Please can you get the server thing sorted out?

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The current problem (new problem today) with the site appears to be CloudFlaire related. As a moderator I have an alternate means to access WrongPlanet that does not use CloudFlaire and the graphics are all appearing correctly in Firefox. So this puts the problem squarely on CloudFlaire. For some reason CloudFlaire isn't handling the graphics correctly today on WP and they aren't showing up at all in the browser (Firefox, IE, Opera) or they appear after a second or two delay in Chrome.

Seriously? No, seriously?

This site can't have more than a thousand or two active forum users, and usually when I see the list of who's actively using any particular subforum there are just a couple, so I'd guess at peak time there have to be under 100 users at any given moment.

Open source forum software can't handle *that*?

Open source forum software can handle *that*.

Open source forum software can not however, Handle any modules. There goes your chat. There goes your news thing.

And yes - I'm using chrome.

I use firefox and only recently have had sporadic issues with seeing images, it is usually fine.



You cannot go by who is actively using subforums, that doesn't usually work right. A lot of the time it will say none. That is impossible, you are looking at it.

And what about all the people that are not members that are on wrongplanet?

Many members set their profile to last visit hidden. These individuals are not listed in the who's actively using the forum list.

Several months ago there was a counter that kept track of the numbers of individuals currently using the site at any given time, including those that are not members, and the average number of total users at any given time was anywhere from 1000 to 1500. The site is very heavily used, well beyond the posting traffic, or what is indicated in the who's using the forum lists.

I'm using Windows XP, with Internet Explorer version 8, on an 8 year old computer, and rarely have any problems. My understanding is, with this new cloudflare enhancement, if you set your browser to delete cookies, cache, etc. after closing the browser, it helps. I do have an extremely fast broadband connection, that is not available in some areas of the country. I haven't had any serious problems, more than before cloudflare came along, except for the day that the whole site went down for about 4 hours.

However, I still remember the days of modem access with 14.4K download speeds. My 12MB speed is quite an improvement over the old days, when one had to watch the pixels fill in the pictures on every web page. TV was much more popular in those days.

One thing I've noticed over time is getting used to every speed enhancement where what seemed fast eventually seems as slow as the previous speed. I really don't won't to go any faster for fear that I may no longer have patience for anything in life.

It's the same thing with TV, the images move like fireworks compared to a decade ago.

People even talk twice as fast.

I dont' won't to mininimize anyones frustration that has to wait a few seconds for a page download, but there is more to the frustration, than problems with the site.

Some become addicted to speed literally through structural and neurochemical changes in the brain that occur as an adaptation to an environment of increasing stimulus. What's even more interesting though is it is a gradual process of adaptation that most are not even aware of, until they feel the frustration, because their brain is not getting what it's adapted to.

If the power grid ever goes down for a couple of weeks, there is going to be a serious adaptation to the speed of reality, for some. That comment is not directed at anyone specifically, it's directed toward most everyone that is connected anywhere in the world, that has the luxury of speed, and stays connected the majority of their days at work and home.

Considering how old my computer is and browser is, I doubt my speed is as fast as most, however, from my experience the next move up in microsoft software hasn't always equaled an increase of speed. I like XP much better than what came after that.

I get way more internet explorer errors than WP errors. It's probably time to upgrade. But I look at it as an exercise of patience.

There's an old saying that time goes by faster as you get older. It's actually a new saying, back in the much older days before the speed of culture started moving faster, the world views were much different. Everything starts and ends in our brains.

People literally sat on couches and talked for hours with each other, with no TV set in the living room. Granted I'm not one for talking, but I had a boss I had to listen to for hours on end everyday for almost 5 years. It finally got to the point where it hurt my head to hear anyone talk.

One of the younger guys came in the office who was about 20 years younger than me; I was about 20 years younger than my boss. After about 20 minutes the young guy said OMG this is taking too long.

When I talked, I imagine it was 5 times faster than my boss, and over with in 10 seconds I wanted to finish every sentence for him, in my mind. He had incredible patience, and incredible intelligence but was from a different era.

There must be some limit in how fast the brain can go. After all its organic in nature, and limited as such. I think I might have found the limit for me, but it took quite a few decades to find it.

Fine, so it's 1500 at a time. Let's round it up to 10,000.

What's the issue?

Sure, I probably have less patience for this stuff than the older guys here. It also grates on me a little when there's a problem and it goes unresolved. It's my nature.

Since WP always misbehaves in one of two or three consistent ways, I figure there are only two or three things wrong with it.

That logic doesn't make sense. For example, my computer will not turn on. That is the only issue with it. So that means there is only one thing to fix. It could have 10,000 viruses, not be plugged in, not have the monitor plugged in, have the screen turned off, and a bunch of other things.

True. It's more likely when your computer won't turn on that it's because of one problem though.

So far, just this year - we've tracked over 10 distinct and separate issues that caused failures with this site. Just because an issue presents the same way doesn't mean it's the same issue.

Lets take the issue of "the site won't load". Based on that one symptom, these are the possible issues:

Hardware failure
Power went out
System kernel paniced
Server was shut down
HTTP service was shut down
HTTP service hung
HTTP service reached process limit
HTTP service reached connection limit
Host reached connection limit
Host ran out of memory
Service memory leaked
Host reached 100% disk utilization
Host reached 100% inode utilization
Host lost network connectivity
DB was shut down
DB hung
DB reached process limit
DB reached connection limit
DB ran out of memory
DB ran out of disk space
DB lost network connectivity
DB lost network connectivity to HTTP server
Configuration change
routing loop
switching loop

And these are just the reasons I can come up with off the top of my head.

I understand, but there are certain issues that are pervasive and have been consistent for years.

Foremost among them, the lack of response from the server when posting occasionally. It's happened the same way, about the same frequency, for years. Nobody has ever, as far as I can tell, attempted to fix the problem, or else it would have stopped happening at some point.

That's not a problem - that's a symptom of a problem. The problem is, actually, "making an addition to a post takes too long to process" which, in turn, is really "the DB takes too long to commit writes to posts". There is no way to fix that without fundamentally altering how posts are stored in the DB, and how the application interacts with the DB.

This is *exactly* the sort of thing that I was talking about when I said that there are no open-source alternatives that work for a site this busy.

One word for that, "Firefox". You certainly don't need to upgrade your computer. I have a five year old MacBook, an eight year old Dell piece of crap laptop, and a nine year old Power Mac G5. And they all have way more power then I need to read and post to web forums. Any computer made in the last ten will be more then adequate for WP. That is if the server is not down.

I find it almost unbelievable that there is no popular open source bulletin board software that can manage posts from more than a couple thousand simultaneous users. A post shouldn't be a whole lot more than a SQL INSERT. Can you enlighten me at all as to what it's trying to do that is overloading the DB? I'm honestly curious.

On the subject of supported users:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/

Beginner web developer (But has some sort of background).

This site has 1500 active members, No? Well, SQL doesn't like that, and so many simultaneous connections sends it into overload. Think of it like your mind, When too many things are trying to be "inserted" at any given time, It dies, doesn't it?

Much the same principle.

SQL_INSERT is all well and good, But if you've pressed submit, Then Johnny down the street hits submit at the same time, Then your boss hits submit... It all adds up.



And HOW many are online at any given time?

Users means server requests, whether it is from a member, guest, or bot.