Anyone else thinking 'bout giving up using Boards?

Stark

PullMyFinger! wrote:

All the Mods replies in this thread have been mostly "wacky" and "funny" yet if it was a normal user posting off topic they'd have been warned to stop.

The signal to noise ratio is always low on Feedback. Threads in Feedback get locked regardless of whether it was users or mods who made all the noise.

So where were we? Oh yes, send in the owls.

Endymion

I haven't been warned to stop.

PullMyFinger!

Sparky-s wrote:

6 front end HTML webservers may be a hint.

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1058222&postcount=1

They have an average of 6,000 users at one time remember.

Hi Sparky, love your posts so dont take this the wrong way when I say I cant make head nor tail of that link.

Why dont Boards just get some of them HTML servers then? If its Ireland's biggest chat forum it should just go for it as stop going for it half hearted.

Im looking at this from a business perspective - Boards are gaining "customers" but I dont think they're sticking around for too long when they see the speed of the product. Plus Ive noticed some regular names have just stopped posting altogether or not as much.

Cloud once said he once thought Boards would be big enough one day that members would give their Boards name and a code instead of their bank details when it came to setting up direct debit (or something along those lines). Given the current performance of the site and the lack of functionality I sincerely hope he was taking the piss



PS: Id search for the said thread quoting Cloud above but well .......

Sparky

No bother. Boards may be massive in its userbase but in terms of many of online users its fairly small in relation to digitalspy.

I cannot remember how many web servers and database servers boards has. They in no way have the power digitalspy has, but someday boards may.

I wouldn't generalise many of the users as customers, as boards is not charging for a service and issuing a receipt, unless of course you take it upon yourself to subscribe, you could then be classed as a customer.

I don't call users on my forums customers as I am providing a free service in the same way boards is, but non the less I see your point.

Boards only brought in the banners and added subs to help pay for the costs from what was mentioned quite a while ago.

If boards main aim was as a business they would decide to charge for every advert on adverts.ie, but as Dan said to me at the last beers, how do I do that?
That's another matter altogether though.

Edit: I updated my post to an easier post.

ALanJay wrote:

Our setup is as follows:

A pair of Coyote Point Equalizers - to load balance across the hardware

8 HTML servers (a selection of dual Xeon and dual Opteron servers a mix of 4Gb and 8Gb RAM)
2 HTTP Graphics servers for site / forum images (ditto)
4 dual core dual processor Opteron machines for the mySQL Continuent m/cluster solution with 12Gb RAM and SCSI 320 15k RPM hard disk.

All connected together via a number of gigabit switches.

Busiest DAY last month on the forums was 1.5 million page views (for the day) which was about half our traffic for the day. Last month was around 55 million page views for the entire site. This month has been running over 1 million page views per day for the forms (again about half our total site traffic).

PullMyFinger!

Thanks for editing that Sparky

Originally Posted by ALanJay
Our setup is as follows:

A pair of Coyote Point Equalizers - to load balance across the hardware

8 HTML servers (a selection of dual Xeon and dual Opteron servers a mix of 4Gb and 8Gb RAM)
2 HTTP Graphics servers for site / forum images (ditto)
4 dual core dual processor Opteron machines for the mySQL Continuent m/cluster solution with 12Gb RAM and SCSI 320 15k RPM hard disk.

All connected together via a number of gigabit switches.

Busiest DAY last month on the forums was 1.5 million page views (for the day) which was about half our traffic for the day. Last month was around 55 million page views for the entire site. This month has been running over 1 million page views per day for the forms (again about half our total site

So Digitalspy is using the same software as Boards but more servers? Im curious also: how much would Digitalspy's specs above cost to setup?

Time Magazine

As far as I know, and I don't, the rule of thumb is about €3,000 per server.

Endymion

PullMyFinger! wrote:

Thanks for editing that Sparky



So Digitalspy is using the same software as Boards but more servers? Im curious also: how much would Digitalspy's specs above cost to setup?

Thousands upon thouands of euro. The type of money that would take years for boards to raise in it's current structure. More importantly you might ask how many man hours it would take to set up.

Crash

I think personally that boards should be run off a thousand 68k machines connected via parallel linkup with VBB rewritten to run off 64k of ram.

It'd be sexy. and a nice PhD for me to do

DublinWriter

Anyways, back to the pissing contest!

pH wrote:

http://mysqld.active-venture.com/ORDER_BY_optimisation.html

From that very page, about halfway down....

In the cases where MySQL have to sort the result, it uses the following algorithm:
Read all rows according to key or by table scanning. Rows that don't match the WHERE clause are skipped...

So, no index = table scan.

QED.

All the best of luck with your prospective future career in IT pH. I think you'll need it.

ecksor

PullMyFinger! wrote:

All the Mods replies in this thread have been mostly "wacky" and "funny" yet if it was a normal user posting off topic they'd have been warned to stop.

Example?

ecksor

DublinWriter wrote:

So, no index = table scan.

My reading of his post is that he's not talking about the case where there's no index, he's talking about the case where there's an ascending index.

_blank_

Sparky-s wrote:

unless of course you take it upon yourself to subscribe, you could then be classed as a customer.

I subscribe, and I don't consider myself a customer, rather a contributor to the running costs of the site. If my €50 every year can help in any way, then I'm happy.

Plus I get to have my username in italics, nice stars, my own tagline and if I wanted a bigger avatar. Some of these things I avail of, some of them I don't. I don't think any of these things impact on the speed issue, if they did I'd gladly give them up.

BuffyBot

Im looking at this from a business perspective

Perhaps that's the problem..

PullMyFinger!

ecksor wrote:

Example?

All of Amp's posts in this thread.

Stark

I think he means an example of where a user was scolded for going off-topic.

ecksor

Correct!

WhiteWashMan

Stark wrote:

I think he means an example of where a user was scolded for going off-topic.

get back on topic, mod!

and just to add to this conversation, i have no idea how db tables work, i dont know the difference between any db's, and i dont care less.

i do know that boards.ie runs so slow during the day time work hours, and it runs fine in the evenings and weekends.

now, that either reflects an issue based on time, or an issue based on my location, ie. browsing during the day from work and int he evenings and weekend from home.

i am not aware of too much slow down during the evening. although to be fair, i think if it takes more than a couple of seconds to load i generally close the borwser and bugger off. but off the top i dont recall much slow down at home.

but i do agree that there does seem to be an issue with it, but i do not understand why it would be a problem half the time.

Sparky

seansouth wrote:

I subscribe, and I don't consider myself a customer, rather a contributor to the running costs of the site. If my €50 every year can help in any way, then I'm happy.

Plus I get to have my username in italics, nice stars, my own tagline and if I wanted a bigger avatar. Some of these things I avail of, some of them I don't. I don't think any of these things impact on the speed issue, if they did I'd gladly give them up.

Well, you are right. I would consider myself as a contributor more than a customer.

Pighead

Sparky-s wrote:

Well, you are right. I would consider myself as a contributor more than a customer.

Contributor? Less of the false modesty Sparky-s. Everybody knows that you're more or less an Admin these days. You've made it buddy.
Oh and on topic Pighead has no intentions of hanging up his keyboard. Boards Forever.xxx

Sparky

Ha. I have no share hold in Boards, so that's a no go.
However I don't like to know something and wait for someone else to say it later on when a topic can move on, if that's what the intention of your post is.

And yes, I am an Admin. But somewhere else.

PullMyFinger!

Carnivore wrote:

Thousands upon thouands of euro. The type of money that would take years for boards to raise in it's current structure.

This is a catch 22.

Boards needs to get faster or all the new members will think "phuck this" and head off elsewhere. Yet its the emergance of new members this year thats slowing Boards to a crawl somedays. Maybe stop taking on new members for the time been? There's no point if they're just going to make things worse.

Re: the thousands upon thousands of euro - 10k spent now would recoup ten times that in the long term for Admin.

ecksor

Re: the thousands upon thousands of euro - 10k spent now would recoup ten times that in the long term with Admin.

You obviously understand this business better than I do

amp

Ecks baby, need a sub to get another Learjet. I couldn't fit enough hookers in the last one and you know how DeV get's through them. I'll pay you back once I sell off the excess coke.

Also, I have 10 years experience in computers which allows me to finally reveal, in a Hercule Poirot fashion that the culprit behind this scurilous boards.ie slow down is in fact........

[AD BREAK]

LET'S ALL GO TO THE LOBBY! LET'S ALL GO TO THE LOBBY! AND WORSHIP AT THE ALTER OF CONSUWHORISM!

CLIT BANG!
[/AD BREAK]

....A virus. Virii caused slowdowns on the vast majority of slowdowned computers I fixed in my 10 year career in IT. Therefore because the server is running slow ergo: the server has a virus. QED baby.

No need for thanks or payment. Instead make a donation to the SFF.

Endymion

PullMyFinger! wrote:

Re: the thousands upon thousands of euro - 10k spent now would recoup ten times that in the long term for Admin.

A part of me died a little when I read this.

1) where are the admins ment to get 10k, which btw wouldn't be enough for the hardware.

2) How are the admins ment to make 100k in the long term?

3) You've a weird sense of reality when it comes to money. The type of reality that come from never not being able to buy what you want.

4) 10k probably wouldn't even cover the cost of paying someone to build and support that system.

nesf

Carnivore wrote:

3) You've a weird sense of reality when it comes to money. The type of reality that come from never not being able to buy what you want.

I think it's because he views himself as a bit of a business guru.

Endymion

nesf wrote:

I think it's because he views himself as a bit of a business guru.

Ah I see. What we need are more hardware and software Guru's and less business guru's in this thread.

SimpleSam06

Carnivore wrote:

1) where are the admins ment to get 10k, which btw wouldn't be enough for the hardware.

You get a grant from the local council or other body (I'd advise tourist board) who will give you half price on equipment up to about 16k or so, if you have a reasonably decent business plan, and aren't afraid of a lot of waiting and calling. Then you get a loan from the bank for 16k based on the strength of said grant, and give half back straight away courtesy of the grant. An 8k loan is nothing, and 16k buys a shedload of equipment, especially if you shop around and know what you're looking for.

Carnivore wrote:

2) How are the admins ment to make 100k in the long term?

Aforementioned business plan. Either get it through advertising or form partnerships with existing websites, like for example ireland.ie. The majority reason (40% last time I checked it) people come to Ireland is to visit friends or family. Getting people in contact with actual Irish people is a Good Thing for tourism. Thats one idea; there are many.

Carnivore wrote:

3) You've a weird sense of reality when it comes to money. The type of reality that come from never not being able to buy what you want.

The only thing anyone needs to know about money is that if you want it, you need to get out there and ask for it. End of.

Carnivore wrote:

4) 10k probably wouldn't even cover the cost of paying someone to build and support that system.

You have a forum full of Linux users who would probably topple over each other to help out with setting up a system. People have loyalty to this site, they'll give of their time and experience for a nominal fee and recognition.

WhiteWashMan

hey, why not buy a crs-1 from cisco?

/shill

ecksor

Carnivore wrote:

1) where are the admins ment to get 10k, which btw wouldn't be enough for the hardware.

We can rustle up 10k and I believe it would get us a nice enough lump of make-web-go horsepower, but what I know about hardware and prices you could write on the back of a stamp with a big marker.

However, finance isn't the issue here (I could have sworn I've said this already).

2) How are the admins ment to make 100k in the long term?

It's not that far-fetched.

However, if PullMyFinger! thinks that we should have already spent it and that it would DIRECTLY lead to us making 100k more (as opposed to delaying a while, like we're doing) than we would have done otherwise then he definitely understands this whole thing better than I do. And hey, maybe he does, I'm certainly not claiming to have it all figured out.

Endymion

SimpleSam06 wrote:

You get a grant from the local council or other body (I'd advise tourist board) who will give you half price on equipment up to about 16k or so, if you have a reasonably decent business plan, and aren't afraid of a lot of waiting and calling. Then you get a loan from the bank for 16k based on the strength of said grant, and give half back straight away courtesy of the grant. An 8k loan is nothing, and 16k buys a shedload of equipment, especially if you shop around and know what you're looking for.

So Ecksor, what your the business model? A load of 8k is a loan of 8k. From what little I know thats two years "revenue" for this place, maybe three years.

Aforementioned business plan. Either get it through advertising or form partnerships with existing websites, like for example ireland.ie. The majority reason (40% last time I checked it) people come to Ireland is to visit friends or family. Getting people in contact with actual Irish people is a Good Thing for tourism. Thats one idea; there are many.

Flood the place with american tourist. And what happens to that buisness plan the first time someone is told to **** off. What about all the non-money spinning forums, are they dropped in this business model?

The only thing anyone needs to know about money is that if you want it, you need to get out there and ask for it. End of.

And they you have to give it back, with interest. You might want to look into spin solutions.

You have a forum full of Linux users who would probably topple over each other to help out with setting up a system. People have loyalty to this site, they'll give of their time and experience for a nominal fee and recognition.

I'm a computer and electronics engineer. I'd give my time and experience to this site for free if asked, regardless of recognition. However you hugely underestimate the difficulty involved in setting up a system like that from scratch. I take it you've no technical background?

1) Technical skills would have to enclude more then "I can boot Linux". Personally I've no Idea how the software for this site works bare the basics, and i've been programming for years.

2) I'd Imagine there would be few people willing to work for free or even a nominal fee, on a site that employs business plans.

3) It's not something you could do on the side. HAve you any idea how long it takes the admins to set up and test a single new server, let alone that system, they would be working for weeks.