What is happening to RF programming?

[Carl]

Recently I have been getting time outs while the forum program attempts to post my thread comments. Additionally some of my searches for new postings takes significantly longer to display than at other times.

If the time out occurs and I try to post comments to the thread again (so I don't lose my comments) additional characters are inserted in the text of my post.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Does anyone know what the cause is.

Just wondering if I should look at my computer or if the forum programming is the cause.

[SonSeeker]

I haven't had the specific issues as you, Carl. (Yet!)

But there have been times when I could not get the Forums page to load at all, but I assumed that Admin had taken it down for maintenance or something.

[mattfivefour]

Carl, I have experienced the very same issues as you from time to time recently. I have alerted Chris to this thread and I am sure he will look into it.

[Chris]

Our database server is running slow.

[mattfivefour]

Carl, one thing I have found works when a page freezes while loading is to click the reload button. And if the post writing/editing page loads but you cannot get a cursor, go to the button at the bottom that says "Preview Post" and click it even though you have written nothing. It will then load the editor properly.

[Carl]

Thanks Matt I will try your suggestions first opportunity.
Chris I had suspected that the server was running slow. Is RF getting to the point where it needs a larger system?

[tjplaw]

I can also be a person's computer and browser that is slow as well.

[Carl]

I can also be a person's computer and browser that is slow as well.

True that is why I ran a virus scan, an adware scan, and CCleaner. My PC was clean. And it is intermittent not all the time.

[tjplaw]

When you consider this forum has 50,809 threads and 281,353 posts, the server gets hits pretty hard.

Most forum owners have the option to prune old threads and posts, most leave these postings in case members wants to make a detailed search of old postings. Plus, if this forum is hosted on a shared server you can get timeouts and some minor connections errors when that server is busy. Also, web browsers, your computers speed, and how fast your connection is can affect whether a site loads fast or slow.

I don't know how long this forum has been online, but it maybe wise to prune old threads and postings older than 3 +years, this would speed up the MySQL
database connections, but that's up to the owner.

Also, a persons router and modem can experience DNS errors, these errors can slow the process down even more. I have a Linksys router that experiences DNS errors at times, when this happens, I just unplug the routers power supply, wait a minute or so and plug it back in, this usually fixes the problem.

I have a 25 meg connection and I still experience timeouts, usually it's the host and the internet itself, and probably not your system.

If you get repeated connection errors, do what I do above.

[Carl]

tjplaw how can you tell if your router is suffering from DNS errors. And I do understand about access time and file numbers. Wonder what the base language that the server is running under? Unix?

[tjplaw]

tjplaw how can you tell if your router is suffering from DNS errors. And I do understand about access time and file numbers. Wonder what the base language that the server is running under? Unix?

UNIX is a dinosaur now, probably Linux, although UNIX based is more stable.

You'll know something is wrong if you keep getting the same error page when visiting a certain website, page failed to load etc.
This may not be an issue with your system? but the website server, I get this error all the time when I visit the drudge report, I tend to
disregard it because of the site traffic, which is massive, usually a page refresh solves it, if not, it could be in your browser, but I again
tend to disregard this. In my experience, most DNS errors are within the router and modem and or the computer.

There is a whole slew of reasons why a website doesn't load, try doing a keyword search like: Fixing DNS problems etc.
Most modems and router have an assigned web address, and look like this, 192.168.1.1, go to your router/modem manufactures website for
additional info.

I use 4 different browsers, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera and suffer from time to time repeated page load failures, this tells me that it's not necessarily the fault of the browser, but more likely my router and modem, and how servers talk to each other.

Internet browser are basically "dumb" they are configured to fetch all internet protocols that allow web pages to load, and if the browser
fails to fetch, sometimes even one of these protocols, there will be a problem loading the content, this is why they have a reload feature.
Update your browser when it's available.

Here's what I do.

1. Unplug both the router and modem, let them sit for a least a minute. If you have a wireless router, the unit will save all your setting
unless you do a reset, same with the modem. When you plug these back in they automatically are assigned a new IP address, this usually
solves some of the problems.

2. Delete your browser history and if you want, all cookies, the bigger these files are the slower your system can become.

3. Delete the contents of your Temp Folder. This folder can be huge if not assigned a certain amount of space, I keep my low, like 20 megs.

4. If you have an old Ethernet card, it may be best to replace it, they are inexpensive, $20 or less.

5. Buy a new router, Linksys are good, but are prone to DNS errors.

And as a last resort.
6. Take your computer, find a stump, somewhere safe and use safety glasses, take a 12 gauge shotgun and shoot your computer, usually
takes one round, and buy a new system. Just kidding....

Hope this helps, avoid # 6 if you can.

[Chris]

We are on a shared hosting system and that effects performance. I don't have a budget like RR for example where I can put the site on a dedicated server. I wish I could though. The host did tell me that our database is 1GB which they said was "large" considering most databases are usually around 500MB. I probably need to prune some but haven't gotten around to it. They suggested I optimize the database so I might look into that. We'll try to get something figured out soon.

[tjplaw]

We are on a shared hosting system and that effects performance. I don't have a budget like RR for example where I can put the site on a dedicated server. I wish I could though. The host did tell me that our database is 1GB which they said was "large" considering most databases are usually around 500MB. I probably need to prune some but haven't gotten around to it. They suggested I optimize the database so I might look into that. We'll try to get something figured out soon.

1 gig of text is really large.

[Chris]

I closed the forums a little while ago and ran the forum optimization tool that is built into vBulletin. Hopefully we will see some performance improvement. But with a big database and high traffic on a shared hosting plan is going to make us a tad slow than we would like. Let's see how the optimization tool worked.