DRE
Well-known member
My site also has around 200K posts. On a scale of 1 to 5 how do you think your user's experience has been enhanced by ES?
XF community suggestion: new forum for big board admins
- Thread starter kontrabass
- Start date
Jim Boy
Well-known member
This is good example of the sort of discussion that a big board forum should encompass. I've searched for info on this topic and not found anything, although there probably is a discussion somewhere deep within the bowels of Xenforo. Not that your answer even adequately addressed the internal data issue. For starters what internal data is important to all nodes within the cluster and what internal data can be left to a single node.
All internal data should be accessible for all nodes. How you choose to do that again is down to the sysadmin. The easiest would probably be some sort of NAS, lsyncd or something like drbd.
Jim Boy
Well-known member
None of those solutions are great for me. Servers get spawned and destroyed frequently in my environment so I can't set static addresses for lsyncd and drbd. And NAS's have a terrible network overhead. However I've found that other than attachments, I'm not really seeing any issues with letting every server run their internal data independently, albeit I'm still running 1.1.5. What sort of issues should I be seeing?
Wildcat Media
Well-known member
Yep, we've been there. I took over our "big board" forum more years ago than I care to remember! Once we moved onto our own server, we hit a roadblock after several months. I was used to shared hosting, not a dedicated box. So after reading, the lightbulb moment--we need to have my.cnf tweaked. Sure enough, we made substantial changes to my.cnf and we were back up and running. Got crippled again, and tried one or two more then. Then I had APC installed, and it dropped our loads in half. We then outgrew the server and got our scheduled hardware upgrade. Sphinx helped us out when that server got overloaded. I did other edits to the core vB files to lessen the loads as well.
Point is--we were never 9.4 million posts like we are today. I think we were well over a million when I took over, but I learned a ton by reading through "big board" posts, and I also applied some of those concepts to other forums I've run that are far smaller, even today.
Wildcat Media
Well-known member
If there's one thing I would stress about a "big board" area: some of XF's features could use a tweak or two to help with high-volume boards, now and in the future. With our traffic, we now see dozens of reported posts a day. We're handing out warnings--we've never used a warning system before. There are other requests to fix thread titles, assist users, help someone with a login, move a thread to the correct area, etc. Anything that would help us work more efficiently helps us out. Having the moderator tools work intuitively is a must, as many moderators are great "people persons" but might not be the most technically oriented. We're regularly getting 1300-1400 visitors online per day now, and with that, the volume of problems can become overwhelming.
That is where a Big Board section would help: "What if (feature x) could do (this) instead of (that)?" Good ideas can be discused here, then posted in Suggestions, or we could kick around the idea of having an add-on written as another alternative. It's just that as the staff operates at a higher level, they tend to see what obstacles are in the way of doing their jobs easily, and it's the admins (like us) who have to translate those needs into the technical terms which can be discussed in an area dedicated to busy forums with high volumes of posts. And if a fellow admin (or one of XF's staff) sees an opportunity to point out a feature we're underutilizing? That's perfect! Great exchange of information.
That is where a Big Board section would help: "What if (feature x) could do (this) instead of (that)?" Good ideas can be discused here, then posted in Suggestions, or we could kick around the idea of having an add-on written as another alternative. It's just that as the staff operates at a higher level, they tend to see what obstacles are in the way of doing their jobs easily, and it's the admins (like us) who have to translate those needs into the technical terms which can be discussed in an area dedicated to busy forums with high volumes of posts. And if a fellow admin (or one of XF's staff) sees an opportunity to point out a feature we're underutilizing? That's perfect! Great exchange of information.
Seems like a great idea to me. I've learned a lot over the years from various "big board" forums and subforums. It's always nice to be able to network and pick the brains of other big board admins, its helped me to avoid making mistakes and gotten me out of a few problems. The wealth of knowledge in these types of forums is unparallelled.
The Big Forum List thread seems to be growing quickly and having a big board subforum might help with encouraging other big boards to migrate, bringing more knowledge and funds into the XF community.
The Big Forum List thread seems to be growing quickly and having a big board subforum might help with encouraging other big boards to migrate, bringing more knowledge and funds into the XF community.
Mouth
Well-known member
Applied 8 days ago, and received the automated ticket response saying an agent will respond "as soon as possible"
4 days later and I had not heard anything, so sent a follow-up email enquiring about status. Still haven't heard anything.
Doesn't sound like a community that communicates and wants involvement. Appears more like elitist, un-interested, and uncommunicative. Or dead?
Brent W
Well-known member
The owner is incredibly busy with his business and family. I am trying to help him as best as I can but I do not have access to approving people.
Also, making accusations and throwing insults at people and a community you have never met about is incredibly rude and a sure fire way to not be considered.
Razasharp
Well-known member
I used to be a member there - asked for my account to be closed.
I didn't like how others were getting slagged off, lots of libel/slander about developers who weren't privy to the conversation - the admin didn't do much about it.
So I would be in favour of a Big Board section here - mostly to discuss XF related items, rather than general BigB issues. There is a good Big Board area over at www.theadminzone.com - I think Sandman is a member here and he doesn't allow that sort of nonsense. (Tho I haven't been on there for a long time)
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Brent W
Well-known member
You were kicked off because you broke the rules of the forum but this isn't the place to discuss this is it? If anyone wants to apply they are free to. The forum is very private and we have a strict rule of what is posted on the forum stays on the forum, which is what you broke. Its a great resource, we do a yearly meet where you get to meet all the members face to face. This last year we had people from as far as Amsterdam come to Austin, TX for the meetup as well as the creator of Tapatalk.
If you don't like the community and think we are elitist and slandering people, then don't apply and move on with your life.
Razasharp
Well-known member
Please don't try to re-write history. I was not kicked off at all - I asked for my account to be closed, because members like yourself were accusing a developer of copyright theft and tarnishing his good name - and that was not something I was happy with, particularly as I knew the developer who was being slandered!
It reminds me of FB - a place where people go to gossip. Ugh.
Brent W
Well-known member
I am not rewriting history and this will be the last I will reply to you about this. I and many others on this forum are members of this community and can not be happier with the quality of people that we have dedicated to running forums. If you disagree then feel free to. Your posts will be ignored as I refuse to get into a useless back and forth over your feelings.
For those interested in being a part of the community and have a large successful forum, feel free to apply on the site. I will do my best to make sure that you get looked at.
Razasharp
Well-known member
Well I will let people make up their own minds, by taking into account your publicly visible history (well, what's not been removed from public display anyway) - on forums such as vB.com - and mine.
