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MarkG
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Grand Lord of Apolyton, Owner of all this land as far as the eye can see
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We'd like to give some answers on what has been happening the last days on the forums.
<U>1) Why did we have problems?</U>
Problems were created from the increased traffic due to the release of Civ3. From an average of 200 we went to 600
<U>2) Couldnt you be prepared for the oncoming traffic?</U>
We could not calculate neither the amount of traffic that we would get or the ability of the server to to handle. We could not also evaluate which functions of the forums were caused more server load at these levels of traffic
<U>3) What have you been doing to keep the forums up?</U>
First of all we have been monitoring the load on the server as much as possible(we do have to sleep and do some real life stuff every now and then) and try different approaches at reducing server load. Some of the measures were disabling important(or not so important) parts of the forums, such as the OT, search and avatars as well as disabling guest view to the civ3 forums. During the recent downtime we were able to make some alteration ot our code as well. We have also moved some 200k posts from the Civ3-General and the OT to archives
<U>4) Why did the downtime last so long?</u>
Initially because the sql server went on strike and demanded the presense of a Gamestats technician before restarting
<font size=1>(disclaimer: the previous phrase may include a joke. please remove any children from the computer. always read the label)</font>
We also decided to make some tests and some alterations to the code which took some time and when you add some real life elements like markg's real job and dan's very real university work load....
<U>5) What have you done to increase the capacity of the server</u>
First of all, this isnt a matter of capacity on the current machine, but of better use of it. While in contact with Jelsoft, the creators of vBulletin(the forum script that we use) we have been told that with over 700 users we are more or less reaching the limits of their system. Even so, with all the measures we have taken, last night(for MarkG, evening for Apolyton time) we were able to have 600-650 users, keep a good(=low) server load and open again the OT
<U>6) What's missing from the forums right now?</u>
The following are disabled, we will make efforts to bring them back according to our server load and the current traffic:
- Avatars
- Display of full list of currently online users
- Display of birthdays on first page
<U>7) When are these features coming back? Will the OT be closed again?</u>
All we can say is that we will act according to the situation that we are in. For example, we have enabled searches again but we might take it off later. We are also looking at the issue of avatars: we might be able to bring regular avatars back but not show custom ones, since they seem to be the trouble in this part. In the end, we believe that being able to post in a forum visited by thousands of civers per day and hundreds of them are connected at the same time with you is better than having a nice image next to your post(and wait for half an hour for someone to respond to you  ) For the currently online users we have brought back the total numbers but not the full list(you can still check if your buddies are online from the control panel). As for the birthdays bit it's probably a small thing but we're keeping it off for now. You can still see everyone's birthdays on the calendar
We would like to thank you for your patience and apologise for the inconvenience. Someone has described this as growing pains and that is exactly what it is. We hope that we'll be good enough so that the current traffic is not a temporary situation but a permanent one. Cause the more we are, the better Civ will be! 
edit: currently online numbers on main forum page enabled
Last edited by MarkG on 11-11-2001 at 00:29
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TCO
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Richmond, VA
Jan 1970
time: 00:16
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Mark, I think you could grow this thing to over a thousand on-line users if you made the effort to push growth and were ready to handle it. Realsitically, the snafus of the last week have limited Poly growth. (Whatever we're at, we could have been more.) I think it would be a uesful exercise for you and Dan and the GS boys to sit down and calculate the financials (costs and revenues) for doubling the site size and then think about how you would go about doing it. (Technical and marketing steps.)
Last edited by TCO on 10-11-2001 at 19:07
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d_dudy
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quote:
Originally posted by GP
Mark, I think you could grow this thing to over a thousand on-line users if you made the effort to push growth and were ready to handle it. Realsitically, the snafus of the last week have limited Poly growth. (Whatever we're at, we could have been more.) I think it would be a uesful exercise for you and Dan and the GS boys to sit down and calculate the financials (costs and revenues) for doubling the site size and then think about how you would go about doing it. (Technical and marketing steps.) |
maybe he likes the site the way it is?
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10-11-2001 14:08
, now that I've stopped playing computer games. So please try to keep OT open.
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