Good morning, boys and girls!
I've recently invested in a massive upgrade to the hosting and maintenance infrastructure for the Website Management services at my web development company, Harness Media. As part of the deal, I secured some great upgrades specifically for the SurveyorConnect server.
First of all, we'll be traversing to a newer, faster server in a new datacenter later today/tonight. That is phase one of the upgrades.
Tomorrow, we'll be bolting on some extra goodies that will make the server more efficient and performant. I'm hopeful that this will translate to faster load times for you.
While I can't guarantee it will be faster for everyone (because the site is served through various places all over Earth), I'm hopeful that we'll all see at least a little bit of improvement. Making things work better starts at home with our own server, so we'll see how it goes. A community forum is a very intense type of website due to all the moving parts, so we'll likely never be a sub-one-second load time website like most of my clients' websites. But we can surely try to keep it under a few seconds, if possible.
Plus, it's not all just about being faster -- it's about keeping things updated and secure. Moving to a new server will mean that we'll have all the latest hardware, operating system, and other things that keep this place ticking. The website itself will not change as part of these upgrades.
So... if you arrive here at some point later today or tomorrow and see the maintenance splash page, you'll know why. I hope to keep the downtime(s) as brief as possible, as I don't want to cause any unnecessary discomfort. Cross your fingers!
See you on the other side! ?????ÿ
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Aaaaaaaaand we're back! It may seem a bit slow while the caches catch up with everything.
Please let me know if you notice any oddities. The forum itself should function normally otherwise.
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Loading seems to be at least as fast as before if not better.
Posting replies takes a long time, and the "working" symbol flashes so briefly you might miss it, and doesn't come back until you are about ready to give up.
This is on Win7 Firefox
I think I notice a faster refresh / load time.
I will say I follow another forum for audio and their interface is blazing fast. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php
G
About an hour ago, we installed the bolt-ons I mentioned earlier. I've been tinkering with them and adjusting settings. Now I'm going to let things settle a bit longer (i.e. chill and have some coffee) and then run some tests. It does seem a bit snappier now, at least in my first visit since the installs. 🙂
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Chk....
commencing to break and discover.....
When opening the site with Google Chrome, it takes about 16 seconds for the home page of the website to load. It's been this way for a few weeks now.
Just updated my Chrome and getting the same result.
Cleared my cache...same result
Opening RECENT is very fast.
Posting this took the same 16 seconds.
T. Nelson - SAM
it takes about 16 seconds for the home page of the website to load.
I get about the same for the home page, but the Recent page -- which is the one I use regularly -- is only taking about 3 seconds to load.
Edit: The time for this post to upload and display was long, probably about the same as the home page.
Liking a post (@jim-frame above) took about 10 seconds
Marking all read is almost instant
Previewing a post is instant-ish
I'm not complaining, just trying to give @Wendell all the info.
T. Nelson - SAM
Also, I just noticed that when I'm replying to a post, the orange spinning wheel disappears 2-3 seconds BEFORE the post actually "hits" the page. Not sure what that means, just an observation.
T. Nelson - SAM
The good news is that it works, regardless of whether it is fast or slow.
Ok, so I think the problem is that the RAM disk is running out of space, which then puts all the pressure back on the drive. We are using a super-fast SSD drive, but a RAM disk is still going to be way faster. That would explain why simple page loads are pretty quick, but running tasks (such as submitting posts) are much slower.
So, I'll be tinkering off and on today with the RAM disk size and see if I can find a good compromise without stealing too much RAM from the system.
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My last reply to a post just vanished into the ether???
Apologies everyone for the ridiculous amount of time it takes to post or reply in the forums. After spending some time trying to make this server behave, I think I'm going to have to change providers. But that might take me a couple/three days to get it all sorted out.
The other enhancements that were made are not able to truly shine because of this server. Hence my desire to give that up and move again.
Stay tuned! Things will get better. 🙂
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So... moved to a new server over the weekend. Again. MUCH better this time. But still have work to do to re-install the extra goodies that should help with performance and posting times.
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Thanks, Wendell.
The wait times reminds me of the joy of working with a new instrument man who'd fidget with all the nobs and focus ring before finally letting me know where to move the stake! 🙂
Just wanted to apologize yet again for the slowness of the server. Moving to a new server was a good choice, but now we are having trouble with the licensing of the "world-class" caching system and the developers are working on fixing that. This is why the server is still so slow, because NOTHING is currently being cached; literally everything is being reloaded every time you view a page. :-/
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Fun fact: Despite being the slowest it's ever been, this website is currently so busy the last couple of months that it looks like we'll break the 100K unique visitors (in a 30 day period) mark later this month. Go figure.
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This is why the server is still so slow, because NOTHING is currently being cached; literally everything is being reloaded every time you view a page. :-/
Now that seems like something the developers might have wanted to have lined up. LOL.
Still worth the wait times to read the content though! And it sure beats the heck out of the old 14.4 modems.
14.4 modems.
I started out on a 2400 bps modem. I recall other people earlier using 300 bps phone couplers.