Higher Perf Forums - Beta Test

[stormin61931]

Excellent, Phil! All is working fine on IE 5.5 and IE 6.0.

-stormin

 

[MagicAngel]

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.

Yes, one might say that this format supports breaking off from the thread into "very specific and individual discussions" which take away from the value of the original thread and leads to long, useless and pointless threads, but I guess that is a point of view thing.

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.

200K? Actually UBBS pages, so you get something much smaller, perhaps 50k, so you can see what the tread is about and you don't have to click fifty times to find out the thread didn't have a single intresting thing in it, but again my point of view.

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.

Yes, your point of view.

 

[F.J.]

Mr Askey,

Am posting from the new system now, only issue so far has been that I was unable to run a 'search' from the OlySLR forums. I simply got a 'page cannot be found' from IE5.0. Took the '2' off the URL and the same search worked fine from the old system. (For 'Hemmingway', BTW) Tried it a few times and no change. Of course it could be unrelated, everthing else is great, and I have not experienced that 'lag' that occasionaly ocurred in the past.

Sincerely,

Frank

(FYI, PIII 733, MS Windows 98SE. IE 5.0, dialup, 56k @ 26.4k)

 

[F.J.]

I post (rarely) on a UBB system, and wouldn't appreciate one here. The DPR forums are more of a 'community' than UBBs ever are; I think this is due in part to the nature of the forum system, as we can take a different tack off the main thread, and discuss, i.e. how the photographic process relates to the poetry of Lawrence and a Miata. Admittedly, that was a wild example, but photography is not simple, and not all questions are answered in a linear fashion, therefore we aren't confined to a linear format.

Plus I'm on 26.4k dialup and hate waiting for a looong UBB thread list to download. Here I read what I want, from who I want, when I want, and get to avoid the trolls as I know who they are so I don't click. I love it -- Thanks, Phil,

F.J.

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.

 

[Homer40784]

at least for the client end.

You may see some stats that indicate it is better but really, the only problems I had was when the activity was very high. Doubt that it is now.

However I will say that it "feels' better and theoretically if we can reduce the calls to the DB it should remain so in periods of high activity.

Homer

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.

 

[Tom S50315]

When viewing the last message of a thread, the "Next" button is still a link and the "Next New" button is visible.

I am using Mozilla 0.9.5 browser.

 

[Tom S50315]

While in the "my Threads" page, if I click on "NEW" on one of my threads, I get:
"An Error of the type "Microsoft VBScript runtime " has occurred"

From the old forums page, this works ok.

TS

 

[Phil Askey]

Thanks, yes the first one you noted is not a 'bug' but a 'feature' (hehe), the second is a bug and I'll address that.

While in the "my Threads" page, if I click on "NEW" on one of my
threads, I get:
"An Error of the type "Microsoft VBScript runtime " has occurred"

From the old forums page, this works ok.

TS

 

[Phil Askey]

Thanks, it's not designed to be a performance test but simply compatibility at this stage. We'll only know if it's helping with performance once it's fully implemented (across the public forums)

at least for the client end.
You may see some stats that indicate it is better but really, the
only problems I had was when the activity was very high. Doubt that
it is now.
However I will say that it "feels' better and theoretically if we
can reduce the calls to the DB it should remain so in periods of
high activity.

Homer

 

[Kyriakos]

Page loading almost instant.

 

[Kyriakos]

Definetely slower than Netscape.

 

[jrad]

Yes, seems faster under IE5.5 with dial-up at 44k. Clicking on poster's "profile" under the beta yields:
"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"

whereas the profile comes up fine under the Mark I model. Not plugged in, or is this a permanent de-feature?

-jrad

 

[Phil Askey]

Fixed.

Yes, seems faster under IE5.5 with dial-up at 44k. Clicking on
poster's "profile" under the beta yields:
"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"

whereas the profile comes up fine under the Mark I model. Not
plugged in, or is this a permanent de-feature?

-jrad

 

[Magne Nilsen]

I just went from top to bottom of this thread:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&page=1&message=1753908
by cont. pressing next on the header. And then the same thread in
http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/read.asp?forum=1018&page=1&message=1753908

The new Higher Perf Forums took 8 minutes. The old one clocked in with 1 minute - ehhh - Higher Perf??
Magne
Using IE 5.0 SP2 on W2K.

Yes - I'm sure the second round was on the old forums - no caching showed up on the item - they were all new and unread...

 

[BillyBob]

Seems quite a bit faster for me using IE6.

 

[GrandMaster]

The high perf forum is a lot slower for me too.
IE 5.5 SP1 on W2K

I just went from top to bottom of this thread:
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1018&page=1&message=1753908
by cont. pressing next on the header. And then the same thread in
http://www.dpreview.com/forums2/read.asp?forum=1018&page=1&message=1753908
The new Higher Perf Forums took 8 minutes. The old one clocked in
with 1 minute - ehhh - Higher Perf??
Magne
Using IE 5.0 SP2 on W2K.
Yes - I'm sure the second round was on the old forums - no caching
showed up on the item - they were all new and unread...

 

[Ed Bennett68380]

Phil:

Pages are served noticeably faster in the new forum, using both IE 5 and Netscape 4.09 for the Mac, over a DSL connection. Profiles show up no problem, but the active "Next" link on the last message in a thread is still there (oops -- I forgot, that's a feature! )
P.S.: I just registered after lurking for months. Great site!
EdB

 

[Phil Askey]

test2

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.

 

[James Cooper]

fast as hell. way to go, phil.

James

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.

 

[Kim Shen40378]

Phil,

Yesterday Perf 1 seemed to be slower or had some lag time. Today Perf 2 seems very fast but most clickable links to outside the site( Pbase,Fototime) would not work. Using IE Version 6.0.2600.000CO and a cable modem.
THank you Kim

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.