XF community suggestion: new forum for big board admins
- Thread starter kontrabass
- Start date
ToDie4
Well-known member
Personally I don't mind either way, but I do have to wonder if in time will this create a sense of Elitism on the site, could it not possibly generate an air of XenForo caring more for Big Board owners than hobbyists etcetera because they have special and preferential treatment.
What about Big Board owners having their own specific forums but having to pay a yearly fee to have access to those segregated forums, wouldn't this then remove any sense of foul play at any level!
What about Big Board owners having their own specific forums but having to pay a yearly fee to have access to those segregated forums, wouldn't this then remove any sense of foul play at any level!
whynot
Well-known member
No,it would not.
For a fee the elite group would feel that their problems need immediate attention from the developers.
Other(ordinary?) members would feel that the elite group gets more attention than them.
ToDie4
Well-known member
T'was just a thought, like I stated, I don't mind either way, just wondering how it could all be perceived is all.
My personal opinion is that large boards face a unique set of problems when it comes to things such as hardware, server configuration and optimisation, search solutions, etc.
That being the case, I can see why a separate section would be useful to group all relevant threads together.
However, there should be no restrictions with regards to who can and can't view or post in said forum.
After all, every big board was once a small board and some of the practices (e.g. optimisation) can apply equally across the board (pun intended
).
That being the case, I can see why a separate section would be useful to group all relevant threads together.
However, there should be no restrictions with regards to who can and can't view or post in said forum.
After all, every big board was once a small board and some of the practices (e.g. optimisation) can apply equally across the board (pun intended
).
EQnoble
Well-known member
Well I was thinking of it this way, I don't have a big board...in fact technically by content I have no forum but...the point is...I am as much a noob as anyone could be when it comes to running a community so this is my point of view.
Big Board owners as a section to me seems like it should be a place where the big board owners can post amongst each other and easily find posts relating to big boards only. When an owner of a larger board needs something he may need a totally different approach than the average forum user. It is for that reason I think the average person shouldn't be able to post in a section like that until they have their board verified by staff. I mean if you don't have a large board yet (or are not quite close yet) , your questions probably are irrelevant as they won't pertain for another million posts or so and that is how I have been approaching this (on subjects such as sphinx search and other things) .
I am not saying those are not good questions to ask. But that is what the development questions section is about. Since big boards usually have unique circumstances they will have less options than the average user and this would be a place for the "elites" as was said before to brain-up and figure out solutions and approaches. I don't see how this correlates into special service at all for the big guys. It is merely a section where individuals who are busy running million+ post sites on xf can easily convene at the site that makes most sense to do it at and discuss problems that are relevant to them and the trade off for us is we get to read about their trials and learn from them...the elites. I think it is rather symbiotic.
Big Board owners as a section to me seems like it should be a place where the big board owners can post amongst each other and easily find posts relating to big boards only. When an owner of a larger board needs something he may need a totally different approach than the average forum user. It is for that reason I think the average person shouldn't be able to post in a section like that until they have their board verified by staff. I mean if you don't have a large board yet (or are not quite close yet) , your questions probably are irrelevant as they won't pertain for another million posts or so and that is how I have been approaching this (on subjects such as sphinx search and other things) .
I am not saying those are not good questions to ask. But that is what the development questions section is about. Since big boards usually have unique circumstances they will have less options than the average user and this would be a place for the "elites" as was said before to brain-up and figure out solutions and approaches. I don't see how this correlates into special service at all for the big guys. It is merely a section where individuals who are busy running million+ post sites on xf can easily convene at the site that makes most sense to do it at and discuss problems that are relevant to them and the trade off for us is we get to read about their trials and learn from them...the elites. I think it is rather symbiotic.
CTXMedia
Well-known member
Big Boards
For the unique issues of site owners with +1million posts
Yes please.
I've spent months optimising my dedicated server; Apache, APC, eAccelerator, Sphinx, CRON, MySQL, InnoDB, my.cnf, tuning-primer.sh, mysqltuner.pl, FastCGI, PHP as a DSO, KeepAliveTimeout, GZip, mod_deflate, expires headers, memcached, change tables to memory (HEAP), lighttpd, nginx, litespeed, CDN, time to first byte ...
... all of which will likely mean little or nothing to small board owners.
Big board owners have a greater technical need at the server level - one that is not within the experience or requirements of many small site owners (people who are on shared servers and whom don't have access to the nitty gritty of their server setup).
That is not to say it won't be useful for small board owners; up-and-coming site owners will benefit from a library of help and advice - assistance on how to move from a shared to dedicated server platform - pointers for tools/commands/packages that might help with managing their new servers themselves - pitfalls and good practice guidance - server tuning and optimisation, etc.
I don't think you'd need to make it exclusive either - the deeper technical level will dictate a form of self moderation anyway; people with no interest or understanding won't feel inclined to participate, or if they do, those of us with more experience can educate/assist as required, or the mods can remove the "fluff" if it's of no value to a thread.
A positive move for XF if you go ahead with this, and not at all the "exclusive" club some people seem to think it might be ...
Cheers,
Shaun
For the unique issues of site owners with +1million posts
Yes please.
I've spent months optimising my dedicated server; Apache, APC, eAccelerator, Sphinx, CRON, MySQL, InnoDB, my.cnf, tuning-primer.sh, mysqltuner.pl, FastCGI, PHP as a DSO, KeepAliveTimeout, GZip, mod_deflate, expires headers, memcached, change tables to memory (HEAP), lighttpd, nginx, litespeed, CDN, time to first byte ...
... all of which will likely mean little or nothing to small board owners.
Big board owners have a greater technical need at the server level - one that is not within the experience or requirements of many small site owners (people who are on shared servers and whom don't have access to the nitty gritty of their server setup).
That is not to say it won't be useful for small board owners; up-and-coming site owners will benefit from a library of help and advice - assistance on how to move from a shared to dedicated server platform - pointers for tools/commands/packages that might help with managing their new servers themselves - pitfalls and good practice guidance - server tuning and optimisation, etc.
I don't think you'd need to make it exclusive either - the deeper technical level will dictate a form of self moderation anyway; people with no interest or understanding won't feel inclined to participate, or if they do, those of us with more experience can educate/assist as required, or the mods can remove the "fluff" if it's of no value to a thread.
A positive move for XF if you go ahead with this, and not at all the "exclusive" club some people seem to think it might be ...
Cheers,
Shaun
Robert F Schmitz
Well-known member
+1
As noted by others, the ablilty of SB owners to read and see what issues may lie ahead of them is a positive thing. In ways it is similar to a n00b, to which in some ways I still belong (coding as an example), learning the ropes from reading posts of more seasoned SB owners. There have been times when I have posted or read other's posts that made little sense in a conversation because they didn't know yet. I see it as a learning curve that has its flat times but as your site grows, you have more to learn.
Separate section within this site, sure, but all should be able to read and as Dean commented, there may be that person with a different view who may have a good ability to think outside the box that can be of assistance regardless of forum size.
Rigel Kentaurus
Well-known member
I am a little sad this one didn't make the forum re-org
Blackbeard
Well-known member
There isn't enough support yet for big boards. I don't particular like to advertise my big board, with my username sometimes. It could give secrets away if I'm inquiring into something particular with software. Beyond the points already made Brogan, I would like to see one eventually.
Rigel Kentaurus
Well-known member
Jim Boy
Well-known member
** Bump **
Time for this topic to be raised once again.
IMO issues relating to big board implementations differ in two ways. Firstly Xenforo is designed around a single server model, to get Xenforo to work across multiple servers is doable, but there are no guidelines issued by Xenforo as to the process. Not that this would be easy as the environment in which this happens will vary from site to site. Secondly big boards are more likely to have address issues of redundancy, again an esoteric subject.
Since this topic was raised Xenforo has gained popularity and has grown, the number of big boards has certainly grown, at least two of the three current biggest boards were not running on Xenforo when this topic was last mentioned. This community is a little frustrating for admins of big board users, topics that are of interest are hard to find. User stories about how some of the big installations were configured would help other users.
Big boards are simply another way in which Xenforo is utilised, having that category of information would certainly improve the implementations of the most prominent boards out there, which can only be good for the xenforo community as a whole.
As for access to the board - info on the board could be useful to everyone and I can't see on what basis you would restrict it.
Time for this topic to be raised once again.
IMO issues relating to big board implementations differ in two ways. Firstly Xenforo is designed around a single server model, to get Xenforo to work across multiple servers is doable, but there are no guidelines issued by Xenforo as to the process. Not that this would be easy as the environment in which this happens will vary from site to site. Secondly big boards are more likely to have address issues of redundancy, again an esoteric subject.
Since this topic was raised Xenforo has gained popularity and has grown, the number of big boards has certainly grown, at least two of the three current biggest boards were not running on Xenforo when this topic was last mentioned. This community is a little frustrating for admins of big board users, topics that are of interest are hard to find. User stories about how some of the big installations were configured would help other users.
Big boards are simply another way in which Xenforo is utilised, having that category of information would certainly improve the implementations of the most prominent boards out there, which can only be good for the xenforo community as a whole.
As for access to the board - info on the board could be useful to everyone and I can't see on what basis you would restrict it.
Brent W
Well-known member
If you have a big board and are an active admin I recommend applying here: http://www.bigboardadmin.com/
Dakis
Well-known member
I have applied there months ago and never got a response.
Wildcat Media
Well-known member
I'm on board. A Big Board area here would be welcome, and I know I could contribute a bit.
Over at vB, we were relegated to a single, long thread that rambled for years and took forever to navigate since the search feature was lacking. But I learned a lot from it nonetheless! Aside from learning about and installing APC, Sphinx was the one thing that really saved our forum from a slow, miserable death caused by MySQL congestion. In fact, we were able to cut back from two servers to one, and even toward the end, Sphinx still dealt out search results in half a second or less.
I do agree it needs discussion, and having it here is where it belongs. Those of us running large forums have a lot of experience and stories to swap. Not only that, if it's open to everyone, it shows others, and potential customers, that xF can work on large forums. And...best of all, with it being in xF's own community, we can always tag a developer or a moderator to bring attention to something they may be able to provide feedback on and, hopefully, monitor in the long run as a means of product improvement. Granted our share of the overall market for XF is probably a small fraction, but whichever efficiencies we can share helps everyone in the long run.
There are multiple ways to set up multi-server setups, XenForo doesn't target itself to one particular method, its up to the admin in question to decide whats best for their site.
Frontend side, as long as XF can access the defined data and internal data directories, you have some way of either ensuring sessions are persistantly served to one user via the load balancer, or you use a shared session method (such as memcached) and some way to access the database, it will work.
Currently, I think the biggest "flaw" is that XF doesnt have any replication support for MySQL (though, again, there are several large boards using MySQL replication and XenForo, as long as the data is kept in sync from the master to the slave(s) theres no real issue there either.
DRE
Well-known member
I have a small forum. Like @Rigel Kentaurus said, I don't have the same problems nor am I interested in big board problems. By all means, have your own subforum. I don't care if I have access or not. Doesn't phase me a bit. Take your elastic search with you too while your at it cause that seems like it's more suited for big boards and is overkill for us small board owners.
