Why so slow?

Dear Board Dudes & Dudettes,

I came here today to slap some discipline, advice and many comments at the Flash Site Check section. Have Cable modem and felt like laying out many a feedback. To no avail. Why is Flashkit so slow? When I had a dial-up modem I thought I might die here, now I just grow whiskers while waiting for pages to load. I love Flashkit much more than other related forums. What is going on? Can I do something to make it quicker. Are you doing something to fix this. Listen, I know there are worse things in life and I may sound like a crybaby, but honestly - this is a great place and the year is almost 2002. Can we fix this?????

f l a s h p e s t

unless the boards are cleared out I don't think a lot can be done. I use a dial up connection and don't have a problem with the speed. Sometimes I'll get an occasional error but i can live with it...

Your kidding. This site moves on 56k?

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Originally posted by flashpest
Your kidding. This site moves on 56k?

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yep, moves like rik morranis giving john candy a piggy back :(

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Originally posted by snoop_doug

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Originally posted by flashpest
Your kidding. This site moves on 56k?

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yep, moves like rik morranis giving john candy a piggy back :(

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Now that is some funny ****!

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Originally posted by flashpest

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Originally posted by snoop_doug

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Originally posted by flashpest
Your kidding. This site moves on 56k?

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yep, moves like rik morranis giving john candy a piggy back :(

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Now that is some funny ****!

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Thats the greatest thing i ever heard! hahaha

And yet my question still goes unanswered. Why so slow?????

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Originally posted by flashpest
And yet my question still goes unanswered. Why so slow?????

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Sure unanswered... do you think anyone ever gets to this page before christmas?? I started requesting this post almost a year ago.. ;-)

Serious now: Yeah, I think its slow too.. Only in the morning when the States are still sleeping its allright for me..In the afternoon it's as fast as... well you know.. eventhough I've got a 10mb connection at work...

Apart from that... great site!!

mc
the Netherlands

mcBassTN. Yes it is a great site. Better by far than any Flash forum/ the most populated. That is why I do not want to complain too much, I'm afraid I may be exiled and dethroned from senior member and forced to reinstate anonymously as just a lowly "member".

Still! No answer as to the definitive reason the site is sooooo slow! I'm seeking the scientific reason.

Can the Allmighty, omnipresent owner of this site who I probaly met at the San Fransico forum please anwer this intriguing question???

It Crawls. What gives?

I love this site. Its gonna lose all its popularity if it continues to run like this.

I don't see any reason why it should run so slow. Every time I am on there are 70 to 100 people on at one time. I run a vBulletin board that often has that many on, and my peak CPU loads are rarely over 60%. My server is nothing special.

What is it about FK that bogs it down? Is it the size of the DB? And what ever happened to FK 2?

This is the slowest forum I have ever visited! I am a prefessional developer and I use forums all the time. Devshed is a good example of one that works well. I am starting to look into Flash now and this is a good site but just too slow and buggy. Either it is just very slow or you get MySQL error messages.

Very poor!!

James

I CAN'T EVEN POST THIS MESSAGE - JUST GET

Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /www2/flashkit/board/admin/db_mysql.php on line 82

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /www2/flashkit/board/admin/db_mysql.php:82) in /www2/flashkit/board/global.php on line 709

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /www2/flashkit/board/admin/db_mysql.php:82) in /www2/flashkit/board/global.php on line 716

There seems to have been a slight problem with the database. Please try again by pressing the refresh button in your browser.

An E-Mail has been dispatched to our Technical Staff, who you can also contact if the problem persists.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

What a load of rubbish!

We've made some changes that should speed the board up. Need to see it at peak hours, but I think an update on this issue is well in order.

Hope this helps.

I mean if you look at:

http://board.flashkit.com/admin/mrtg/

The actual load itself is not too bad, it's the memory that's struggling and I suspect that even though the dual proc machine is fast, it probably needs an upgrade to be able to cope with the # of threads opened for MySQL at any one time. The bandwidth is fine though, the rest of FK absolutely zips along for me, no problems (which is good!)

There are a couple of threads open on this now on the site check board and coffee lounge and it is clear that people are getting annoyed, but everyone understands that the site is under immense traffic etc.

But at the end of the day, the ammendments to get the board performance increased surely wouldn't be too drastic. I'm sure that the community wouldn't mind if the boards were taken offline for a few hours or even a day as the server is replaced/upgraded if necessary.

But I'm glad the issue is finally getting noticed even albeit in a two sentence kinda way ;-)

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Originally posted by vikasshah
I mean if you look at:

http://board.flashkit.com/admin/mrtg/

The actual load itself is not too bad, it's the memory that's struggling and I suspect that even though the dual proc machine is fast, it probably needs an upgrade to be able to cope with the # of threads opened for MySQL at any one time. The bandwidth is fine though, the rest of FK absolutely zips along for me, no problems (which is good!)

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Thanks. Was a bit drained, hence the two sentence reply above.

I found an unterminated loop in some code yesterday in something else running on this server. It had to time out, each time it was initiated. I think it was putting too much of a strain on apache. Regardless, it wasn't a good thing and would definately affect the rest of the server.

It's looking better from this angle, and I'm outside the network on cable modem. Anyone else seeing any improvements or otherwise?
[Edited by jstarkey on 01-09-2002 at 12:39 PM]

Seemed to run faster for a while (I think when it was restarted) and then slowed down again and threw back some MySQL errors like the ones higher up in the thread.

Maybe it's something a little more underlying??? But when they came back online, very fast for a while (probably when nobody was logged on ;-) )

Hmmm.... Probably a good idea to just monitor it for a day or so eh?

Also, probably not of much relevance, but if you look at http://forums.gtgames.com/forums/index.php running same forum software, albeit a newer version, and also a very large forum. Running much much faster! Possibly worth getting in touch to see how?? They may be forthcoming as it's all for a good cause admin 2 admin you know! Maybe also for the sake of a couple of hundred dollars, VBulletin has an upgrade route to the more recent release?? This seems to have had a few performance improvements etc. But then, I suspect this may be a modified version of the application?

Either way, something needs to be done as from where I'm sitting (as a newish user) the FK Forums seem the mainstay of the site and if the performance keeps degrading, people may go elsewhere.
[Edited by vikasshah on 01-09-2002 at 04:54 PM]

I have heard everybody moaning and flashkit mumbling about "were trying" all I can think is there are a lot of boards with more traffic that run just fine

3 X Dual obsolete P3 processor systems with a mere 1GB Ram in these days of dual P4 Zeon 2.2GB processors with 2GB ram for under $3000 seems a disgrace for a site of this magnitude

I'm sure flashkit could put some of the advertising rev to making the site actually work. I used to come here a lot but it's become such a drag I come only if I have to now and I have stopped answering questions because it's just to annoying trying to communicate on the boards

Come on guy's and Gal's get a grip of this if I was one of you advertisers I would be concerned as to how many of your 250K members are actually going to other sites because they are sick of the lack of performance

Get it together people Please!!!!!

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Originally posted by davidmasterson
I have heard everybody moaning and flashkit mumbling about "were trying" all I can think is there are a lot of boards with more traffic that run just fine



I'm sure flashkit could put some of the advertising rev to making the site actually work. I used to come here a lot but it's become such a drag I come only if I have to now and I have stopped answering questions because it's just to annoying trying to communicate on the boards



Come on guy's and Gal's get a grip of this if I was one of you advertisers I would be concerned as to how many of your 250K members are actually going to other sites because they are sick of the lack of performance



Get it together people Please!!!!!

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Thanks much, for your input.

Ironically enough, every bit of the revenue is going into paying for the bandwidth.

There will be some changes soon. We are recoding a few things to cut down on the amount of calls to the DB server for each thread/forum/post request. The way a lot of the site was coded was intended as a convenience for the admin, but as the site grew they became a hindrance to the speed.

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Originally posted by snoop_doug

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Originally posted by flashpest
Your kidding. This site moves on 56k?

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yep, moves like rik morranis giving john candy a piggy back :(

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Im on a cable modem in Switzerland, I hate to complain as well....but wow...this board sure is slow and I have a possible solution:

Take down the boards, fire the cat whose job description includes maintaing the server, and use the money instead to hire rik morranis giving john candy a piggy back to deliver by hand all handwritten posts and responses (mail without the 'e')to all registered FlashKit members. Non members would have to use the regular post, but at any rate the time it takes to communicate to each other would be improved.

damn. maybe I'll just hire them myself, except, ...oh...I forgot that John Candy is hard to reach these days

I miss that guy, he was so humorous, how bout it

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Originally posted by TheTrooper
I miss that guy, he was so humorous, how bout it

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Not as humourous as some it seems..... :)

Not as humourous as some it seems..... :) [/B][/QUOTE]

depends on your sense of whats humourous, I reckon =)

Are you still mad at me for my stupid teenage flame negative post from the other day Jezza? hope not ;-)

Happy sunday!

Love, Peace & Happiness

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Originally posted by TheTrooper
depends on your sense of whats humourous, I reckon =)

Are you still mad at me for my stupid teenage flame negative post from the other day Jezza? hope not ;-)

Happy sunday!

Love, Peace & Happiness

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Nah, I was just making a joke, hence the smilie :)

John's got lot's of ideas for boosting the performance of the site, these things take time so we have to all be patient. One of the reasons the board is slow is because for FK, the board is just just standalone as with other sites, it integrates into other aspects of the site such as myFK, flashtyper and content reviews. All these things add to the strain.

But then again, all these things make FK unique, I am still yet to see a flash resource site with anywhere near as much functionality as Flash Kit.

agreed. but of course Flashkit was much leaner and meaner whhen there was 50,000 members. I just hope that John can figure out the tweaks to the code to optimize the speed o fthe board. The rest of FlashLit works preety fast.

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Originally posted by TheTrooper
agreed. but of course Flashkit was much leaner and meaner whhen there was 50,000 members. I just hope that John can figure out the tweaks to the code to optimize the speed o fthe board. The rest of FlashLit works preety fast.

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Absolutely, it's the size of the boards that slow it down. It's based on mySQL and PHP and these aren't the fastest tools around. mySQL (or at least the version we are running on) is only really aimed at small to medium sized db's and FK probably outgrew it. I think they may have improved it since then, I believe the crew at slashdot were pretty much funding it's development as they used it on their site. John may know more about this than me (I am probably wrong about all of it :))

Anyway, John's got plenty of things lined up to try, lot's of small tweaks should help make a big difference over time to the performance.

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Originally posted by jezza

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Originally posted by TheTrooper

agreed. but of course Flashkit was much leaner and meaner whhen there was 50,000 members. I just hope that John can figure out the tweaks to the code to optimize the speed o fthe board. The rest of FlashLit works preety fast.

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Absolutely, it's the size of the boards that slow it down. It's based on mySQL and PHP and these aren't the fastest tools around. mySQL (or at least the version we are running on) is only really aimed at small to medium sized db's and FK probably outgrew it. I think they may have improved it since then, I believe the crew at slashdot were pretty much funding it's development as they used it on their site. John may know more about this than me (I am probably wrong about all of it :))

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I uhhhh, well, kinda. MySQL prides itself in being fast, and it is, under small load. Ref Tim Perdue, phpbuilder.com, they did some benchmarks on sourceforge's backend, I believe. MySQL was quick out of the gate, but as load increased it began to choak. They ended up switching to postgresql, which is slower under small load, but maintains the same under higher load.

PHP, is just plain fast.

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Anyway, John's got plenty of things lined up to try, lot's of small tweaks should help make a big difference over time to the performance.

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We'll get it. Jezza is helping to stear and offering a lot, which makes a big difference, since he's basically the board god :). He's speeding up the process a lot, with his info.

This is my first day on this board. And I have to say that it is going so slow, that I would almost call it unusable. Maybe I'll just have to try it in the middle of the night.

It looks like there are all sorts of interesting threads going on, but I can't get to them. But I do get all sorts of error messages and stalls. I'm on a 56K connection using IE5. Here's hoping this clears up, I'd love to contribute to the ongoing discussions.