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Database issues unacceptable


hypochondriac

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Cheers Baj

 

To put it all into context I am in the Dam and have just paid a fiver for a glass of wine. It will keep me amused for 15 minutes, stay in my system for about 2 hours and give me a headache in the morning.

 

Compare this to the forum thayt provides 365 days of fun, laughter and Dune.

 

The guys that run this site do so (as far as I understand) as a NFP hobby. As committed Saints fans I think we have a forum which is far superior to many of our 'rivals'.

 

To all the knockers out there, be careful what you wish for.

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Cheers Baj

 

To put it all into context I am in the Dam and have just paid a fiver for a glass of wine. It will keep me amused for 15 minutes, stay in my system for about 2 hours and give me a headache in the morning.

 

Compare this to the forum thayt provides 365 days of fun, laughter and Dune.

 

The guys that run this site do so (as far as I understand) as a NFP hobby. As committed Saints fans I think we have a forum which is far superior to many of our 'rivals'.

 

To all the knockers out there, be careful what you wish for.

 

To be able to actually access and post on the superior forum praps?

 

To not have to copy every post i make (including this one) so that if i get a db error i can just paste it in and not have to retype?

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I believe forums or sites charging for membership are under a very strict regulation to provide annual accounts showing how fees are spent. This wasn't so a few years back but happens to be the law nowadays. I'd bet Harry Redknapps taking a bung somewhere in the accounts for his advice on moving money about and making it vanish into clear air.

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It's a weak service. But it's the best you're gonna get. I reckon I've seen maybe 20 people complain about their fivers.

 

That's £100. How much time and effort do you think that buys us collectively?

 

Sooner or later someone will decide that they can get migration from this site to another (just as previously).

 

I do agree this platform is waning, shame.

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Ah bless, we mgrate into The Cloud.

 

A minor issue, better check a couple of points with your lawyers Baj... with regard to liability and more importantly Jurisdiction. (There are thousands of articles & pages linked to this out there in the world)

 

Don't want to be held liable for data theft or some disgruntled reader suing you for libel and finding the host in China isn't covered by your insurance.

 

But a wise idea to move

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yes guys, I was a bit annoyed too, but let's be fair ...most of the season , or the year for that matter the service is pretty good.

 

Twice a year (on deadline day) they'll be this panic..so what? does it really matter that you had to wait an extra 30 mins. to read others on a transfer that has already gone through? ..

 

For those of you who expect micro-second response all the time, I say thaw out a bit.

In the transfer market, what's done is done and the others must wait for next season.

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yes guys, I was a bit annoyed too, but let's be fair ...most of the season , or the year for that matter the service is pretty good.

 

Twice a year (on deadline day) they'll be this panic..so what? does it really matter that you had to wait an extra 30 mins. to read others on a transfer that has already gone through? ..

 

For those of you who expect micro-second response all the time, I say thaw out a bit.

In the transfer market, what's done is done and the others must wait for next season.

 

If only it was quite that simple.

 

Down here when the Dbase freezes I get a mixture of a Dbase error page and then an Etisalat "This Site is Blocked Warning"

 

Our internet is censored and Proxy Filters scan for repetitive "improper" searches - ie if you keep hitting banned sites they can your internet connection and ask you lots of unpleasant questions.

 

So, yes it is more than a mild inconvenience

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Even I agree with Hypochondriac, and I think he's a complete tool.

 

I don't like having my money taken as payment for a service which is then not provided. I have made contact with my lawyers:

http://www.lamportbassitt.co.uk/

Lamport Bassitt

46 The Avenue, Southampton SO17 1AX

Telephone: 023 8083 7777

 

I would urge others to do the same.

 

If you're not happy with this firm, then choose another, if you don't have your own already:

http://www.hampshirelawsociety.co.uk/lawyer-southampton.asp

 

which one are you, lamport or bassitt?

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What I fail to understand is why the 'service' can't be restricted to paid up members at busy times?

 

One can sort of accept the "we're looking into it" response everytime there is a problem but the lack of proactive remedial action (I.e. Chopping off non-members at busy times) is what one can't understand...

 

In order to allow or deny access to a given user, the server needs to know who that user is. This means that, at the very least, someone will need to log in before the system can determine whether they are "paid up" and whether they should be restricted. And even then, the system will still have to service requests from restricted users who'll keep trying to connect.

 

One of the issues with forum-based sites is data, specifically, the changing of data. Databases maintain indexes. These are much like the indexes you'd find in a book, and provide a quick way to look up specific content. Books are static, in that, once they're printed, neither content nor index change. On busy days like match days or transfer deadline day, tons of new content gets submitted. It's like to trying to create a phone book for Southampton, except with a 1000 new visitors, every hour. And everytime someone wants to look at that book, you need to print it to order.

 

One really easy way to speed things up would be to reduce the page size on forum posts. Don't really know that we need 50 items per page, and at busy times, the server will have less work to do on each page request.

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One of the issues with forum-based sites is data, specifically, the changing of data. Databases maintain indexes. These are much like the indexes you'd find in a book, and provide a quick way to look up specific content. Books are static, in that, once they're printed, neither content nor index change. On busy days like match days or transfer deadline day, tons of new content gets submitted. It's like to trying to create a phone book for Southampton, except with a 1000 new visitors, every hour. And everytime someone wants to look at that book, you need to print it to order.

 

One really easy way to speed things up would be to reduce the page size on forum posts. Don't really know that we need 50 items per page, and at busy times, the server will have less work to do on each page request.

 

We use both a php and a mysql caching mechanism which removes most of the issues stated there. Reducing page size has almost bugger all effect :/

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Apologies, and for the record, I completely agree with all of you.

For me, this is the final straw for this current server set up, we've tried, tweaked and amended as much as we can, and for some reason, even on slightly lesser busy days like today, it just can't cut it.

We have a "plan b" which involves a COMPLETE move of the site to new hosting (for the techies out there, Cloud hosting so we can increase nodes on the fly, up to 60 seconds from order).

Me and Steve have discussed this before, but now I think its time for it to happen.

 

please make this happen, last night was a joke.

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We use both a php and a mysql caching mechanism which removes most of the issues stated there. Reducing page size has almost bugger all effect :/

 

Yeah, but given the amount of traffic on busy days, how often is your cache invalidated?

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I hope you get your 5 quid back.

 

This is not about the money. It is about making a stand for the little man. Big corporations use us and exploit us. They take our money and are happy to provide substandard services. This corporate mentality has crept into SWF over the past couple of years. I say "enough is enough". If it ends up costing me £500 then so be it. It will be a price worth paying for justice.

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Hang on.....weren't you a moderator for quite some time on here? Surely you have to be a little bit bothered to put yourself forward as a mod?

 

Not sure of the logic behind that. I was a Mod as I wanted to help out, because I like the forum. That doesnt mean Im going to get upset and spit my dummy out when I cant get on it for 2 hours on a Monday night. I've got other things to get het up about in life.

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I do find it quite strange that when I was on SaintsForever I could never get at the place when anything happened, but I've never, EVER had an access issue with this site, despite people moaning about it all the time.

 

I suspect this is because I'm not on here as much, and no longer care what 90% of the people on here think about stuff, because they're knee-jerkist idiots, so when something actually happens I generally tend NOT to head over here until all the mentals have tired themselves out.

 

But just don't get me started on Portuguese player name pronunciation.

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Not sure of the logic behind that. I was a Mod as I wanted to help out, because I like the forum. That doesnt mean Im going to get upset and spit my dummy out when I cant get on it for 2 hours on a Monday night. I've got other things to get het up about in life.

 

Oh behave. "Spit my dummy out"? All people are asking is for a forum that works, especially as we're paying for it. Not exactly too much to ask, and certainly not a case of dummy spitting. Notice how the only people really defending the site/trying to make this a non-issue are Mods and former Mods, hardly a surprise though.

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Oh behave. "Spit my dummy out"? All people are asking is for a forum that works, especially as we're paying for it. Not exactly too much to ask, and certainly not a case of dummy spitting. Notice how the only people really defending the site/trying to make this a non-issue are Mods and former Mods, hardly a surprise though.

 

-1 fwiw

 

Its hardly worth the effort of getting steamed up about it mate, the site ran slow yesterday, so what? Its like all the furore about snowploughs during the cold snap, if we had thousands of them on standby it would cost the country a fortune in taxes but when it snows and someone gets to work 12 minutes late its a disaster. When this site crashes look on it as a bonus and do something else. Personally I went and had a nice glass of merlot and a w*nk, so that was 45 seconds taken care of ;)

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Cheers Baj

 

To put it all into context I am in the Dam and have just paid a fiver for a glass of wine. It will keep me amused for 15 minutes, stay in my system for about 2 hours and give me a headache in the morning.

 

Compare this to the forum thayt provides 365 days of fun, laughter and Dune.

 

The guys that run this site do so (as far as I understand) as a NFP hobby. As committed Saints fans I think we have a forum which is far superior to many of our 'rivals'.

 

To all the knockers out there, be careful what you wish for.

 

That's fair enough, but thanks to the lack of accounts on the operation of this site, how do we know someone's subscription isn't paying for that wine?

 

I don't pay anymore because I'm not happy buying something that isn't transparent. I doubt millions are being made, but I do know that popular sites make money (and with advertising + subscriptions, more so). I also know what a MYSQL / PHP site costs to host (in broad terms) and I can't reconcile the two.

 

But seeing as I don't pay I don't have a right to moan and, as a free user, the site offers what it says on the tin.

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That's fair enough, but thanks to the lack of accounts on the operation of this site, how do we know someone's subscription isn't paying for that wine?

 

I don't pay anymore because I'm not happy buying something that isn't transparent. I doubt millions are being made, but I do know that popular sites make money (and with advertising + subscriptions, more so). I also know what a MYSQL / PHP site costs to host (in broad terms) and I can't reconcile the two.

 

But seeing as I don't pay I don't have a right to moan and, as a free user, the site offers what it says on the tin.

 

The 800 or so paying customers would amount to about four grand a year, hardly enough to keep steve grants bentley fuelled or baj's multiple guitars in strings. I cannot believe anybody involved is making any money from this.

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That's fair enough, but thanks to the lack of accounts on the operation of this site, how do we know someone's subscription isn't paying for that wine?

 

I don't pay anymore because I'm not happy buying something that isn't transparent. I doubt millions are being made, but I do know that popular sites make money (and with advertising + subscriptions, more so). I also know what a MYSQL / PHP site costs to host (in broad terms) and I can't reconcile the two.

 

But seeing as I don't pay I don't have a right to moan and, as a free user, the site offers what it says on the tin.

 

 

If that's what you or others want to believe then go ahead. It's typical of Saints fans to come up with conspiracy theories.

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That's fair enough, but thanks to the lack of accounts on the operation of this site, how do we know someone's subscription isn't paying for that wine?

 

I don't pay anymore because I'm not happy buying something that isn't transparent. I doubt millions are being made, but I do know that popular sites make money (and with advertising + subscriptions, more so). I also know what a MYSQL / PHP site costs to host (in broad terms) and I can't reconcile the two.

 

But seeing as I don't pay I don't have a right to moan and, as a free user, the site offers what it says on the tin.

 

Do you look at the accounts of every company you ever buy stuff from?

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-1 fwiw

 

Its hardly worth the effort of getting steamed up about it mate, the site ran slow yesterday, so what? Its like all the furore about snowploughs during the cold snap, if we had thousands of them on standby it would cost the country a fortune in taxes but when it snows and someone gets to work 12 minutes late its a disaster. When this site crashes look on it as a bonus and do something else. Personally I went and had a nice glass of merlot and a w*nk, so that was 45 seconds taken care of ;)

 

I'd rather it worked 5% of the time (during matches, transfer windows and Paul Allen yacht sightings) and use the other 95% of the time for w*nking... ;-)

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