[Important] What the hell just happened?!?

Halls of Meh and Shame are missing and not in the optional list. Did you decide to just let them stay nuked?
Well, so are all of the other forums other than General at the moment.

Edit:
Never mind, had to opt into them on the optional forums.
 
I hit a wall at Nergigante a few months back and haven't picked it up since but would like to again. Currently playing through God of War and Ni No Kuni 2 so maybe after those.
I’d be more than happy to help starting Friday after I turn in my drawings to the art show :)

You can have a good laugh at my hot mess fighting style and we can destroy him!
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Indulge me for a moment, I got a wild hair.

When I was
An admin
Our founder
Went into his cpanel
to free up some drive space

He said "Oh man,
There's too much
space usage
I'll free some by deleting
the "Test" SQL database.

He clicked it
Deleted
the DB
but then the forum seized up
and horror masked his face.

Because as it
turns out, see
Test DB
Was actually what was "live."
Our post were all erased.

Sometimes I get the feeling
That all I do is gripe
And other times I think that I should go
And through it all, the rise and fall
The posts that all got wiped
And though they're gone, we want you all to know

We'll carry on, we'll carry on
And though your posts got wiped, believe me
Their memory will carry on, we'll carry on
And in my heart I can't contain it
The error logs won't explain it

A site that sends you reeling
From decimated threads
A lack of timely backup protocol
So paint it black and roll it back
Let's post it loud and clear
Defiant to the end, we hear the call

To carry on, we'll carry on
And though the posts are gone, believe me
Their memory will carry on, we'll carry on
And though truncated and deleted
We weary users marching

On and on, we carry through the threads
(Oh, oh, oh)
Disappointed friends and relatives
(Oh, oh, oh)
Take a look at me
'Cause I could not care at all

Do or die
You'll never make me
Because the world
Will never shut my trap
You can try
You'll never break me
We wanna all
We want to post this crap
Won't explain
Or say I'm sorry
I'm unashamed
I'm gonna show my scar
Give a cheer
For all the broken
Listen here
Because it's who we are
I'm just a man
I'm not a hero
Just a mod who had to sing this song
I'm just a man
I'm not a hero
I don't care

We'll carry on, we'll carry on
And though your posts are gone, believe me
The memory will carry on, we'll carry on
And though your posts all got deleted,
The weary users marching on

Do or die
You'll never make me
Because the world
Will never shut my trap
You can try
You'll never break me
We wanna know
We want to post this crap
Do or die (we'll carry on)
You'll never make me (we'll carry on)
Because the world (we'll carry on)
Will never shut my trap
You can try
You'll never break me
We wanna all
We want to post this craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap (we'll carry on)
 
I just had to:

davesnothereman.jpg


Yes, of course I'll eventually relent, but that day ... is not today.

EDIT: Thanks, Gas. I don't feel like I'm the only one now.

--Patrick
 
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Indulge me for a moment, I got a wild hair.

When I was
An admin
Our founder
Went into his cpanel
to free up some drive space

He said "Oh man,
There's too much
space usage
I'll free some by deleting
the "Test" SQL database.

He clicked it
Deleted
the DB
but then the forum seized up
and horror masked his face.

Because as it
turns out, see
Test DB
Was actually what was "live."
Our post were all erased.

Sometimes I get the feeling
That all I do is gripe
And other times I think that I should go
And through it all, the rise and fall
The posts that all got wiped
And though they're gone, we want you all to know

We'll carry on, we'll carry on
And though your posts got wiped, believe me
Their memory will carry on, we'll carry on
And in my heart I can't contain it
The error logs won't explain it

A site that sends you reeling
From decimated threads
A lack of timely backup protocol
So paint it black and roll it back
Let's post it loud and clear
Defiant to the end, we hear the call

To carry on, we'll carry on
And though the posts are gone, believe me
Their memory will carry on, we'll carry on
And though truncated and deleted
We weary users marching

On and on, we carry through the threads
(Oh, oh, oh)
Disappointed friends and relatives
(Oh, oh, oh)
Take a look at me
'Cause I could not care at all

Do or die
You'll never make me
Because the world
Will never shut my trap
You can try
You'll never break me
We wanna all
We want to post this crap
Won't explain
Or say I'm sorry
I'm unashamed
I'm gonna show my scar
Give a cheer
For all the broken
Listen here
Because it's who we are
I'm just a man
I'm not a hero
Just a mod who had to sing this song
I'm just a man
I'm not a hero
I don't care

We'll carry on, we'll carry on
And though your posts are gone, believe me
The memory will carry on, we'll carry on
And though your posts all got deleted,
The weary users marching on

Do or die
You'll never make me
Because the world
Will never shut my trap
You can try
You'll never break me
We wanna know
We want to post this crap
Do or die (we'll carry on)
You'll never make me (we'll carry on)
Because the world (we'll carry on)
Will never shut my trap
You can try
You'll never break me
We wanna all
We want to post this craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap (we'll carry on)
This is the best post ever made on this forum and will never be topped.
 
Not to want to be too annoying, but I've now checked it on two phones and three PCs, with different networks and different DNS'es, and the forum still has horrible slowdowns since the change. Any page I open loads 10-15%, then hangs for 10+ seconds, then suddenly loads fully.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Lord Rendar was saying something similar in discord... I wonder if it's something specific to our european users? Hrmmm.
 
After using it for awhile, I agree that it's horribly slow. I'll run a few quick tests to see if I can provide more info than that.
 
Well, first the website is simply slow - server response times are 0.66 seconds - which is pretty abysmal.

Second, a lot of items, like the rating icons, are not marked as cacheable with an expiration time, so they are loaded every single time.

There are a number of items which aren't compressed very much, and while image quality suffers, this combined with the above two means that things like the forum banner images may be a big part of the slowdown.

Those were the top three recommendations from google pagespeed insights:

https://developers.google.com/speed...happened.32656/page-3#post-1395203&tab=mobile

Even if you don't have much control over server response time, fixing caching of items that will rarely change but are always present could be a big improvement.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The odd thing is I'm not noticing these performance issues, either at work or at home. But the issues Bubbles and Rendar are reporting are way more than 0.66 second load times.. Bubble's talking major 10+ second hangs in the middle of loading, and Rendar was saying sometimes it would take minutes to get a page to load at all.

In any case, this seems like things that need to be brought to the host's attention.
 
I just did some timing and testing. Opening a thread I've visited our haven't visited since the Big Event doesn't seem to matter much, nor amount of gifs or media to display. I opened four threads, And they took 17, 24, 4 and 22 seconds to open (on my phone). The fastest one was Gared's PTSD one, the slowest the MCU one.
 
I had noticed the forum seemed slower to load threads lately, thought it was just hiccups but... In case it helps: I'm in GA with a 120mbps-ish down connection. From doing a few sample hard refreshes, they all look roughly like this:
1525722700255.png

... Where the green bar is the first request (i.e. the html page, 60KB in the example above). The wait times vary but are noticeable. Could something be causing the server to choke/idle when generating the pages prior to sending them?
 
On my desktop, I openend four threads simultaneously. Load times were 34, 62, 67 and 68 seconds.
In case this helps pin down a problem, the "loading" icon in the tab header stays on the grey circle going coutnerclockwise for almost the entire time, changing to the blue, clockwise one maybe half a second or so before it loads. In contrast to some other slow websites, where it's the blue clockwise one that's spinning for seconds. Sadly, I have no idea what that icon actually *means*
 

GasBandit

Staff member
On my desktop, I openend four threads simultaneously. Load times were 34, 62, 67 and 68 seconds.
In case this helps pin down a problem, the "loading" icon in the tab header stays on the grey circle going coutnerclockwise for almost the entire time, changing to the blue, clockwise one maybe half a second or so before it loads. In contrast to some other slow websites, where it's the blue clockwise one that's spinning for seconds. Sadly, I have no idea what that icon actually *means*
The former is "attempting to reach the website," the latter is "webpage requested, waiting for data."

This smells like DNS propagation problems.
 
The former is "attempting to reach the website," the latter is "webpage requested, waiting for data."

This smells like DNS propagation problems.
I dismissed it at the beginning for that reason, but it's been a week, right? Shouldn't be an issue any longer.

That said, I wonder what DNS's are being used by those with slow times vs those with fast times.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I dismissed it at the beginning for that reason, but it's been a week, right? Shouldn't be an issue any longer.

That said, I wonder what DNS's are being used by those with slow times vs those with fast times.
I'm using 129.150.35.251, NTT America's DNS server, which has served me pretty well since switching to it.
 
FWIW I have this happening at home as well, initial request starts loading, progress bar sits there a while, then finally...bang, page arrives all at once. And I’m still using a server in my house and on my LAN that caches DNS requests, so DNS resolution really shouldn’t be an issue, at least not after that first page loads (unless what, the TTL is 12 seconds or something?)

EDIT: TTL for A record is 4 hrs.

—Patrick
 
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