Are the delay-pages necessary?

phaxx

Just a little thing, more of a curiosity than an annoyance, but do we really need the little delay-page that you see after posting/etc to bring us to another page? I don't know how vB works, but I assume you can just use the Location: header to do the same thing.

How much freedom to you have to play with the code?

DeVore

We have some control over the code but right now we are still getting our heads around the site ourselves.
I dunno if there is a point to them but I doubt the coders would have put them in if there wasnt so we'll proceed with caution....

DeV.

mewso

Not being privy to the coders design I can only guess. I imagine it's a toss up between watching your posting for a little bit longer or that nice bull about taking you to your new page etc.
I suspect that the boards are not database driven but that the page is rewritten to add your posting to it or created etc. Database might be quicker but updating the actual html page is probably sounder and then again I could be wrong in which case I 've just written total bollix as usual.

phaxx

UBB runs from flat files, and has to update the HTML, so that's why the delay is there. vB is driven by a database, as far as I'm aware, (No other way there could be so many features in it if it was using flat files!) so there shouldn't be any need for the delay.

yellum

Well a good idea for a delay like that is to put up a warning to people about posting libelous (sp ? ) comments and that their details will be handed over if a sue-athon begins.

DeVore

Boards is now database backed. (and you think a lot of changes went into the *front end* !!)

I must admit I dont see any reason for the delay pages either...

I'm curious too so I'll look into it, but right now there are a lot of things to get straightened out and done too, so its a lower priority then those.

Still, Phaxx, its a good point and *when* we forget will you bring it back up? Ta.

DeV

amp

Oh right. Explains why when I search my previous posts they nearly all come up and I can marvel at my genius in seconds rather than minutes. I wuv vB.

phaxx

It's probably easy enough to do, call header() with "Location: $url"

I use the header+location function all the time for myself, only use a redirect like that when I want to be able to see possible error messages, and be able to click back to look at them.

Oh right it's running on IIS isn't it.. I assume the header() function is still there. No experience with IIS, thankfully

mewso

Originally posted by amp
Oh right. Explains why when I search my previous posts they nearly all come up and I can marvel at my genius in seconds rather than minutes. I wuv vB.

Yes I tend to marvel in your genius in seconds rather than minutes. Gives me time to remember the meaning of 'genius' and correct myself.

OKenora

Best i can offer is that the delay pages are still there as a convenient posting spot for ads to a largely captive audience, so the boards peeps can actually make a few quid somewhere. No sound programming reason for their existence that i know of.

Kraken

Just thought it might have something to do with the people who use netscape. it auto reloads the page containg the new data. In stead of the tedious reloading and waiting to see if you actually posted.... just an idea..

dahamsta

Just a couple of points:

o vBulletin is written in PHP, not ASP. PHP is incrementally faster than ASP, especially if it is run using the Zend Optimiser, which is freely available). In fact, if you use the commercially available Zend Cache, it can be made even faster. It's quite expensive though.

o Unlike the UBB, which generated HTML files as it went along using flatfile (delimited text) database storage, vBulletin uses MySQL as the data store and generates *all* pages on the fly, including the threads themselves. This is a mighty achievement when you consider the large queries that have to be made on each page load, i.e. posts, user details, sigs, etc. This is also one of the reasons the drop-down navigation box is down the bottom of the page (some people requested it at the top when boards.ie migrated), because it needs a separate query which slows load-time. It's an option in the Control Panel BTW, you can turn it off (I would). Jelsoft deserve a mightly slap on the back for make the application so fast when you consider this, as well of course as the developers of both PHP and MySQL.

o On the topic in hand, I haven't delved too deep into the vBulletin code, but in my own applications I use the delay pages (formally known as "interstitials") as a way of informing the user that something is happening, otherwise users tend to think the page has stalled and hit reload. In some cases the developer doesn't actually perform the action on the original click, but on the interstitial page, as the message is now in front of the user and they know what's going on. I don't know if this applies to posting, but it does when you search in vBulletin, because the searching process is quite resource-intensive. That's why you see a "search id" when you hit submit on the search form - it actually logs your query and doesn't perform the actual search until the interstitial page.

The Geek

tubedogg

Another reason for the searchid is to archive searches for one week to save wear-and-tear on the server for common searches.

Anyway, to the point of the thread, the page is necessary. Basically look at it this way: when you post, the page is (esentially) reloaded and an action is performed (insert the post into the database, among other things) and the page with all the posts is loaded.

Simplified version:
newreply.php?action=newreply (enter post, choose options) -> newreply.php?action=postreply (insert post, update post count, etc. in database) -> showthread.php?threadid=XX (show the thread with the posts)
So as you see the middle page is necessary, as something is actually happening there.

dahamsta

Sorry to be argumentative tubedogg, but as someone already mentioned in this thread, that could be negated with a simple Location: header. Ultimately, the interstitials are there to inform the user. They could be dispensed with, but the application is probably better off with them included.

adam