Now that 1.0 is out, Perhaps it's time to start opening a discussion with big board admins. A separate XF community forum would be great. We are so excited to start testing XF, but with 10MM posts we need to start talking Sphinx....
XF community suggestion: new forum for big board admins
- Thread starter kontrabass
- Start date
There is a good big board admin forum on smf. I think they require like 1 mill posts. Would be good to have something like that here. Its quite helpful getting feedback on the challenges of scaling to growth and stuff.
Also there is a homegrown big board search option being created, not sphinx.
Also there is a homegrown big board search option being created, not sphinx.
Not the main point of your post I know, but Kier has stated there will be a different solution for big boards:
Null
Well-known member
I don't believe a dedicated forum for 'big-board' administrators is the way to go, least not here on XenForo.com.
That would surely feel to a lot of people that there is some sort of separation or l33t status 'big-board' administrators have. Maybe it would even make some people think that 'big-board' administrators have pushing power over the software.
This community, the software is all about the entire community, nobody is different.
That would surely feel to a lot of people that there is some sort of separation or l33t status 'big-board' administrators have. Maybe it would even make some people think that 'big-board' administrators have pushing power over the software.
This community, the software is all about the entire community, nobody is different.
I like the idea, I think it was quoted somewhere that after 1 million posts the default search should be replaced with an alternative solution. I imagine there are other things for big boards that would help that would be irrelevent for smaller setups.
Um there are definitely much different issues to deal with on large forums compared to small ones. Most, if not all, other software packages have such boards and they aren't issues there.
It's not about alienating anyone, it's about XF catering to the crowd of forum admins that have issues that frankly get lost in general forums. VB has brushed off big-boarders for YEARS and we are sick of it. Oh - they finally have a sphinx BETA out now after how many years??? Having one place to get fellow big-board admin's help on everything from server optimization to CDN's to Sphinx (or other search solution) etc would be fantastic. There are of course more small boards out there - but there are a lot of us big-boarders who've had forums up since the 90's when VB was the bomb, who are looking desperately to XF to deliver us.
x4rl
Well-known member
Everyone pays the same....
Small vs Big
Why should big get something small don't ???
At dark said
Small vs Big
Why should big get something small don't ???
At dark said
Personally I could see a forum that everyone had access to devoted to large forums, they do have different issues to address.
Considering that 1.0 was just released I'm not terribly sure now would be the correct time to do that though considering how many hurdles there are for larger forums to switch to another software.
Considering that 1.0 was just released I'm not terribly sure now would be the correct time to do that though considering how many hurdles there are for larger forums to switch to another software.
I can see the use for a big board section here...as long as any licensed member can see it.. I do not have a large board but for future reference it would be nice to read about problem, reaction, solution in regards to large communities running the same software as me. Since there isn't a ton of HUGE boards out there yet running XF it shouldn't be that much of a PITA to manually add permissions for a handful of people to post in a section as I picture it.
Short answer: when the time is right for the site I am cool with it.
Short answer: when the time is right for the site I am cool with it.
I think there is some complement for that point of view.
A big board forum is needed so people that have forums with 500,000+ posts can talk between them, share experiences and share common issues, without interference from the users that are not having the same problems and that cannot really contribute to the conversation.
If someone with a big forum posts a problem, people might not see the point and reply with an uninformed opinion, because they have not run personally into the problem, or don't care at all, which makes sense. There is nothing worse than having a deep concern one has dismissed by a group of people that are just not interested, because they are not in the same stage.
It is not the same to manage a community with 10 moderators as one with 200. It is not the same to search in 20,000 posts than to search in 1M. It is not the same to have 40 forums as having 2000 and having problems with permissions and cache.
Regular users might not need memcache, a dedicated image server, a specific compiled version of PHP, might not care about using apache, nginx or lighttpd. Regular users do not want to weave the hooks into a precompiled php binary file. Regular users do not care about compression in the memcached stored content.
By not having a dedicated forum to big board owners you are exposing normal users to threads and concerns that do not apply to them
By not having a dedicated forum to big board owners you reduce the motivation for them to share their problems and solutions because they do not want to waste their time arguing with hundreds of users that do not have the knowledge or interest
I don't think they should put everyone in the same bucket. It is not healthy nor fair to anyone.
Agreed. I run one big-board vB on a dedicated box, and I've had to learn how to do many things I've never done before to get it to work. I now know all about tweaking my.cnf, opcode caches like APC, memcache, and implementing Sphinx, along with many other things. I run the Cacti script to track server loads and processes over time, to get a general idea of trends. And, I've pestered the staff of vB over in their support forum many times with my optimization requests.
I do not mind if smaller board members can see the area, though. For those who are setting up smaller forums that could grow into big boards, it helps them to see how to properly set forums up (rather than shooting from the hip), teaches advanced planning, and helps them learn more about making even smaller forums more server-friendly, especially on shared hosts where you need to be concerned about sharing resources and "playing nice" with neighbors. It also helps forum administrators from forums of any size when they can see the many member issues we run into on our big boards, and how we deal with them.
As for criteria, I don't know exactly what constitutes "big board," as it is not just about post counts. A board could have 500,000 posts but have 1,200 visitors online at any one time. That certainly is "big board" in one sense, as it takes a lot of resources to serve that many users. Another board could have 5,000,000 posts but only 200 active visitors online at a time. It may have manageable traffic, but will have other performance issues just due to the large number of stored posts.
I would suggest a separate area only to help with forum organization--keeping all big-board-related topics in one area, in other words, making them easier to browse. I often like to scan a forum section to see what is being discussed, and have picked up many tips that way. Not having to wade through 90% of the other threads to see the 10% that might interest me is helpful. And it need not be an exclusive club either--any small forum out there has the potential to become a "big board" one day.
I can see the need, but I feel that it would be best if anyone could post in it, firstly so that people do not feel excluded, and because even those not running 'big boards' may have experience relevant to a topic posted there. I certainly feel that if it were a club that required more than x number of posts to contribute a lot of potentially great contributions will not be made.
I can't imagine any problems with people posting nonsense if it has its own area, and if people do then their ability to post in that forum could be removed.
I can't imagine any problems with people posting nonsense if it has its own area, and if people do then their ability to post in that forum could be removed.
The problem with limiting a forum like that in some way, is 'who' actually gets access. For instance I've helped large forums in the past on certain issues and solved things in unique ways, yet my forum is not that large at this time. I would think others are may be in the same position. In addition some medium size boards owners may be able to provide a new perspective.
Keeping things nice in a forum like that could be handled through the normal channels. In addition the Personal Conversation system is available to anyone that wants to talk off line with someone or even a group of people.
Keeping things nice in a forum like that could be handled through the normal channels. In addition the Personal Conversation system is available to anyone that wants to talk off line with someone or even a group of people.
I don't think access needs to be limited at all, I think that instead it should jsut be made aware that the big boards forum is for discussion of big boards, and posts made of a non-relevent nature are going to be subject to more scruitiny that usual. Hell, even pick up an extra mod just for that sub-forum to make sure non-relevent chat goes elsewhere?
To extend the need also, I am going to be configuing / optimising my new dedi server soon for my site, I will most likely document it all, most of which will probably be irrelevent for small sites, but people making the move to a dedi server may find it useful.
I also don't think anybody is asking for it to be private or restricted access, just a dedicated forum would do
There aren't enough Big Board forums yet running XF, but I still like the idea just for sorting those into their own area for easier browsing, if there should be enough to warrant creating a separate space for them. Scanning topic titles in a forum section is often a good way to pick up new tips.
