Edit Bug, and what we are doing about it, Please Read

[Spark]

Hey all!

We are aware of the edit bug that is going on with our software. For those of you who have not experienced this yet, on occasion when you edit your message, you will "time out" and get a Server Error.

Here is what's causing the problem: We're too darn big.
Here's a more detailed explanation: In order to be able to search the message archive, BladeForums.com maintains an "index" file which basically is a big file containing the searchable material from every post that's been made here. Currently, that file is over 15mb in size.

Now, when you make a new post, it's no big deal, because the index file is simply appended. But when you edit a post, that's when the issues come into play. Because the server has to go in and compare every post to the others to make the changes (essentially rebuilding the index), this takes a while. And when you have a site the size of ours, it takes quite a while to do. So long, in fact, that the server can think that the subroutine is stuck in a loop, which causes the subroutine to be killed.

So, what do you do for now? Well, if the server looks like it's dragging, then hit stop, and go back to the forums, and see if your message updated (by hitting reload).

What are we doing to fix this problem? We'll, first, our hosting company is in the final stages of building a new, faster UNIX server for us to go on. It should be ready by the end of this week, or beginning of next week.

Second, we're buying our own server, and it's going to kick ass. 400mhz Pentium II's. 512Mb Ram. Twin 9.1 Gig (or maybe 13.4 gig) storage hard disks for data, and another HD to hold the system info (for faster processing). Red Hat Linux with Apache SSL. Time line on this is 1-2 months.

What will this mean for you? Less outages, and faster response times. It'll also mean that we can offer you webhosting for less than anyone else out there (with the exception of Geocities

). For the businesses, we'll be offering E-Commerce capabilities as well.

MORE POWER. And as usual, it's all for you guys. Profits from the 1999 BladeForums.com knives are going to pay for a large portion of this, other ventures are going to pay for other parts of it. You'll be seeing a lot of other service's with it as well, so hold tight.

Thanks for your support.

Spark

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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com

Insert witty quip here

 

[mcfg]

Right, that edit bug has bit me before, life went on. Happy to hear about the new server, the hardware sounds strong. Will buy from the future Bladeforum store to help pay those bills.
Moving foward is excellent!


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Mark C.

"Life is nothin' but a series of fascinations"

 

[Jim March]

Yo Spark, while you're looking at improvements, check out the "hacked custom smileys" thread and see if you can figure out how Glockforums gets over 15 integrated smileys?

Grin!

JM

 

[Bob Irons]

You're going in the right direction. Right now nobody beats Apache and linux on a fast Pentium machine for a practical small business web server. This will handle a user community in the low hundreds pretty well, with multiple Pentium CPUs
helping up the response and number of supported users a bit.

The Unix server is almost a requirement when your user community gets well up into the hundreds or thousands. So far even the fastest 4 CPU Pentium servers haven't been able to approach the performance of a well setup Unix server. The only down side I know about the Unix servers, is the expertise required is a bit higher and a bit more expensive to set them up right and maintain them. Since it comes from a service provider, all the customers get to eat a little of the expense.

I'll do what I can to support you through my purchases from the BladeForums store and the special knife projects. Unfortunately, college expenses for my kids will limit my purchases a bit.

Hope all goes well with the new Pentium II server. Should be a good performer. All the vendors just announced their new Pentium III machines just this last weekend. That's the down side of the PC world. No matter how great your new machine is, right after you buy it and sometimes before it's even delivered, it's been superceeded by something better.

Thanks for your efforts in maintaining and improving a great forum.

 

[Blades]

I'm just a simple cave man, your magic words I do not understand, but if they will fix "the box that brings words of knives" then I'll trust your magic.

Blades

 

[Bob Irons]

Blades,

I think we all agree the REAL magic is in the steel.