An update on the forums problems...

[FORDification]

As you've probably noticed by now, the couple of forum mods done since we were down for about 4 days have again been uninstalled. The forum software is as basic as it can get. This was done as a way of trying to pinpoint which mod was causing the server overload problem, and now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that the uninstall of these mods will reveal this. Also, the Photo Galleries have been temporarily disabled, in an attempt to minimize as many variables as possible.

I've contacted the host and asked for an update on the current server stats. They'll have to monitor them for 24-48 hours to get an accurate accessment and will let me know....and we'll go from there.

[flyboy2610]

Good luck with it, Keith.

[mrsnicks]

Yeah.. I just noticed no location flags...

Keith.. when I clicked on the "view posts since last visit" it came up with 299 posts.. and showed 6 pages at the bottom.. but page 4, 5, and 6 gave me the message "No posts match your description" ... error message.

Is there a limit to that function as in how many it will remember and let you go back to?

Patrick

[71 LONG BED]

I hope everything gets worked out before you get to wits end.
Once again, thank you for all the hard work and dedication to keep this site going for all of us who have grown to love the company kept here.

[FORDification]

Yeah.. I just noticed no location flags...

Keith.. when I clicked on the "view posts since last visit" it came up with 299 posts.. and showed 6 pages at the bottom.. but page 4, 5, and 6 gave me the message "No posts match your description" ... error message.

Is there a limit to that function as in how many it will remember and let you go back to?

Patrick

Hmm....I honestly don't know. I've never run into this before nor had reason to even look into it. When I get caught up a little bit here I'll definitely check it out.

[DuckRyder]

Keith.. when I clicked on the "view posts since last visit" it came up with 299 posts.. and showed 6 pages at the bottom.. but page 4, 5, and 6 gave me the message "No posts match your description" ... error message.

It has always done this, I think that when you click the "2" or "3" it actually searches again, it has been a while (like long enough to read a page or two of new post) I think that it searches based on your newest visit.

My work around has always been to right click each page and "open in a new window" so it is there when I get to it.

[FORDification]

I've been spending the last few evenings doing a very monotonous manual cleaning of the database, in an effort to trim it down. I'm actually making pretty good progress, but it's very slow going. Here's what I've been doing:

Every time a post is made, each and every word in the post is compared to a list stored inside, and if the word has never been used before, it gets added to the database and assigned a number. Then when someone does a search, the database can quickly look for those words by grabbing all posts with the assigned number.

This is good, since it makes searches go pretty fast, for the most part. However, what really slows it down is when there are misspellings. You see, every time a word is misspelled, it gets added to the database as a 'new' word. These can really add up over time, especially when commonly-misspelled word is used often....and every time the word is misspelled a little differently.

Each word gets stored in a new row in the wordslist table in the database, so it definitely adds up. When I got started cleaning the wordlist, there were nearly 200,000 words stored inside, and a majority of them are words that would rarely (if ever) be used in a search, so they're being manually deleted from the database. After 3 long evenings of working on this, I've made it up through the D's so far, and have already deleted tens of thousands of words. I've noticed that since doing this, the search feature is MUCH faster....and it'll get better as I delete tens of thousands more. Then I just have to start making this a part of regular database maintenance, so it doesn't become the chore it is now.

Now here's the funny part: just as an example, while doing the D's this evening, I found FORTY-SEVEN different misspellings of the word 'definitely'....and that's just ONE word! Since I'm cleaning the database anyway, and I'm right on the section with these misspellings, I'm going to post them here, just for laughs....then as soon as I post this message, I can delete them from the wordlist, since these will be words that nobody will actually use in a search:

defanatly
defenately
defenatly
defenetly
defenilty
defenitly
defentaly
deffenitly
deffiantely
deffinately
deffinently
deffinetely
deffinetly
deffinitely
defiantely
defiantey
defiantley
defiantly
definalty
definantly
definate
definatelly
definately
definatley
definatly
defineitely
defineitley
defineitly
definently
definetally
definetaly
definetely
definetily
definetley
definetlty
definetly
definiently
defininantly
definitively
definitley
definitly
defintely
defintily
defintitely
defintley
diffinently
diffinitly

Now I'm not giving anyone a bad time about this (OK, maybe just a LITTLE bit!) since I know that not everyone is an ace speller, and it's really not at all important here, but this is an excellent example of why using the spellcheck is a good thing. Hopefully I'll be able to get it reinstated very soon.

[FORDification]

OK, I just posted that message and have now deleted all those misspellings. Just choose one of them at random and enter it into the search engine. You'll see it comes back stating "No topics or posts met your search criteria". That doesn't mean the word was deleted from the posts, it means it was deleted from the wordlist that database uses for searches. The misspellings are still in the individual posts....the search engine just ignores them now.

[theskytoucher]

Thank You again Keith for all the work you are doing on this site.

[kknip]

Thanks for your dedication to this site!!! I don't see where you find the time.Good luck on getting things resolved,I can't wait for the gallery to come back up again.

[71 LONG BED]

Thanks Keith! The "behind the sences" work you do is amazing, to say the least. As far as the spellcheck, I need it back, bad!

[TheEskimo]

Kieth, you totally Rock!! I can't even imagine the hours you put into this place, it's amazing

[theskytoucher]

Well keith I noticed all the features getting back onto the forum and i just wanted to thank you for all your hard work.

[68F250]

OH YEAH!! Thanks Keith!!

[FORDification]

Yeah, when I started the troubleshooting here to find the forum gremlins, I uninstalled all of the forum mods so that we could pinpoint the problem. However, even after uninstalling them all, the problem persisted, which did narrow down the possibilities...at least I know that it's not related to the forum mods. Therefore, I'll be slowly getting everything reinstalled very shortly while I continue to troubleshoot.

It'll still take me a few weeks to get things back 100%, mainly because I'm going to be gone for the next week, so please be patient a little while longer.