[robliano]

Is everyone getting database errors and other funky stuff happening on the forum?

[valdet]

Hi Rob,

Can you please forward which database error are you receiving.

I am aware of the very wide pages, and I am working to solve this issue, although its not completely in my hands, as it is a software issue and we are awaiting for their support to resolve this issue.

Edit: The pages should load fine now. They are not extremely wide as they were few minutes ago.

Many thanks for your time,

Regards,
Val.

[patch36]

I got the wide pages on Firefox but not IE. It is working fine for me now in Firefox.

For the last week I would get database errors after posting, ect. , but that seems to have quit.

[djs]

Actually, the page transitions that have been turned back on seem to be causing a lot of problems. Pages are very slow to load or not loading at all.

I'd prefer to not have the transitions, they cause lots of problems. Faster loading is more important than some dissolve type of thingy....

Dan

[valdet]

Originally Posted by djs

Actually, the page transitions that have been turned back on seem to be causing a lot of problems. Pages are very slow to load or not loading at all.

I'd prefer to not have the transitions, they cause lots of problems. Faster loading is more important than some dissolve type of thingy....

Dan

Page transitions only work when you browse the site through IE. I would recommend you to switch to Firefox or Opera. It will definitely make a change.

And yes, I have disabled the page enter-exit transition parameters.

Have fun.
Val.

[al3]

Originally Posted by valdet

Page transitions only work when you browse the site through IE. I would recommend you to switch to Firefox or Opera. It will definitely make a change.

And yes, I have disabled the page enter-exit transition parameters.

Val.

I find there to be quite a bit of latency all day today on Firefox 3.x. I might suggest that whatever you did, you undo if possible to see if page loading speed returns to what it was previously... which was quite good.

Al

[valdet]

Originally Posted by al3

I find there to be quite a bit of latency all day today on Firefox 3.x. I might suggest that whatever you did, you undo if possible to see if page loading speed returns to what it was previously... which was quite good.

Al

Hi Al,

Thanks for your input. To be honest I have such issues with many sites I open with FF 3.0.

Nevertheless I also noticed slower pageload after I got back from my vacation. Honestly I have no idea what was going on during that time, as when I got back I read few emails about forum problems but the forum was opening just fine, except being slower. Mind you we haven't done anything over the last 2 weeks, in order to undo.
I only upgraded the vBSEO version last night, and this is not related to pageload.


I believe the increasing traffic and the userbase are causing the server to use more processing power, and since we're still on shared server we cannot tweak server settings as we would love to. One thing is that the server is running on PHP safe mode, which prevents some code included enhancements to be run.

One day when we move to a VPS or dedicated, these problems would probably be a part of history books.

Best regards,
Val.

[al3]

[quote=valdet;83140]

Hi Al,

Thanks for your input. To be honest I have such issues with many sites I open with FF 3.0.

I've not done my own benchmarks but everyone else who has is saying that FF 3.0 is much faster than anything else out there.

I only upgraded the vBSEO version last night, and this is not related to pageload.

Wait a minute? You installed a new version of vBSEO and you don't think that is something to consider? Who knows what the developers did to the codebase? Do you read the release notes before the install? I've noticed both latency and downtime this evening. For a while around 10 PM PDT there was no load of the forum at all.

My guess is that there is some bug in the code or some new feature that is causing the delay.

What was the reason for the upgrade? Security? If not, why bother?

I believe the increasing traffic and the userbase are causing the server to use more processing power, and since we're still on shared server we cannot tweak server settings as we would love to.

This is very possible, but the ISP can give you server stats. Where is the board being hosted? How many sites are on that server? (One heavily used porn site can cause latency for all other domains!) What kind of server is the forum running on? What operating system?

One thing is that the server is running on PHP safe mode, which prevents some code included enhancements to be run.

PHP safe mode should not have any adverse effect on page load. Safe-mode will degrade writing files to the disk and then reading them, or executing external programs. The forum is not writing files but just entries into the MySQL database.... which of course is another point of latency.

Does the system use an abstracting layer such as ADODB? That can slow things down a bit, but not much.

One day when we move to a VPS or dedicated, these problems would probably be a part of history books.

This system should work fine on a shared server, so long as the load is balanced and you are not using a shared database server. That's were your problems might be. How many accounts are sharing the database server? That's the question I would ask. All it takes is for one account to start writing some huge blob binary files and everyone else using the server is going to be impacted.

Al

[valdet]

Yes I upgraded to a new version of vBSEO. This is not vBulletin which is the core forum software. vBSEO is as you may know only a URL rewriting product for vBulletin which makes your links more SE friendly and brings more incoming traffic.

We upgraded the software because among other ways, it helps us keep on top of search engine listings for many industry specific keywords, and also some "long tail keywords" too. One would be surprised what kind of "long tail" keywords people use and they find our forum on top of Google and other SE's.


The release notes were about few new features, code improvements and bugfixes.

I am aware of the forum being down few times tonight. I was tracking the issue with the support team of vBSEO and they managed to find the glitch.

The forum is running on a Linux machine, and I don't know if there is a different MySQL server or the database is hosted on the same machine.

[al3]

[quote]

Originally Posted by valdet

The release notes were about few new features, code improvements and bugfixes.

I don't know much about vBSEO and how it integrates with the forum modules of vBulletin. The only content manager I'm familiar with is the ancient phpNuke (is that still made?) However, if vBSEO is called to do what it does and it can't get the info it needs over the net, I can see where latency might occur. Is there a easy way to retreat back to the previous version and see if there is a difference?

I am aware of the forum being down few times tonight. I was tracking the issue with the support team of vBSEO and they managed to find the glitch.

I think that helps confirm that this new module is having some impact on the forum, but it seems to be sporadic. That's the hardest type of problem to chase down.

The forum is running on a Linux machine, and I don't know if there is a different MySQL server or the database is hosted on the same machine.

I would kind of doubt that they would put a MySQL server on each physical machine. If I ran an server farm, I wouldn't do that. I'm sure they have several dedicated boxen to the database servers, especially if they have a mixed environment of Windows and Linux servers since some folks will want to use SQLServer or maybe Oracle. (I use MySql) and never had a problem with it. The price is right!!)

Which flavor of Linux is the forum's server running? Perhaps the host has done an upgrade and caused the glitch? Some flavors run better as webhosts to Apache and PHP than others. If I had a server farm and decided to run Linux I'd run the Slackware distro or the Debian distro as my Linux of choice... and of course I'd run it headless (no graphical interface... just command line... some of you folks remember pre-windows days of MS-DOS or CPM.)

My own server I runs on FreeBSD which I find to be the most stable operating system on the planet (although Solaris has an equal reputation but I've never used it.) You should only hope the heart-lung machine they might use on you runs on FreeBSD. Lord help you if it runs Vista! If it does, get that final needs policy now!

Al

[djs]

[quote=al3;83141]

Originally Posted by valdet

Wait a minute? You installed a new version of vBSEO and you don't think that is something to consider? Who knows what the developers did to the codebase? Do you read the release notes before the install? I've noticed both latency and downtime this evening. For a while around 10 PM PDT there was no load of the forum at all.
PHP safe mode should not have any adverse effect on page load. Safe-mode will degrade writing files to the disk and then reading them, or executing external programs. The forum is not writing files but just entries into the MySQL database.... which of course is another point of latency.

Al

Actually, if you look at vbulletin, it is extremely easy on a mysql database. This forum would not have any problem unless something else is going on with the database server in a huge way. It also always surprises me how many hosts no virtually nothing about mysql and don't tweak it correctly for the type of use it gets.

vBulletin makes heavy use of caching database files. You can turn this off in admin, and if you do, you'll see sever slow down. You can also make certain updates happen faster (more often) which will make vBulletin a resource hog itself.

Some of the addins on this site are a bit of a resource hog (vbSEO being one of them), but still it should run just fine.

I run a vbulletin site that is in rough terms the same size as this one, on a shared server. The only time we have performance problems is when someone else on the server becomes a bit of a resource hog, something bound to happen from time to time.

All that said, there was definitely a code break over the last few days. Blank pages, database errrors, etc.


Dan

[Winter]

Man, this site and posts are still just loading clinically slow for me. Why should I have to concern myself with FireFox? I am loading and connecting fine to the hundred other sites on the net that I go to.

Winter