Merging tech problems + discussion

[Chippiewill]

You are obviously not aware that merging the sub forums would reduce page loading times by less than 0.01 of a second

And how many seconds would that be in a day putting together everyone's times?

A few minutes in total, which is a load off the server.

All small things add up to a big thing. Also they do not push it on to page two ever so don't whine about that :rolleyes:

[Immenseman]

You haven't explained it at all, you've said that it will reduce page loading time (albeit just a tiny amount). It wont, the differences will be too small to cause any effect on the server.

I know more than you about this

Granted. I'm going with what Jin and nvrspk4 have said and seeing as they run this forum, successfully - I will believe what they tell me rather than some bitter user slightly wound up because his thread got nudged down two spots.

I know 00chips is a regular tech forum user and he doesn't seem to care. It's just you throwing your toys out of the pram.

[Agnostic Bear]

And how many seconds would that be in a day putting together everyone's times?

A few minutes in total, which is a load off the server.

All small things add up to a big thing. Also they do not push it on to page two ever so don't whine about that :rolleyes:

Ok fine I will reiterate correctly: it takes less than 0.01 of a second to pull the list out I'd imagine. That's the entire thing, removing 1 subforum in a list of 69 is going to do absolutely NOTHING.

0.01 / 69 = 0.0001

That is ridiculously minuscule and irrelevant.

Also it does push things on to page 2, go look for yourself.

BRB SHOWER

Granted. I'm going with what Jin and nvrspk4 have said and seeing as they run this forum, successfully - I will believe what they tell me rather than some bitter user slightly wound up because his thread got nudged down two spots.

I know 00chips is a regular tech forum user and he doesn't seem to care. It's just you throwing your toys out of the pram.

Neither Jin nor nvrspk4 are "expert" PHP programmers (that's not a bad thing), and they wont have the intimate knowledge we (expert PHP programmers) would.
What Jin is planning on doing will speed the forum up an absolute ass-load however he has yet to do it. When it does I will be happy with page loading times.

[Chippiewill]

I don't care as long as all the 'Yesterday' and 'Today' threads are on one page it is fine, and if the forum is so fast for you then you can't be that bothered by the extra page load.

[nvrspk4]

For the record, Jin is extremely proficient with PHP, I am not aware of how he would classify his skills but he is more than competent, I am aware there are some fantastic coders here but to say that he doesn't know what he's talking about is assumptive.

I will make no secret of the fact that I am not even close to a PHP expert, I won't pretend to be what I'm not.

On the topic of whether or not this slows things down. I'm not sure if people are just calling it this but I'd like to first note that Tech Problems was a forum not a sub-forum.

Also, for claims that merging forums will not do much, we recieved a warning from vBulletin that the number of forums was too much and would hamper our forum speed. That's why we had to take away VIP Sub Forums. Even after that they said, too much, it will make it slow. So we have had it suggested by the maker of the product that we downsize the number of forums.

I'm not going to lie, I can't disprove you that it takes .01 but I don't see any proof that it does take .01 to "pull out the list". And here's conjecture on my part but for every forum it also has to note, are there new posts, are there not, and then display the appropriate image, as well as load several animated images, one for nearly every forum as unlike some other forums, almost every forum is used frequently.

I think that the time per forum is significant, and yes one alone may not do that much but its the total effect of the changes.

[Chippiewill]

Just a quick note, that pulling the images out isn't going to really increase page load as it has to get it once....

Also move the staff questions into a sub-forum into this forum, it just isn't used enough to be wasting 0.01s of every time I load the index.

Edit: There is some pointless JS on the index that allows us to see a forum as read if we double click the forum icon. Perhaps you should check if it is used. If not then remove it, I can imagine it saving even up to a second (Maybe)

[N!ck]

Can it at least be made into a subforum of Thch Discussion rather than just merged. Most of the "problems" in there are from kids that could easly be sorted within 30 seconds from a Google search. Ok, some are genuine things that are posted by the more competant members which is fine. If I have a problem I phrase it in such a way that it is a discussion and post it in the discussion section.

I don't want people who can't change their MSN name or whatever ruining a decent forum .

[Mentor]

I'm not a 100% on the VB database structure but if memoery servers its pretty inefficent, to load a front view, a single query doesnt cut it. Once the rows for the tables are out, another set of querys is needed to then retrive the last poster in the forum, and from that post details the user name of the poster.
Which means the forum view alone could be accessing 3 tables, many of which are huge. Times that by the amount of users loading these pages, and by the amount of page loads recived each day, theres a significant load involved even in what seems like a pretty simple action.
Dont forget VB lacks alot of the speed optimsations common in other forum softwares, so does have a few issues when scaleing as far as habbox's had.

[Chippiewill]

I'm not a 100% on the VB database structure but if memoery servers its pretty inefficent, to load a front view, a single query doesnt cut it. Once the rows for the tables are out, another set of querys is needed to then retrive the last poster in the forum, and from that post details the user name of the poster.
Which means the forum view alone could be accessing 3 tables, many of which are huge. Times that by the amount of users loading these pages, and by the amount of page loads recived each day, theres a significant load involved even in what seems like a pretty simple action.
Dont forget VB lacks alot of the speed optimsations common in other forum softwares, so does have a few issues when scaleing as far as habbox's had.

Now if they were using phpbb3 this would be entirely different.... For one phpbb3 has a very good cache, it also now supports alternate cache software....

[Agnostic Bear]

Now if they were using phpbb3 this would be entirely different.... For one phpbb3 has a very good cache, it also now supports alternate cache software....

phpbb3 is also an open source pile of ass.

The only good open source software comes from a team of small developers OR a team of huge developers led by someone awesome. phpbb3 has neither.