Reading mode: Light Dark

Higher Perf Forums - Beta Test

  • Thread starter Thread starter Phil Askey
  • Start date Start date
Go to last post
P

Phil Askey

Guest
Hi guys,

After a few sluggish days last week I started work on a higher performance forums application. It looks and feels EXACTLY the same as the current pages but works in a very different way. Our current forums are crippled by the fact that every message read (read.asp) accesses the database (500,000 times a day), this puts load on our database and web servers. The new system is simple enough, make read.asp cacheable (ie. if you've read the message before your browser won't ask for it again) but make the thread list dynamic (as that can change by the minute). This new system should be (a) faster for you as a user of the forums, (b) put less stress on our servers and (c) help to reduce our huge bandwidth usage.

If you feel like you'd like to help beta test the new pages they can be found here:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/

Remember, it (should) look and feel almost identical to the existing system but reading messages (especially multiple messages in the same thread) SHOULD feel faster.

Caveats:

The new pages will work ONLY with Javascript enabled browsers (IE4+, NS4+, Opera 5+) - this is non-negotiable.

There may be a few 'gotchas', make notes in this thread if you have found a serious issue.
 
I am not sure if its because our American friends are still sleeping but I didn't notice any speed difference between the two servers. Actually both are working fine for me.
rgds,
Phil Askey said:
Hi guys,

After a few sluggish days last week I started work on a higher
performance forums application. It looks and feels EXACTLY the
same as the current pages but works in a very different way. Our
current forums are crippled by the fact that every message read
(read.asp) accesses the database (500,000 times a day), this puts
load on our database and web servers. The new system is simple
enough, make read.asp cacheable (ie. if you've read the message
before your browser won't ask for it again) but make the thread
list dynamic (as that can change by the minute). This new system
should be (a) faster for you as a user of the forums, (b) put less
stress on our servers and (c) help to reduce our huge bandwidth
usage.

If you feel like you'd like to help beta test the new pages they
can be found here:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/

Remember, it (should) look and feel almost identical to the
existing system but reading messages (especially multiple messages
in the same thread) SHOULD feel faster.

Caveats:

The new pages will work ONLY with Javascript enabled browsers
(IE4+, NS4+, Opera 5+) - this is non-negotiable.

There may be a few 'gotchas', make notes in this thread if you have
found a serious issue.
Click to expand...
 
The differences at the client end are very slight (and browser dependent), however the difference it will make to our servers and thus response at busy times is the important thing.
sollentuna58 said:
Phil Askey said:
Hi guys,

After a few sluggish days last week I started work on a higher
performance forums application. It looks and feels EXACTLY the
same as the current pages but works in a very different way. Our
current forums are crippled by the fact that every message read
(read.asp) accesses the database (500,000 times a day), this puts
load on our database and web servers. The new system is simple
enough, make read.asp cacheable (ie. if you've read the message
before your browser won't ask for it again) but make the thread
list dynamic (as that can change by the minute). This new system
should be (a) faster for you as a user of the forums, (b) put less
stress on our servers and (c) help to reduce our huge bandwidth
usage.

If you feel like you'd like to help beta test the new pages they
can be found here:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/

Remember, it (should) look and feel almost identical to the
existing system but reading messages (especially multiple messages
in the same thread) SHOULD feel faster.

Caveats:

The new pages will work ONLY with Javascript enabled browsers
(IE4+, NS4+, Opera 5+) - this is non-negotiable.

There may be a few 'gotchas', make notes in this thread if you have
found a serious issue.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Whenever I click on a posters profile, I get the errormessage below.

But: I have no problems seeing http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/postersprofile.asp?poster=hhimiiidhw
That's not consistent.

tc

-----------------------------------------------
Forbidden

This page is protected by proprietary privacy software (to protect users email addresses).
Your web browser did not pass the correct credentials to our server
You may receive this message if you are blocking certain HTTP headers
 
As a web developer, I won't use it on general principle. There are ways to do things without resorting to generating all your HTML client-side.
Phil Askey said:
Hi guys,

After a few sluggish days last week I started work on a higher
performance forums application. It looks and feels EXACTLY the
same as the current pages but works in a very different way. Our
current forums are crippled by the fact that every message read
(read.asp) accesses the database (500,000 times a day), this puts
load on our database and web servers. The new system is simple
enough, make read.asp cacheable (ie. if you've read the message
before your browser won't ask for it again) but make the thread
list dynamic (as that can change by the minute). This new system
should be (a) faster for you as a user of the forums, (b) put less
stress on our servers and (c) help to reduce our huge bandwidth
usage.

If you feel like you'd like to help beta test the new pages they
can be found here:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/

Remember, it (should) look and feel almost identical to the
existing system but reading messages (especially multiple messages
in the same thread) SHOULD feel faster.

Caveats:

The new pages will work ONLY with Javascript enabled browsers
(IE4+, NS4+, Opera 5+) - this is non-negotiable.

There may be a few 'gotchas', make notes in this thread if you have
found a serious issue.
Click to expand...
 
...new postings anymore even after pressing the 'reload' button.

I have to clear the browsers cache to see the new postings (or switch back to the 'old' forums.
tc
 
Erm, you've been using it without knowing... "all your HTML".. nope, just the thread list and it's been like that since day one.

It's up to you but this new 'read.asp' will replace the old one in the main system sometime this week.
Andy said:
Phil Askey said:
Hi guys,

After a few sluggish days last week I started work on a higher
performance forums application. It looks and feels EXACTLY the
same as the current pages but works in a very different way. Our
current forums are crippled by the fact that every message read
(read.asp) accesses the database (500,000 times a day), this puts
load on our database and web servers. The new system is simple
enough, make read.asp cacheable (ie. if you've read the message
before your browser won't ask for it again) but make the thread
list dynamic (as that can change by the minute). This new system
should be (a) faster for you as a user of the forums, (b) put less
stress on our servers and (c) help to reduce our huge bandwidth
usage.

If you feel like you'd like to help beta test the new pages they
can be found here:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/

Remember, it (should) look and feel almost identical to the
existing system but reading messages (especially multiple messages
in the same thread) SHOULD feel faster.

Caveats:

The new pages will work ONLY with Javascript enabled browsers
(IE4+, NS4+, Opera 5+) - this is non-negotiable.

There may be a few 'gotchas', make notes in this thread if you have
found a serious issue.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Duh.. Ahem, well that's a pain in the ass then. I'm sending a 4 hour expiry on the read page and a 1 minute expiry on the thread list. This means that the thread list you see below the message should always be up to date (this works perfectly in NS4, NS6, IE4, IE5, IE6)....

I'll investigate...
crowning said:
Sorry, forgot to include the info :/
tc
Click to expand...
 
There is absolutely NOTHING I can do to convince Opera to re-load the thread list (it appears to completely ignore all server cache / expiry headers)... This means I'm going to have to develop separate read pages specifically for Opera which can't be cached.. Sigh.
Phil Askey said:
I'll investigate...
crowning said:
Sorry, forgot to include the info :/
tc
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
UPDATE: Doesn't work properly with Opera.
Phil Askey said:
Caveats:

The new pages will work ONLY with Javascript enabled browsers
(IE4+, NS4+, Opera 5+) - this is non-negotiable.

There may be a few 'gotchas', make notes in this thread if you have
found a serious issue.
Click to expand...
 
Phil, I hate to point out the obvious, but the forum software you use is killing your server. Every message I read means that I have to click and access the database. A system like UBBS allows me to download a whole page of the thread with one access I can read for minutes without any activity at all. This type of software makes it easier for me too because I can scan every response to a subject and skip the trolls. I understand it isn't a threading reader, but hey, its a price I would pay to be able to read whole threads with one click.

The threading message system is the worst thing about DPREVIEW. (You are the best thing about DPReview.)
Phil Askey said:
Hi guys,

After a few sluggish days last week I started work on a higher
performance forums application. It looks and feels EXACTLY the
same as the current pages but works in a very different way. Our
current forums are crippled by the fact that every message read
(read.asp) accesses the database (500,000 times a day), this puts
load on our database and web servers. The new system is simple
enough, make read.asp cacheable (ie. if you've read the message
before your browser won't ask for it again) but make the thread
list dynamic (as that can change by the minute). This new system
should be (a) faster for you as a user of the forums, (b) put less
stress on our servers and (c) help to reduce our huge bandwidth
usage.

If you feel like you'd like to help beta test the new pages they
can be found here:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/

Remember, it (should) look and feel almost identical to the
existing system but reading messages (especially multiple messages
in the same thread) SHOULD feel faster.

Caveats:

The new pages will work ONLY with Javascript enabled browsers
(IE4+, NS4+, Opera 5+) - this is non-negotiable.

There may be a few 'gotchas', make notes in this thread if you have
found a serious issue.
Click to expand...
 
Works fine here with Mozilla 0.9.5.

BTW, I agree with Serra, I also would like to see a whole page of a thread, or at least have the option to.
Serra said:
Phil, I hate to point out the obvious, but the forum software you
use is killing your server. Every message I read means that I have
to click and access the database. A system like UBBS allows me to
download a whole page of the thread with one access I can read for
minutes without any activity at all. This type of software makes
it easier for me too because I can scan every response to a subject
and skip the trolls. I understand it isn't a threading reader, but
hey, its a price I would pay to be able to read whole threads with
one click.

The threading message system is the worst thing about DPREVIEW.
(You are the best thing about DPReview.)
Click to expand...
 
Sorry, but that isn't going to change. Our system supports multiple sub-threading, something UBB can't do, this means that many of our threads grow into very specific and individual discussions 'beneath' the original posting. Clicking to read a message and getting a 200 - 300 KB page of messages back isn't (a) clever, (b) useful or (c) a good way to reduce bandwidth usage.

These forums are the most popular and heavily used of any site I know, the reason is BECAUSE of the way they operate. I'm not going to break that, the majority of users prefer this format.
Serra said:
The threading message system is the worst thing about DPREVIEW.
(You are the best thing about DPReview.)
Phil Askey said:
Hi guys,

After a few sluggish days last week I started work on a higher
performance forums application. It looks and feels EXACTLY the
same as the current pages but works in a very different way. Our
current forums are crippled by the fact that every message read
(read.asp) accesses the database (500,000 times a day), this puts
load on our database and web servers. The new system is simple
enough, make read.asp cacheable (ie. if you've read the message
before your browser won't ask for it again) but make the thread
list dynamic (as that can change by the minute). This new system
should be (a) faster for you as a user of the forums, (b) put less
stress on our servers and (c) help to reduce our huge bandwidth
usage.

If you feel like you'd like to help beta test the new pages they
can be found here:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/

Remember, it (should) look and feel almost identical to the
existing system but reading messages (especially multiple messages
in the same thread) SHOULD feel faster.

Caveats:

The new pages will work ONLY with Javascript enabled browsers
(IE4+, NS4+, Opera 5+) - this is non-negotiable.

There may be a few 'gotchas', make notes in this thread if you have
found a serious issue.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Mathew Anderson
  • Sticky
DPR Update New forum system FAQ
Replies
7
Views
3K
hunkydory
H
Mathew Anderson
  • Sticky
  • Featured
Announcement Welcome to the new forum system!
2 3
Replies
55
Views
79K
Greg.
Greg.
Mathew Anderson
  • Locked
  • Sticky
Announcement For-sale Forum Rules
Replies
0
Views
835
Mathew Anderson
Mathew Anderson
Dale Baskin
  • Locked
Upcoming forum changes: investing in our community's future
32 33 34
Replies
671
Views
7K
Mathew Anderson
Mathew Anderson
Dale Baskin
  • Sticky
  • Featured
DPR Update DPReview forum update: timeline and what to expect
9 10 11
Replies
210
Views
24K
Dak on cam
Dak on cam

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top