What happened to this feature?

[Sugaree]

Well, I was looking at the General Discussion forums today and I saw that there were 2 members were viewing The White Padded Room. So, I go to see who it is and I don't see the feature/bar at the bottom that says which users are viewing the forum.

Has this feature been disabled? Or is it a error due to our recent database crashes.

[Kiros]

Well, everything that is on this site is generated each and every time you view anything at all. It's never constant, so it always requires resources. For the board software to do queries and checks to find out who's viewing a certain forum/thread takes more resources than normal.

Anthony made an announcement very recently about the shoutbox and search being disabled because of the high server loads. If the server loads are high and we are trying to get them down, then we need to use less resources... Common sense would dictate that the feature has been disabled. The reason is fairly obvious - I would hope anyway.

[Whisper]

How come the demands suddenly sky rocketed?
We've had all these features for awhile now
How come its acting up now?

[Kiros]

How come the demands suddenly sky rocketed?
We've had all these features for awhile now
How come its acting up now?

I'm not quite sure why the server load has been spiking so high recently. If it goes past 8.55 it will lock out visitors and members from browsing - a normal warning level is around 5 and 6. The average server load is normally around 2 or less - maybe 3 or 4 if a few people are searching to forums. The spikes of server load have been reaching numbers like 26 and 28; they have been remaining that high for several minutes or more as well.

So this is why we're disabling some features. Until we figure out what is creating high server load, the features will remain disabled.

[Whisper]

So is someone piggy backing off our server?

[Aηdy]

Could be a vBulletin bug.

[Maverick]

Could be a vBulletin bug.
Doubtful because this is a problem limited to this site and this server.

[Aηdy]

Doubtful because this is a problem limited to this site and this server.

I'll shut up then ;)

[Kiros]

So is someone piggy backing off our server?

Unfortunately, we don't get our own server for the site. We'd have to pay big bucks for that. We have something called a shared hosting package, so resources are shared. I'm not sure if there is a CPU usage quota for each site, but if there is, then it's completely based on this site. If there is no quota and the CPU is being shared unequally, then it might not be this site's fault.

Whatever the case, I'll bring up a ticket with DotServant if we can't find a fault on our (or my) part.

[Antares]

It really doesn't seem like our fault because actually our activity has more or less decreased within the past...2 weeks. because school has started.

[ShatteredWings]

That's the confusing part, the server was going boom with 10 people online(total)

However, cutting out the search and shoutbox seems to help, i haven't had it go out all day

[Kiros]

Well we have had a lot of changes recently - the upgrade to vBulletin 3.7.2 Patch Level 2, changes in the .htaccess to make things more attractive for search engines, the spread of Taco Bell, etc. All in all, even though server activity is low, if there are certain people doing certain things all nearly at the same time, the server load gets higher. If I goofed with a setting or coded the .htaccess with several unseen inefficiencies, it might be multiplied by a decent amount.

That's why I'm saying that it could be us - and by "us," I mean me. We're still in the process of figuring this out. It's going to take a bit of time, so please don't expect everything to be back to normal even within a few days. :|

[george]

search engines, the spread of Taco Bell, etc.

I'm sorry if I'm asking a stupid question but what does Ben mean by "the spread of Taco Bell"?

[Mzor203]

I'm sorry if I'm asking a stupid question but what does Ben mean by "the spread of Taco Bell"?

I think he's referring to the fact that people hang out at Taco Bell with their laptops and do some web-surfing. So, logically, with more Taco Bell, there is more web surfing.

Random guess though. I probably failed. :|

[stotty]

Same the other day I got a message saying server overload. Wait 2 minutes but it took ages to get back online

[ShatteredWings]

I'm sorry if I'm asking a stupid question but what does Ben mean by "the spread of Taco Bell"?

ever go into the flash chat? ben likes fast food [/]


anyways, thanks for explaining everything

[Sapphire]

Might blocking spider slurps help lower the server load enough to give us the search feature back while this gets sorted?

[ShatteredWings]

or just guests. It might work

[Maverick]

Might blocking spider slurps help lower the server load enough to give us the search feature back while this gets sorted?
Searching is a much much more server intensive process than just a few bots. I checked who's online now and there are only less than a dozen bots online right now. There's nothing that can be substituted to bring searching back asap.

[Kiros]

I'm sorry if I'm asking a stupid question but what does Ben mean by "the spread of Taco Bell"?

I just want to point out that I happened to be craving Taco Bell while posting. I didn't think that anyone would take it seriously.

._.