So we are on the new server, now what?

[Dan]

Well we are on the new server, thats great, things are a little faster though we still have issues.

We have a massive amount of data on this site and we ideally need to clear some of it. I do not however want to lose any of the data we have.

So over the next couple of weeks I will be slowly getting the new forum system up and running, When this happens, i will only be moving about 500 or so of the most recent topics or maybe all the ones from this year into the new software.

This means we will be starting with a nice and relatively empty database and the entire site will have a lot less data to trawl each time it loads the forums and pages.

Don't worry all of the old data will still be available and you will be able to search through it all through the archive.

http://silvertails.net/silvertails-forums/archive.php

But in general we will have a lighter weight site.

I will then be looking for ways to do this probably yearly going forward to keep us as clean and fresh as possible.

This isn't fixed in stone yet and I will consider other ideas including just going to a standalone forum and breaking out of the rest of the site, which again will give use good results as we are not loading everything everytime.

Dan

 

[SeaEagleRock8]

Thanks for keeping us all afloat, your efforts are greatly appreciated.
It's great you are going to set things in stone, I assumed nowadays it was all plastics and lightweight alloys. You are a man of rare substance.

 

[eggson]

Nice one bud, although at times it takes me forever to load a page and i sometimes get a timeout(?) error (i use google chrome):
Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): Unknown error.

Hope it sorts out soon and again good work on making this the one and only Manly forum on the whole world wide (www see what i did there?) interwebz!

 

[codewana]

Yes, another plus one to the THANKS DAN sentiments.

I also noticed that the sight is quite slow when loading (I have the forums page tabbed on firefox and that was the slow link). Everything else is faster (except when trying to quote someone - the text takes a second or two).

 

[torana355]

What forum software are you going to use. I would recommend VBulletin 4.0.3 

 

[Berkeley_Eagle]

sometimes I find a blank page coming up and sometimes it is a little slow to load, but like you said we all need to lose a little weight

 

[Dan]

vbulletin would be good if we went to a stand alone system, however, I don't want to really do that if I can help it. It also is quite pricey and i would rather throw money at system resources rather than software.

Most likely we will end up on a joomla integrated solution like Kunena, moving to vbulletin would still present the same issue as we would need to cURL all the pages into Joomla which is what takes all teh resources now

 

[The Gronk]

Just put in a donation button, and direct the MWSE where to click.  You are now working hard to provide a service for them and deserve to be supported for that. 

 

[The Wheel]

Dan can you ensure some of the famous threads are moved across to ensure the historical integrity of ST eg "Dan V God"; "I want to root Brett Stewart" "Lazy, Sloppy Rubbish"; "Max & his Trusty Steed" etc

 

[Dan]

I just made a few changes which should see things running a little faster.

As for the threads, the God thread was deleted years ago and lost to the ether, it truly is ashame as that was a pearler.

No point in moving threads over though when everything will still be available here just in an archived form

 

[Jethro]

Dan,

I have been getting the same problems that B_e has been getting and refreshing the page doesn't always work.  I have had to go back to the basic silvertails.net url and then step up through the menus to get back to the forums sometimes.

I also note that you have changed the quote box colour from blue back to the pink again.  The blue looked better in my opinion as there is enough pink with the banners and menu and the wide maroon stripes down the sides.

 

[Dan]

Yeah I am having some issues now. I am about to break the forum out of its integration until i can fix it further.

Dan