How much of the server load comes from people just keeping the PopUp sticky list going on their computer?  Would it make a difference if jase disabled that until he finds the correct solution to the server/load issue?

Other thoughts (and no, these won't be popular either) -

1.  Forced log offs if no activity on screen for some period of time... perhaps 30-60 minutes. (i.e. get rid of greedy bandwidth hogs).

2.  Not permitting right clicks 'open new tab' or 'open new window' until the new server is running.  (ooh, I'd hate this, but I hate getting bumped off too).

3.  Disabling pictures until the new server is running. (and I'd hate this, too, since I use a lot of maps and pix).

4. and as mentioned above, disabling the sticky list pop-up.


If none of these would help.... then so be it.


***
pulls out poncho and goggles to protect himself from the rotten tomato barrage about to commence
***

How about I toss a rose for at least thinking about the problem and offering some solutions.  *Grins*  Just watch the thorns.


Anyway, my only comment is that the pop-up sticky list is actually less load on the server than the Main Menu is, which is why it was created -- so that people wouldn't be constantly hitting the Main Menu and causing an increased load when their Sticky List was much more efficient.  As far as I know, this is still the case.

***
catches rose and cleans up the resultant bleeding from the pricked fingers
***

In that case, I'll start using the pop-up.

WG

Personally I find it easier to NOT hit refresh on the main menu when my sticky list popup is automatically checking for me.
If anyone else has the same problem - try it.

Is there any way to get the message out that using the popup sticky list is actually less resource-intensive than refreshing? I always assumed it was the other way around, so I'd venture to guess that a lot of other users made the same erroneous assumption. Perhaps an announcement of some sort?

And I don't think disabling right clicking to open new tabs would do much. There's nothing to prevent somebody from opening a new blank tab and just navigating to the page they need, which would put more of a strain on the server, defeating the purpose.

What about the other solutions. If it helps then I say try em. I use pop-ups all the time as they help to get to the games I both run or want to browse. If there are suggestions on how to correct the prob I'd like to know. Right now I run four games and have another which will be my last I want to start. Needless to say as I'm sure most have experience I lose a lot of game time because I can't get on.

With the exception of the Game Map feature (which is quite small), and the graphics which show you which threads have new posts (which are rather useful), every picture on RPoL (including the portraits) is hosted elsewhere, so they have less effect on RPoL's bandwidth than you might think.

I don't think this would have any impact.  If you stop clicking, then no pages are being loaded and there is no data being transferred and the only load is the RAM on the server to keep you logged in, which should be a non-issue for internet bandwidth.  This assumes you do not have any automated checkers running like the pop-up sticky or the live feeds.  Those would eat up bandwidth even when left unattended.


This is not something that RPOL can control since it is a built in function of whatever browser is used.


As BBR said, the pictures do not use the same server, so I don't think there is much to gain from this.


As was stated above, the pop-up was created specifically because it is lighter load than the Main Menu.  As such, this would only be good for use with your Idea #1 where a user may have left their computer running the sticky even when they are not watching it.

EDIT:
In summary, it seems the only thing here that might help would be to disable the automated functions if they are left unattended for X amount of time (maybe 60 minutes or something).
This message was last edited by the user at 20:32, Tue 15 Apr 2008.

Unfortunately the main culprits are the game menu, along with the composing and displaying message pages.

Other words. Something that can't be taken down. Without shutting the site down till it's fixed.

At the risk of seeming like a hypocrite (at least I'm waiting for off-peak hours to say it), it would probably at least marginally decrease the server load if people would stop posting new notices to complain about it...

I mean, I realize everyone wants to do something about it, not everyone has the luxury I do of having their best times to post actually being outside the problem time frame.  I'm not singling anyone out...it's just that this is...what, the seventh or eighth thread I've seen in the last month about the connectivity issues with the server...this is actually one of the shorter ones, too.

The simple answer to the problem is, find different times to post.  At least until the server issue is handled.  It's inconvenient, yes...but really, is anybody's world going to cease to exist if they post at midnight, as opposed to 10 pm?

I think one problem is that there are some people who (rare I know) may have not encountered the problem before and do not search or look for any other article about it and so make their own.

Other than that there are new people as well who don't know what's going etc. etc. I think most of the threads that are recent have been by new members, that's just a guess though. :)

All we can do is wait.

Our new server has been ordered and the first payment made to Tranxact Global/NetDepot.

Our new server will consist of the following;

• Single QUAD Core 2.4GHz CPU
  (up from a single core CPU)
• 2GB of Memory
  (up from 1GB)
• Dual 250GB SATA drives, mirrored for redundancy
  (up from a single 80GB IDE)
• 2000GB of GNAX (Global Net Access) Gold Bandwidth
  (I have tested their network and it seems very quick)

We are now waiting on our server to be commissioned so we can configure it for RPoL and then go about migrating the site.  More information will be posted as it becomes available.

:)  Thank you jase for your careful selection and efforts.  RPOL is a place that I very much enjoy, an escape in a very stressful world.  I have sworn a thousand times that when bankruptcy is no longer looming on the horizon, I will be happy to donate to this forum to support the hardware/software/manpower it takes to keep it running.

Thank you, again.

I believe it was the great Hans Christian Anderson who once said:

"Woohoo!"

No, wait...that was Homer Simpson.


Either way, thanks for your hard work.

I think some cash donations should be given. Is there a place where we can send it?

Just curious as to whether rpol is likely to have some downtime during the migration?

Big Mac, this thread in the Friends of RPoL forum might be of use:

link to a message in "FoRPoL"


Edited to add this thread in the General Forum, too.

link to a message in "General RPoL"

---

If you want to help decrease the server load, you can always avoid attempting to load the page to check its status by using downforeveryoneorjustme.com/rpol.net to check if the site is down...
This message was last edited by the user at 17:40, Sat 19 Apr 2008.

LadyAiken, "More information will be posted as it becomes available."  I'm sure as soon as jase knows, he'll inform us.

Considering the main sources of the major bandwidth hogs, consists of page refreshing, would it be beneficial to look into AJAX to soften that load? It may not lead to less requests, but it would lead to those requests being smaller. Considering how many hits, that may help lower total bandwidth costs of those pages.

*aplauds jase and gets him and all the mods their choice of free food so they can all have a good meal for once* jase, you and the mods here are all a godsend! thanks jase so much for rpol, and thanks to you mods that help keep it running in good order! Lets Eat!!

A toast: To RPoL! *raises a wineglass*

raises a glass. Thank you all. This truly is a wonderful site. To you Jase...all I can say is sorry for all I put you through in the past. Hope you can forgive someone who was....a much different person then. I grew up...and appreciate all you did to preserve the integrity of this site. Thank you.

Jase has indeed done a great job, and I know everyone I know here worth knowing agrees. This is the best game forum I've ever tried, and the mods do a fantastic job too. I think they are gluttons for punishment sometimes, but I respect every one of them, and have never had trouble with any one of the mods or jase here. In fact, if there's ever been trouble, it's always been on my end for mistakes, and never on theirs.

I'm sure the overload trouble has been a major headache for them, and they've been working overtime to fix the problem. I just hope when the move is made, the new company doesn't lose the disc again.

The WebHostingTalk Forums are the lovely forums that let us know about the disastrous "hey let's move from one side of the country to the other" relocation that our previous hosts decided to undertake, and by pure luck the same thread also put us in touch with the person who had an extra drive in their equipment; ours.  Why I mention this is because I realised that the forum was a very good source of information and have been utilising it since.  Tranxact (who are part of Global Net Access and Netdepot, or possibly visa-versa) have a good reputation within the forums and with all the options available (especially the good network and buydown options that allow us to lower our monthly payments) they seemed the perfect choice.

Picking a provider from the other side of the world is always a bit tricky, but hopefully I've done my homework.  The migration from our current hosts, ZipServers, will actually be the first properly phased migration we've ever done in our eight years of operations.

And for a small history lesson;

• 2000-2002.  CiHost shut down our website due to "excessive resource consumption" without providing us any way to see our utilisation beforehand and without any warning they were going to do it.  They also couldn't tell us what we were over-utilising.  They refused to turn our services back on and after about a week I managed to get a copy of the data from them.
• 2002-2004.  My previous place of employment then hosted RPoL on one of their shared servers, a nice piece of equipment with a redundant array of disks.  The site ran here for two years until a decision was made to move it off to our own server.  The day before the migration was to take place the aforementioned redundant array failed.  Fortunately the data had been replicated to the new server the night before so not much data was lost.
• 2004-2006.  WebHostingPlus lost our server and so to all the data!  After nearly two weeks our data was found by a WHP client who kindly gave us access to it.
• 2006-2008.  ZipServers are the only current hosting provider not to have failed us in a major way.  Just another week or so...  hold in there Zip!

Wow, you certainly spend a lot of time (and money!) on us Jase.

Thank you!

Indeed, thank you, jase!  And yay for word-of-mouth forums!  I expect you've posted there about the issues here?  But for ZipServers, I don't think the problem is with them, is it?  We just outgrew them; they might work fine for a smaller site?

I'm sure it's probably all our faults out here (Players/GMs) that we grew too big for the server because we love this site so much we've told all our friends, and got them to sign on to play our games or to join games we're in that we love.

I hope we don't outgrow the new server too soon, because the bigger we get, the more hassles there are for the mods and jase too, I'm sure. If the new server gives us room to grow though, I'm sure the move will be well worth it.

Jase and the wonderful crew of mods he has do a wonderful job moderating this site. Dealing with spoiled brats, underaged kids and immature adults must create a bit of stress for them, and they probably have days where they don't even want to think about RPOL and all the bs. I know I sure wouldn't want to do it. GMing a few games and dealing with players is bad enough sometimes when you get one who drives you up the wall. I couldn't imagine dealing with thousands of them; especially the ones who end up on banned lists or the ones with multiple accounts. I give you all Bronze Stars for the bravery you show dealing with moderating here.

The problem with the main menu is that it's pretty much the only way to navigate to a game.  I'll try to just keep the main menu open all the time from now on, never closing it.  That should reduce some small amount of strain on the servers.

Would it be possible to get a reduced front page option?  A sort of "sticky page" main page?

Actually, the Main Menu is not the only way to navigate to a game -- there's the pop-up sticky list.

What you describe is what the Pop-Up Sticky List is.  Each page has a "jump" link at the top, and the Main Menu has a "pop up my sticky list" link on it.  Both of these access the (same) pop-up list, which brings up a small window containing just your personal list of games.  This pop-up list can be set to refresh at regular times, and is the less-stress-on-the-server method we keep talking about for accessing game lists.
This message was last edited by a moderator at 01:10, Tue 22 Apr 2008.

So, it looks like I need to keep the Main Page open in order to access the sticky list?  It kept saying, "Window lost" or something like that.  If I need to keep the Main Page open, then it seems like it would conserve even more resources if I just shift-clicked on the games to open them and never used the sticky list.

It's refreshing the Main Page that puts a load on the server.  Keeping it open, without refreshing it, has little effect, which is where the popup Sticky List comes in.

Shift-clicking will work, but without the Sticky List to tell you when you have new posts, you won't know if it's worth opening up the game until you've opened up the game.

there is also the use of live feeds as well for the main menu, which is, in fact same thing as the normal main menu so it works out OK, those of us with the newst version of IE (i myself am using IE 8.0 beta) there is a little "feeds" button next to the homepage button that when clicked takes me right to the new updates via the feed itself, rather then refreshing.

I use it almost all the time now. It works.

Holy cow, I just clicked the orange button that I'd never noticed before and it brought up a page asking, "Do you want to add this to your Google Reader account" and I said, "Sure!"  Wow.

If we used Ajax, the main page could be like a sticky page -- blueing or purpling text as appropriate.  Then we wouldn't have to have a seperate sticky window popup.  I guess I should head over to the beta site to discuss how to code this?

Ignoring all the other problems porting to Ajax would cause, Ajax only saves on reloading the static content.  The only thing that really stays static on RPoL is the logo in the top left, everything else generally changes from page to page.  Even if the links in the bars were made uniformed it doesn't solve the problem that the majority of the data that RPoL sends is dynamically rendered, namely the main menu (people can add or remove games at any time, the post count can change, so to can the post date, game title, etc) and the heavily load pages I mentioned before; the game menu, the thread display screen and the compose screen (which, if you pause to consider it, you will realise has the last 5 posts at the bottom of it, ergo a mini thread display).

The majority of bandwidth consumed by RPoL (and major cause of resource usage on the back-end) is the threads.  Ajax can offer little benefit here and I think a careful approach to our resource problems needs to be taken, not just blindly implementing the latest web craze.
This message was last edited by admin at 06:21, Tue 22 Apr 2008.

Leaving the Main Page up and shift-clicking from it is a difficult habit to take up.  I'm used to, "going into a game, checking a thread or two, back to the Main Page, going into a different game, checking a thread or two, back to the Main Page, going into a different game, checking a thread or two, back to the Main Page, rinse, lather, repeat as necessary."

It is also made slightly harder because RPOL does not force links to open new windows.  While I agree with the policy, it does not help the server load problem.

Using the pop-up sticky list really does resolve this.  Give it a try.  Pop it up.  As Ghengis noted, you do need to leave the main window open -- links clicked in the pop-up window open in its source window.

But soon, you may well wonder why you didn't always use it.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was off-topic, at 18:38, Thu 24 Apr 2008.

Yeah, for sticky list. Seriously this is the way to go. I love it and it's how I do most games. If I want to check what else is out there I'll browse the rest but for the most part I go sticky and it not only helps on server...it's quick and easy too.

Would deleting unused and archived threads help any? I know lots of games with just 2 active threads, and maybe 4 or 5 pages of unused/closed or archived threads that still show up when you open the game.

Only if the old, large threads are used, as in people are loading and reading them often.  If the threads sit there, then no, they're not a problem (serving pages is the problem it seems, not storing them).
This message was last edited by a moderator at 02:43, Sun 27 Apr 2008.

So, I'll navigate to rpol.net and the main page loads.  Let's say it loads in Window G.  I popup the sticky list and it's tied to Window G.  I see what the sticky list says and click a link in it and the sticky list changes what is displayed in Window G from the main page to a game.  But since Window G no longer shows the main page, the sticky list closes.  At this point, I have no way of navigating from the one game to a different game without going through the main page again.

The only method I've found of having success with the sticky list is to navigate to the main page, popup the sticky list, then ignore the links in the sticky list and shift-click on the links in the main page to open those games in a new window, leaving the main page and sticky list untouched.

Are other people experiencing the same thing?  When the sticky list changes Window G from the main page to a game, does the sticky list remain open for you all?

Actually, yes, you do have a way to navigate from within a game without going through the Main Page.

Clicking on the "Jump" link (top right corner, close to the FAQs and Help links) will open the popup Sticky List from inside a game.

> But since Window G no longer shows the main page, the sticky list closes

No, not if you uncheck the box at the bottom of the Sticky List for "Close on Select".  As long as Window G exists and is on RPoL, the Sticky List will work.  If you remove the check in the box for "Close on Select" the sticky list window won't close when you click a link.

> At this point, I have no way of navigating from the one game to a different game without going through the main page again.

Again, no.  Each page has a "Jump" link on it, as I mentioned above in post #29.  This will also pop up your Sticky List and allow you to navigate to a new game without returning to the Main Menu.


Edit:  Ooo, Ron beats me!
This message was last edited by a moderator at 12:37, Thu 01 May 2008.

This is amazing!  Thanks. :)