SITE UPDATE - Comments, Bugs, Problems

[CaleyD]

Put in a call to a friend who is a bit more savvy on running servers than I and he gave me a couple of recommendations.

I've introduced one as a short term fix until our hosts get back to us with a proper answer.  This may have caused you all to get booted out and had to log back in, I apologise but it it was a case of short term pain for long term gain (must remember than line I like it lots).

Fingers crossed the 500 Internal Server Errors will now have stopped.

[RiG]

Is there a possibilty that we could get something set up where you can quote multiple posts like you an do on P & B?

[CaleyD]

Is there a possibilty that we could get something set up where you can quote multiple posts like you an do on P & B?

I'm aware that their seems to be a particular problem this morning and have reported it to our hosting company marked "Urgent".

I know they were doing work on other systems (webmail) last night but this shouldn't have had any impact on the site.

I am definatly finding some slow down on this site in the recent days, quite a lot really.  Also, I am continually getting a "500 Server Error"

cant say I have had any problems with posting SP. anyone else ?

You already can....when you are on the post/reply screen, scroll down and you'll get a list of previous posts with a "Insert quote" link in the top right corner of each.

[RiG]

Seems like you can only go so far back though?

[CaleyD]

Serves you right for being so feckin slow to reply then!!!  :015:

Yeah, it does only go back so far.  Not sure if their is an add-on for this forum software to give anything better but will add it to Scotty's list.  :001:

[Scotty]

how far back would you like it to go ? we can set it to whatever number we want - I set it reasonably low to keep the speed up when replying to a thread.

[RiG]

how far back would you like it to go ? we can set it to whatever number we want - I set it reasonably low to keep the speed up when replying to a thread.

To be honest I would like to see it go as far back as possible - how much of an effect on the speed of the site would that have? Certainly at this time when we are getting a lot more posts there is more to discuss, more to quote etc. but obviously at other times it can be a bit quieter and you wouldn't need it to go back as far.

[CaleyD]

Catch 22 - we really don't want to be doing anything that is going to increase an already bulging server when the site is as busy as it is now, and it is not required so much when the site is quieter.

[The Mantis]

Had one or two 500 errors myself this week.

Have to say the functionality on this site is sooooperb though, keep discovering new functions (including the one just above!). Haven't heard Feyenoord crowing about TJE site for a while either, seems pretty basic compared to this.

[Scotty]

think I mentioned it elsewhere but the solution to the speed issue (while also keeping all features) is probably for us to go from shared hosting to either private servers or dedicated servers ..... but for that we need sponsorship as it is pretty pricey so if anyone knows someone willing to sponsor a portion of the site let us know !!!!

[RiG]

Loads of errors tonight.

[SMEE]

Site has been iffy at points throuought the day.

[CaleyD]

We're still experiencing high visitor levels (as has been the case all week).  It also appears that everyone arrived home from the match and decided to log on at the same time putting a sudden load on the server.

Short of disabling half the site it's out of our hands and we'll just have to grin and bare it until things settle down again.

If visitor levels remain high as we move further into the season then Scotty and I shall have to try and step up the hunt for a site sponsor and/or advertisers to fund upgraded hardware.

[ICTBTTH]

keep getting hit with a 500 internal server problem as well as a 404 at the same time

[Guest donmac298]

We are back to Brainfarts and slow site again - most annoying.

[Scotty]

We are back to Brainfarts and slow site again - most annoying.

no disrespect intended, but we are well aware of this and if you knew how much we were doing in the background to try and resolve it you would probably be amazed !

bottom line we have two, possibly three, options

1. Upgrade our hosting to a dedicated server. this costs about 1000 a year (US dollars/pounds depending on who we selected). We cant afford this unless we get a sponsor for the site/forums.

2. Disable many of the features that users like and go 'Lite'. Although this would probably reduce the brainfarts and increase speed slightly it wont resolve it completely as the site has to talk to the database regardless of what features are installed and this is one of the bottlenecks.

3. De-integrate the site ! We spent months trying to integrate things like forum, site, chatroom, gallery etc so one login would get you into them all but the code that does this is quite intensive. It is possible that we might improve things if we separated these from each other and chose to establish separate sub-sites for each part of the complete site eg. forum.caleythistleonline.com for the message boards, gallery.caleythistleonline.com for the gallery and caleythistleonline.com for the main site and so forth. I am not really in favour of this option as it means the users would have 3 or possibly 4 different places where a login is required, but as with anything else on the site we will listen to feedback from users and base our decision on this.

regardless of the option we take, it will not be instantaneous as each of them involves a fair bit of work to do.

[Scotty]

have disabled the member map, calendar and a couple of other non-essential bits - see if it speeds us up a little .........

[Guest donmac298]

Not having a go scotty - I know you're doing a lot of work to try and resolve things.

[Scotty]

We have done some stuff behind the scenes and it would be interesting to know whether people are finding it faster or not ?

[CaleyD]

New configuration should reduce the number of page not found errors etc witnessed during peak usage as well.

[beachcomber]

seems pretty slick today ritenuff

[Guest donmac298]

Definitely faster.  Thanks.

[Guest TinCanFan]

What happened to the Who's Online page?

[Scotty]

removed it to speed up the site

[CaleyD]

What happened to the Who's Online page?

As Scotty said above, it has been disabled (for now).

Without getting into the mind numbing technicalities, we've made quite a few changes to the site over the last 4 or 5 days.  Some of the "nice to haves" have had to go in order for us to make the site a little more stable and to speed it up a bit.

Most of what we have done is behind the scenes things and although you can't see them, we are (fingers crossed) seeing a little benefit from it.