Index Page Changes

[Joel]

Good morning,

As you may be aware, for a long time TowersTimes has been experiencing problems with page load times and general speed. This problem has been worsening over time, to the point that the server statistics were becoming a major concern for myself as the server was at the point of failure, including several downtime spurts recently for the forum, which is unacceptable.

This has led to many efforts by myself and others to track down the source of the problem that was crippling the server.

In short, after many logs collected and analysed by myself, I discovered that the last post information and topic preview on the forum index was the source of the slowness that was crippling the whole server. After experimenting by disabling the data temporarily, it was confirmed that unfortunately this was the source of the slowness.

We therefore have taken the unfortunate decision to remove this post information from the board index page. We understand that this will be frustrating for some people who have become accustomed to using and seeing it, however the stress the server was being under, to the point of almost complete server failure, is unacceptable, and thus we could only take this action to remedy the situation.

Unfortunately this feature is not included by default in phpBB, and thus we used a "mod" (or modification) to display the information on the index page. This mod, which has now been highlighted as unsuitable for larger forums, was carrying out massive queries on the post database that led to the slow down of the server.

For those technically minded, we have around 500,000 posts in the database. This modification was causing these records to be searched for each forum (so that's 500,000 records being searched for each forum on display, around 14 times) then again multiplied by each person trying to load the index page. This, as hopefully you can imagine, was causing great loads of work for the server, having to try and trawl millions of rows of data in seconds.

The problem also wasn't so bad initially as obviously the more posts we have, the more work it creates. So as we keep explanding and posting, the problem kept growing too.

We are, however, committed to trying to do the best we can for our community. We have begun looking at other forum software vendors aside from phpBB, particularly those that meet our needs and the needs of our community with little or no modification from the original code (as its all these hacks and mods that cause these problems!). We have begun our research right from the word we figured out that part of phpBB was the problem, and we should hopefully finish our research soon and will share the results shortly.

For now however we have taken the remedial action of removing the information from the index page, and I hope that you can all agree and see that the forum is indeed much faster to load now that information has been removed.

As always I and the team appreciate your feedback, and thank you for your patience once again.

[Ritadz]

As I said in the shoutbox, I actually prefer it without said mod, it adds a wierd bit of mystery when your looking at the forum. I think that anyone who honestly prefers seeing what the latest post is to a forum that won't crash every so often is just being too picky.

[Islander]

I think everyone's being too quick to jump down the throats of those who say they'll miss the mod tbh.

Very few people are saying that they'd prefer the forum to run at the crawling speed that it has been running at and have the mod enabled, than disabling the mod and speeding things up. It's a absolutely, 100% clear choice - in this case, speed must win, and the team have, without a doubt, made the correct decision.

However, that doesn't mean that the mod won't be missed greatly. I personally think it reduces the usability of the forum by quite a whack to have it removed - instead of seeing at a glance which threads that I'm interested in have been updated, I now need to go through the threads one by one. Not just that, but I personally find it much easier to look at something that was updated at 16:48 and know that I haven't seen it, than look at something that was updated 31 minutes ago and deduce the same (though tbh that's almost certainly down to habit, and I'm sure I'll adapt fast enough).

The point is, even missing the mod greatly, I still realise that it had to be removed for the sake of the forum, and I'm sure others think that as well, so it's a bit of a shame that some are really pushing the "you should be grateful" vibe strongly. I certainly am, still miss it though, which is why I'm also grateful that the team are looking into alternative software.

Meh, just my 2p. Rant over.

Thanks for fixing it Joel

[.Will]

I realised today that I never used it; I always look in each of the forums so I was going to pull my face but I can't if anything it just looks a bit naked and I think that has taken people by surprise.

I am happy to see TTF change as long as everything else stays the same, the last thing any of us would want is for old post to have to be deleted as that defeats the point of discussion because I know I still read posts from 2005/2006 and use them for reference.

As the forum grows and grows it will become more of a strain, now I am not saying that growth is bad at all but if the forum becomes too big for everything to handle what happens then? Removing this 'mod' and replacing seems to be a 'quick fix' what is the long term plan to enable everything to cope.

I am not trying to be harsh here or funny I just wanted to raise what is in my opinion an important point which no doubt the team have got a clear plan for.

[Bote]

[quote="".Will""]As the forum grows and grows it will become more of a strain, now I am not saying that growth is bad at all but if the forum becomes too big for everything to handle what happens then? Removing this 'mod' and replacing seems to be a 'quick fix' what is the long term plan to enable everything to cope.
[/quote]

As Joel has said above the Team are currently looking into more long term solutions which will hopefully keep TT and TTF stable in the future. New things are always coming along, so something should emerge sooner or later, and we will no doubt look into it when it does

Hopefully though this solution should keep us running a bit better for a while though. The smoother the forums run the better

[Craig]

As a sidenote, as well as going into the individual forums to see what's been updated, there's also the active topics link in the top right hand corner of the forum index page which will allow you to view what topics have been updated in what forum. Sure it's not the same as seeing it on the index page, but personally I have always found it a far more handy page than looking down the list of forums.

[Dormiens-Dave]

I think its also important to say that based on Joels manic happiness on Thursday this doesnt seem to be a short term fix. The mod was really causing massive problems that have been dramatically reduced since they went. I am someone who used the feature a lot and do miss it but i imagine its just a matter of getting used to change. Despite me liking the feature i completely supported the change as the effects are very dramatic. However dont feel bad for missing the feature and we dont mind hearing these oppinions as it helps us with future plans ect

I just wanted really to reiterate this isnt a short fix but a major removal of delayes on the server.... (if i understood what joel was telling me

[Big Dave]

I really like phpBB as a social online forum software and hope that TTF stays with phpBB, but alas, if the team feel a move to another online forum software vendor, then of course there must be a strong reason and I will support the team.

[Jordan]

It's disappointing that such a useful feature has had to be removed. It makes the homepage look rather barren. It's a shame that this couldn't be cached in the forum table in the database for easy access, however crude of a solution that is.

Owing to your claims that the removal of this is makes the forum so much faster, I've written a quick Greasemonkey script which works in Chrome and Firefox to pull this information back in. It's not ideal performance-wise, but it makes the forum experience infinitely better for power users.

You can check it out here: http://cl.ly/331t1X0502021x060k0r (updated!). Code is public domain, bits borrowed from a few different places as a quick fix. I threw this together in about half an hour so it might not be 100% working, but let me know if there's any issues and I'll take a look.

[Hark]

Script seems to work for me on Chrome, does 'fill out' the page a wee bit more. Thnx Jordan!

[Mi-Nigle]

[quote=""Craig""]there's also the active topics link in the top right hand corner of the forum index page which will allow you to view what topics have been updated in what forum.[/quote]

Ha never knew that existed! Much better thanks.

[Mike]

[quote=""Jordan""]It's disappointing that such a useful feature has had to be removed. It makes the homepage look rather barren. It's a shame that this couldn't be cached in the forum table in the database for easy access, however crude of a solution that is.

Owing to your claims that the removal of this is makes the forum so much faster, I've written a quick Greasemonkey script which works in Chrome and Firefox to pull this information back in. It's not ideal performance-wise, but it makes the forum experience infinitely better for power users.

You can check it out here: http://cl.ly/331t1X0502021x060k0r (updated!). Code is public domain, bits borrowed from a few different places as a quick fix. I threw this together in about half an hour so it might not be 100% working, but let me know if there's any issues and I'll take a look.

[/quote]

Just to make people aware, if you're logged in and run Jordan's script, the first post in each forum is marked as read by the server

[DiogoJ42]

I tend to use the "new posts" link most of the time, so as long as that stays I'll live!

[Islander]

I didn't really realise that existed either - not as good as the mod, but definitely useful.

Would it be difficult to make the link more prominent? It's fairly well hidden at the moment...

[Crofty]

considered this a basic feature of the forum so I'm surprised it has caused so much trouble with the loading speeds but if it speeds up page loading times then fair enough. One thing that does frustrate me though is the use of '@' everywhere. I think it looks messy can it not be changed to 'at' instead?

[McFlurry]

I actually think the index page now looks much better. Looks a bit sleeker and with less information helps make it feel less cluttered which is a good thing considering the number of forums.

In my past experience phpBB mods tend to cause more problems than they are worth, so 1 less mod can only be a good thing!

[Dormiens-Dave]

[quote=""Crofty""]considered this a basic feature of the forum so I'm surprised it has caused so much trouble with the loading speeds but if it speeds up page loading times then fair enough.[/quote]

I think the issue is it isnt a basic feature... The effect is basic but because phpbb doesn't support it its been a big problem. The slowness of the forum is obviously an issue but also the large amounts of server downtime where getting intolerable

[mrbrightside]

I think the real reason the forum looks bare is because it doesn't display how many topics or posts there are for each forum (let alone which thread was last posted in). I never realised all of that was part of a mod, as I thought that information was standard phpBB display - though I know that the topic preview was a mod.

Anyway, as long as it helps the servers, it's good.

[djtruefitt]

I never really looked at the front page to see what posts there were, I always use the new posts button and go throught new threads and posts there.

One thing that I have noticed that has changed is on peoples profiles, where it has the date they joined, it now just has the date but with no year. Was this also part of the problem with the mod or is it something else that has just changed recently that I havnt noticed?

[Sam]

I do appreciate that this was an unavoidable decision and was done for the right reasons.

But I must say, it does lessen TTF's usability for me dramatically, and in recent days has become a large obstacle to using the site in the way I like. I can never remember if the latest post in a forum is one I've already read before or not. Since when at the computer I check TTF about three times an hour, this can be a major problem.

Please find a way to restore this functionality as soon as possible!