In my never-ending quest to keep this site running, I have implemented new server-side caching. Hopefully, this will help cure some of the site's woes when traffic hits its peak during game times and between 9am-11am Central time.

 

If you continue to see slowdowns, let me know in this thread. I'll get more aggressive with the settings if this isn't enough to keep the site stable during our busy hours.

 

Forum software is a &^*%. Normally, one would just cache the entire site along with its database tables but one can't do that with a forum, as the database is adding/deleting fields every few seconds.

Brock,

 

Thanks for all you do to keep this site up and functioning well. In our excitement over the content, it is easy to forget that the content doesn't matter if the site is a pain in the *** to use!

Thanks, jb. Most of the time, it's pretty fun work to maintain and build the site but every once in a while, we run into a situation like this caching issue that makes me want to put my fist through the computer monitor.

The speed has been noticeably better, at least for me.

The speed has been noticeably better, at least for me.

 

Same here, though our traffic is considerably lower today. I don't think we'll see the server stressed until tomorrow, maybe not until Monday morning.

Still wasn't happy with the speed, figured out how to up the cache limit size.

 

I'm gonna fix this, damn it.

Same here, though our traffic is considerably lower today. I don't think we'll see the server stressed until 2015, maybe not until 2016.

FTFY.

 

​sorry, couldn't resist.

I am using the mobile forums interface. Any chance this server-side caching could be throwing off how threads are marked read/unread and where the "goto=newpost" links go?

 

I noticed this morning that some threads last updated Saturday were marked as unread for me, even though I know I read them through the last post. And other threads, when I clicked on the "goto=newpost" link for them, it took me to posts I had already read last night.

 

I am accessing across multiple devices and browsers (desktop Safari/Firefox, mobile Android/Chrome) -- maybe that is the source of the trouble? At this very moment, my "read" threads on my phone and desktop do not match. I am logged in and have cleared browser cache on both, and am refreshing the main forum thread list pages.

 

Not a huge deal, but I loved how this feature worked before.

 

EDIT TO ADD: Seems to have settled down on my desktop now, although if I log in with my phone at this moment, none of my activity from the past few hours is apparent in the unread threads / new posts. So the delay could be when switching devices? I guess I was using my phone last night, and desktop this morning...

 

UPDATE: Definitely seems tied to devices. On my desktop now, it is showing as new/unread all the things I caught up on earlier using my phone (again, logged in on both).

Edited April 8, 201412 yr by spycake

That's strange. I have read/unread stored in the database. What device you're using shouldn't matter because the server is pulling info from the database according to your user id.

 

I'll look into it.

That's strange. I have read/unread stored in the database. What device you're using shouldn't matter because the server is pulling info from the database according to your user id.

 

I'll look into it.

 

The past few days, I've been in sync between my desktop and one of my mobile devices. But today I just noticed another of my mobile devices showed I wasn't logged in to TD anymore ("+" icon in top right corner)... but unread threads were still bolded, and the "goto=newpost" links were correctly picking up where I had left off on this device before (not just going to the last post of a thread, which seems to be the default behavior for logged out browsers). Perhaps read/unread can also be stored and retrieved by cookie, separate from logged in user?

 

Even now that I've logged in on this mobile device, there seems to some residual sync issue. I still have a thread marked read on my mobile device from when I was apparently not logged in, but the same thread is still marked unread on my desktop computer, even after logging out and logging back in on both devices (same account on all devices, obviously).

 

But new stuff is syncing fine again. Sorry to bother!

The past few days, I've been in sync between my desktop and one of my mobile devices. But today I just noticed another of my mobile devices showed I wasn't logged in to TD anymore ("+" icon in top right corner)... but unread threads were still bolded, and the "goto=newpost" links were correctly picking up where I had left off on this device before (not just going to the last post of a thread, which seems to be the default behavior for logged out browsers). Perhaps read/unread can also be stored and retrieved by cookie, separate from logged in user?

 

Even now that I've logged in on this mobile device, there seems to some residual sync issue. I still have a thread marked read on my mobile device from when I was apparently not logged in, but the same thread is still marked unread on my desktop computer, even after logging out and logging back in on both devices (same account on all devices, obviously).

 

But new stuff is syncing fine again. Sorry to bother!

 

Yeah, if the user is not logged in, the device will resort to using local cookies in place of the database tables.

between 9am-11am Central time.

 

 

I'm sure our bosses all love this.

Having a bunch of technical difficulties this morning, trying to find the cause right now.

Did we lose a day's worth of posts in that mishap?

Did we lose a day's worth of posts in that mishap?

 

Yep. That was realization #178 in my night of hell. I backed up everything before taking down the server but my backup errored out just moments before completion, buggering the entire database.

 

I could have salvaged some of the posts but said "To hell with it, I need to finish this before morning" and ran with what I had backed up from an earlier build.

 

So we lost a couple hundred posts.

Ugh. Glad I don't have your job, but thanks for getting us back up.

So we lost a couple hundred posts.

 

Future generations of archivists studying early twenty-first century America will curse you.

Being hit with lots of slowness ... especially annoying when trying to move and post threads.