General condition of the site...

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I'd love to have a tech discussion about WebSockets and whether they really need to be an optimization problem, but I guess that would be a different thread in a different forum. I wouldn't expect WP to use highly customized forum software, it doesn't need to, and none of the forum software I'm aware of uses sockets. I have very clear ideas on how I think "ideal" forum software would work, although they are admittedly not refined by having actually run one of these sites.

I think if Alex doesn't have time to work on the forum software, but he wants it updated, he should pass the torch on to someone else. WP must be important to him, it ought to be worth paying someone out of pocket if need be.

I missed your post completely. Although, as I mentioned, if I were adminning this site I would probably quit to maintain the sanctity of my resume.

Well, since we're on the topic of resumes - I have experience working for some of the largest tech companies in the world engineering systems that scale to support hundreds of millions of users.

What, exactly, are your credentials?

That misrepresents what I said, or perhaps I didn't explain clearly enough that WP is just a website and as such it is accessible from mobile devices.

Also, having seen what Kuribo posted - I have to agree.
There are many sites I use with an alternate mobile version available but I dislike the cut down, graphic design nightmare they present and I always use the "standard" desktop version.

I'm not questioning your skills, which I already know are significant, and I don't consider any of this your fault.

I'm not going to get in a pissing match about credentials.

Agreed a lot of sites are worse in a mobile version than just running the desktop site in the mobile browser.

Forum software on the other hand could benefit greatly from having a mobile version that reduces the need for scrolling, etc. Or having a single site that just scales really well to mobile devices.

Last edited by MyFutureSelfnMe on 05 Oct 2013, 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Overcompensating much?

Not at all - before someone wants to lecture me on why things should be done a certain way on a site like this - they should understand how things work in a site that has more than a few users. WebSockets are great - right up until you make your app servers fall over because there aren't *any* mature caching solutions, or load balancers available.

Migrating forum software is easy when you don't have to worry about making sure backlinks don't get dropped and all the content that was available yesterday is available tomorrow.

I'm not saying I think this site needs to be using WebSockets, I cited it as an example of what I think ideal forum software would do. Such forum software would presumably use web local storage to cache a great deal of information, probably significantly more than is being cached under the current solution. But that's a separate discussion and not relevant to WP.

I'm not saying revamping WP is probably easy. It's probably hard. I'm just saying I think it should be done .

90% of the requests to WP are delivered from cache. Virtually all straight GETs are handled by the cache. Searches, logins and posts are essentially the only things that even hit the app layer. And login DB queries are delivered from cache. And the site still has load issues.



And I'm telling you it is being done - the project has been going on for well over a year. And it will likely be another year before it's rolled out.

Look, the site is long overdue for a revamp and it's great that it's now being worked on, but does it really matter all that much? I don't think so. As long as the site provides a safe environment for people on the spectrum - I'm happy. If an error prevents WP from being a safe environment for Autistic people, such as the ongoing captcha issue, then it becomes a serious problem. Other small errors, while irritating, are tolerable.

Just wait for the revamped site. I'm sure it'll be worth it in the end.

In my "ideal" forum software, there would be no PHP at all, only static pages and data delivered via WebSocket. The DB backend would communicate with the browser via sockets (or simulated sockets via AJAX) through a middle man that does nothing but make DB queries and deliver the results in JSON form. That middle man might do significant caching or the DB software might be able to do significant caching on common queries. Since the middle man would not really be doing much processing, either would work.

Since almost everything that has been viewed in relatively recent history would already be cached in the browser itself, it should not be necessary for the server to deliver anything except data newer than a certain date, which would vary by user. For users that spend a lot of time on the site, server accesses be relatively minimal.

Have fun with that.

I would actually have fun with it.

Then go out and develop it and then we can talk.

So, is it that the "esthetics" of this website don't appeal to you?

This website is as close to perfect as it can be for what it does - it provides text-based forum discussions in a more-or-less freewheeling format.