each "accurate" report is a clue to solving the problems....

mgoodrich:
Great vision, and a great service you provide for your industry. Thanks for your committment to this community.