Problems with "new" GC?

[FuzzieAlum]

CarolinaCutie, you don't have to do browse every forum to see what's new. When you go to Greekchat, click on "message boards" at the top. The list of boards will come up, and (if you are logged in) a " welcome carolinacutie! view new messages" should appear right below the Greek101 ad. Just click on that and it will list the forums with activity since you were last on.

Totally unrelated (and I'd PM you, but I don't dare with GC acting up), did your friend at CWRU do rush?

[adduncan]

Originally posted by John
The current trouble with the GC site is due to the server being overloaded with too much work to do. This server has several sites running on it. The combined site traffic is a bit too much for the server to handle at the busiest times of the day.

There are periods of time when the server is receiving several page view requests per second, for hours. Each page view also requires other server functions (such as calls to the database) that increase the server load even more. These peak server load times are when GreekChat slows down significantly.

The fatal error pages are the same as the blank pages that would show before the recent changes. Only difference is that I have turned on error reporting temporarily so I can track any errors as they occur. The errors are now being displayed on pages that were previously blank. As far as I can tell, these errors are mostly php timeouts - meaning that the script has exceeded the amount of time it is given by the server to execute.


So, the next step is to setup an additional server and upgrade it sufficiently so that GreekChat can continue to serve pages quickly even during the busiest times of the day.

I'm working on this now, and hope to have the new server ready soon.

Thanks, John. We really appreciate your keeping us up to date on this.
And in case no one has told you recently--THIS SITE ROCKS! It's opened up an entire new world for many of us!

Adrienne (PNAM 2003)

[PM_Mama00]

This has been working a lot better for me than the last format. But my PM's do act up with a fatal error. Come to think of it, sometimes when I post it does too!

[valkyrie]

Originally posted by adduncan
Thanks, John. We really appreciate your keeping us up to date on this.
And in case no one has told you recently--THIS SITE ROCKS! It's opened up an entire new world for many of us!

Adrienne (PNAM 2003)

I agree! Props to John. Without this site, I'm sure that many of us (myself included) wouldn't even BE greek. Thanks for all your hard work.

[John]

Originally posted by CarolinaCutie
I also don't like how the most recently posted threads don't show up when you go to www.greekchat.com . It's annoying to have to browse every forum.

The script/program which made that feature work isn't quite compatible with the upgraded version of the forum software. I'm working on that and hope to have it online again by the end of the week. By the way, that main page script only listed the 10 most recently active threads in the General Forums area only.

The link that FuzzieAlum described will give you a list of all recently active threads throughout the site since you last visited. You will see that link near the top right of the forum homepage or can access that link directly at http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/se...&action=getnew

[AchtungBaby80]

Yay, John! You're awesome.

[CarolinaCutie]

Thanks, Fuzzie and John!

Oh, Fuzzie... she ended up not having the grades to go through I would love to know how the Phi Mus did though.

[damasa]

Originally posted by ariesrising
Here's a suggestion: Why not delete some of the older messages on the boards, ie ones that haven't been responded to in over a year or something? It would free up server space and speed things up. Most boards I visit do "clean up" like this every 6 months or so.

I agree. Other boards I've been to also delete dormant accounts or account of people that haven't used them/signed in/logged on in a year.

[John]

Originally posted by ariesrising
Here's a suggestion: Why not delete some of the older messages on the boards, ie ones that haven't been responded to in over a year or something? It would free up server space and speed things up. Most boards I visit do "clean up" like this every 6 months or so.

The server slowdown is primarily because of too many simultaneous connections & page requests. The quantity of the data stored in the database isn't part of the problem at the moment. The issue is more about how many requests can the server handle at any given time. The database software we use can handle much, much more. I believe it is currently the server hardware that is limiting the speed of the forums.

Many sites that delete threads & users from their forums also do so because they are on shared servers and have a limited amount of hard drive space or database resources that they are allowed to use. GreekChat is on a dedicated server with full access to the resources of the server. It's just that the server is at times unable to handle the workload put on it.

[librasoul22]

Originally posted by John
The server slowdown is primarily because of too many simultaneous connections & page requests. The quantity of the data stored in the database isn't part of the problem at the moment. The issue is more about how many requests can the server handle at any given time. The database software we use can handle much, much more. I believe it is currently the server hardware that is limiting the speed of the forums.

Many sites that delete threads & users from their forums also do so because they are on shared servers and have a limited amount of hard drive space or database resources that they are allowed to use. GreekChat is on a dedicated server with full access to the resources of the server. It's just that the server is at times unable to handle the workload put on it.

Are you imthechamp?

[Kevin]

Keep up the great work! Glad to see the banner ad ya'll deserve to make money on this deal!

[MSKKG]

Thanks, John!!! We all love this site.

KappaTarzan, you are too funny!!!

[justamom]

posted by John

OMG! YOU ARE A REAL PERSON!!!

May I too add that GC is a great site that so many appreciate.