• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Future of the Forum

idoubtit said:
We currently have major issues with the forum hardware, software and large number of users. The situation is precarious, but knowledgable people are doing their best to make it useable. There are several issues that must be addressed. This is part of the overall website overhaul, which is overdue.
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I'm puzzled. Knowledgable people have been working on this already, but the problem still requires the input of forum members to resolve? I think some more details about the problem would help here. Presumably these people have identified some aspects of the problem...? Is the forum disk bound, or CPU bound? Is it the database that is causing the slowness? These should be fairly easily answerable questions. What is the issue that the resources currently working on the problem can't address?

I have some experience in infrastructure capacity and performance, but whether that is the correct skill set to progress this problem really depends on information that has yet to be provided.
 
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Like others, and despite Sharon's positive comments, I serious doubt JREF's commitment to the forum.
 
abbadon,

I haven't followed the discussion but how do you know it's on a VPS?

As someone who (amongst other things) also does this for a living, abbadon is correct. A well trafficked forums is going to struggle on a VPS. The issue is almost certainly to do with database response time.

The main randi.org website appears to be with a different provider altogether, has it been having performance issues?

Both the forum and the main website appear to be using very old versions of their respective software (vbulletin and joomla). More recent versions are both more secure and faster.
 
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The forum being on a VPS has been discussed on other threads and I think it's pretty much confirmed.. or it's confirmed it's on a shared environment which is most likely a VPS.

Interesting I didn't notice the main site is different, it's on Linode, which is also a VPS type provider (or "Cloud" hosting). I've never seen slowdowns on the main site but the load is likely far far less on the main site since the amount of new content generated per day on the main site is many many orders of magnitude less, a mostly static site lends itself well to caching, etc.

Don't know about Joomla, but I would disagree with new version of vBulletin being faster. vBulletin 5 is a dogs breakfast IMO and I wouldn't touch it.
 
One other thought I had, has the JREF ever thought about seeking out a forum sponsor? Surely out of all of the providers of dedicated servers out there in the world some of them must be aware and supportive of the JREF.

Such a company would provide (donate) the servers and the expertise at their own cost maybe as a tax writeoff, or some sort of "Powered By" indication on the forum...
 
The problems described are why I hardly post here now, good luck with sorting a solution.
 
The forum is on dedicated hardware that cannot be sustained. A move to new hardware and software is needed. That's the issue that must be solved.

I would like the admins to contact me so we can work out details. I don't know who will take charge of supplying the final input on behalf of the forum but would like that established so we can start moving this ahead.

Also, if you are willing to help with the nuts and bolts discussion, that will need to progress via email. Send me your email address and your capabilities.

Sharon@randi.org
 
temporalillusion said:
Don't know about Joomla, but I would disagree with new version of vBulletin being faster. vBulletin 5 is a dogs breakfast IMO and I wouldn't touch it.
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Never used version vBulletin 5 to be honest. JREF forums are on 3.7.7 however. Version 4 was architecturally completely rewritten and much improved.

The main site appears to be Joomla 1.5, which is occasionally dug up along side archeopteryx.
 
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icerat said:
abbadon,

I haven't followed the discussion but how do you know it's on a VPS?

As someone who (amongst other things) also does this for a living, abbadon is correct. A well trafficked forums is going to struggle on a VPS. The issue is almost certainly to do with database response time.

The main randi.org website appears to be with a different provider altogether, has it been having performance issues?

Both the forum and the main website appear to be using very old versions of their respective software (vbulletin and joomla). More recent versions are both more secure and faster.
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Someone posted a listing in the depths of the "Slow Forum" thread. It appears to be a moveable feast. Any time I look it up I get different results. Haven't done it lately. Any time I did, I got the impression there was a lot of domain parking going on on that server. In theory, parked domains should not generate much if any traffic, but if they are pretesting their software before launch to a live environment, it could cause bug issues.
 
idoubtit said:
The forum is on dedicated hardware that cannot be sustained. A move to new hardware and software is needed. That's the issue that must be solved.

I would like the admins to contact me so we can work out details. I don't know who will take charge of supplying the final input on behalf of the forum but would like that established so we can start moving this ahead.

Also, if you are willing to help with the nuts and bolts discussion, that will need to progress via email. Send me your email address and your capabilities.

Sharon@randi.org
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Sharon:

I do not have the expertise to make suggestions, but please add me to the list of willing experimenters--if you need guinea pigs, let me know.
 
icerat said:
Never used version vBulletin 5 to be honest. JREF forums are on 3.7.7 however. Version 4 was architecturally completely rewritten and much improved.

The main site appears to be Joomla 1.5, which is occasionally dug up along side archeopteryx.
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Tried Joomla before, didn't think much of it, but lets face it, they all have their pros and cons. Given the plethora of all the migration tools available, it is moot which platform is selected.
 
abaddon said:
Tried Joomla before, didn't think much of it, but lets face it, they all have their pros and cons. Given the plethora of all the migration tools available, it is moot which platform is selected.
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I love Joomla, we use it for a bunch of sites - you can get some pretty amazing sites up very quickly. It's not however appropriate for everything, despite being much improved since the earlier versions.

As basic CMS's go I would think the main JREF site would be better served on wordpress. Having said that, if it ain't broke don't fix it, but it definitely needs upgrading for security reasons (though I note there is a security proxy in place with their host)
 
idoubtit said:
The forum is on dedicated hardware that cannot be sustained. A move to new hardware and software is needed. That's the issue that must be solved.
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As others have pointed out, this seems a pretty simple discussion/decision. The JREF knows, or should know, what resources are invested in the forums today, and what it would take to modernize and somewhat future-proof them. The big open question is what resources JREF is willing to commit going forward. Are we talking a new server in house and a dedicated cable connection from the local internet provider, or a corporate hosting/mirroring service with Rackspace or Akamai... or something in between?

I've had a serialized donation to JREF, matched by by employer, for years now, and that amount alone would cover a decent hosting service (I pay less annually to godaddy to host my few low-volume sites). I'd be happy to change that to be earmarked *specifically* for supporting the forum hosting if this is simply a matter of cash in the right bucket. I bet others would, too.
 
icerat said:
I love Joomla, we use it for a bunch of sites - you can get some pretty amazing sites up very quickly. It's not however appropriate for everything, despite being much improved since the earlier versions.

As basic CMS's go I would think the main JREF site would be better served on wordpress. Having said that, if it ain't broke don't fix it, but it definitely needs upgrading for security reasons (though I note there is a security proxy in place with their host)
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All of the various flavours have good and bad points.

I will state here and now that if JREF folds, I will host a new site at my own expense once it is gone.
 
idoubtit said:
The forum is on dedicated hardware that cannot be sustained.
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Are you sure, it seems another member disagrees with you. Can you please confirm that this forum is hosted on a dedicated server and not a shared or virtual server??

And what in the world do you mean by "cannot be sustained"? A dedicated server that would host this forum just splendidly would only cost a couple hundred $$ per month and several of us have said that we would gladly chip in and cover that cost entirely.


idoubtit said:
A move to new hardware and software is needed.
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Hardware, sure, but software??

As I said in my previous post another user found another forum using the exact same version of vBulletin as we are. That forum is larger and more active and works fine. So unless you believe it to be one of the add-ons we are using, why do you continue to say a software upgrade is needed?

So much conflicting information in this thread.
 
abaddon said:
All of the various flavours have good and bad points.
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Haha, CMS wars! It can get almost as bad as Apple vs Android wars, or console wars!

I like Wordpress, but have used Joomla and Drupal. Heck I've even coded for Liferay, that felt like swatting a fly with a Buick!
 
idoubtit said:
The forum is on dedicated hardware that cannot be sustained. ...
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This is an interesting piece of information, I guess. But, could you be a little more specific? How many servers? How many processors? How many cores? How much RAM? I suspect many here would be interested reading this info.
The dedicated server building page at Softlayer is here, I believe.
 
Don't read too much into the statement, I don't know how technical idoubtit is, she could have meant dedicated in that it's a hosting environment dedicated to the forum from the site's point of view (as opposed to a hosting environment being shared by both the forum and the main site).
 
Details, please! It should be clear by now that there are enough people here who could offer specific, constructive advice if furnished with some real information.

Are there any special reasons for this coyness? (except for, I suspect, an atavistic urge to Not Tell The Internet Proprietary Information...)
 
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