Board malfunctions

Root cause found, IM's sent, email will be sent after I do some stuff IRL, and it should then only take about as long as it takes to recompile PHP. Expect the board to be down for 15 minutes, and then to get errors like in this thread. Just clear your cache.

WHILE WE'RE ON THE TOPIC, IS THERE ANY WAY TO GET THE $^*^*^$)^@$&*(^*^$*$^*$^&^^@#$ REP BOX TO POP UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GORRAM SCREEN LIKE IT USED TO? AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Yeah that sucks too. I tab to the comments part of the rep box and sometimes it just tabs off the box and I lose it.

No. We can do that, sort of, but when you click submit, it doesn't, and instead of closing, the rep window goes to the thread you're in.

Progress on the munched post container issue. I've replicated it. If people are still experiencing it, copy the URL you're at and post it here. I've seen a pattern I want to confirm.

BTW, WTF just happened? I was kicked out for about half an hour...

Something, which seems to be intermittent, is making our server usage 10-50x as large as it should be. I'm working on it.

Any word on this?

Pretty sure there's no way that last one was our fault, although some of the previous ones have been. the host and I are looking into it.

Sounds like your boot needs to look into someone's ass.

Y'know, I surf some different boards and they never seem to have the issues we do here. What gives? Why can we find a stable server with some stable software? Not that I'm complaining- beggars can't be choosers...

Because they have professionals that do this for a living?

And the other thing is that those other boards probably have their own dedicated servers, where if there is a problem they can solve just about anything they need with no outside intervention.

Which, of course, begs a couple questions.

1) Why haven't we made Kyle a tech admin yet? Sure, we can't make him a mod because his views on what a mod should and the views of about 90% of the rest of board just clash too much. But why's that a hinderance when looking into giving him a tech admin position?
Not to say the two of you are doing a bad job (and for free nonetheless!) but I don't see how another pair of helping hands would hurt (unless of course you're gonna do major coding and don't want too many people fucking around - but I don't see anything indicating you're going to do anything like that).
Sure, Kyle may not want to do it but that's not the issue here. (or find someone else! - Nick has done a great job for the time I've been here but with O2C's help stuff's gotten both better and - more importantly and I think O2C deserves more credit for this than for the other thing, probably - a lot faster. And I'm pretty sure Nick likes having someone help him.)

2) Don't really think the software's at fault here - it's vBulletin after all, supposedly the best. Maybe worth looking into all the mods and reconsidering whether we really need them all.

3) Why aren't we on a dedicated server yet? I recall Elwood saying the board cost him "about a dollar a day" - that's for the webspace and the two domains, I assume. Checking www.godaddy.com, dedicated servers start at 64$/month. Now, I'm pretty sure godaddy's crap but it's the first thing I came up with. If money's the question, I'm sure we can come up with a solution (because, let's be honest, the problem's never been that people weren't gonna donate but that Elwood didn't want the donations). OTOH, we shouldn't get that much traffic - Nick's said that there are about 100 members who are active each day so we certainly won't need the 500$/month that trekunited.com claimed to need.

4) How about adding a couple more people to the highest level (i.e. admins)? For god's sake, don't appoint more mods, that's not where the trouble is - find a couple more people to take place of administrative stuff (not the tech stuff, the other stuff). It's annoying to see the White Room gone for three weeks, it's frustrating to have to wait 3 weeks to have a new board approved - sure, I can understand that Elwood wants to take care of this stuff personally and I can also understand that real life comes first but why not get some trusted help?

Anyway, this is in no way meant to be "harsh criticism" or anything like that because I think you're mostly doing a pretty darn good job - nonetheless, I thought I'd throw a couple ideas out there (don't really think you'll change anything but trying can't hurt ).

2. We have not a few hacks and plugins installed, so it's not just vBulletin.

3. Those other places (and I'm really surprised TBBS hasn't switched to this yet) have their own servers on their own T1 or SDSL, and more importantly, physical access to them, or at least co-location. You'll also note most of them have ads. This is not a coincidence.

DDoS?

Elwood's backing up his Yankee-soldiers-defiling-Southern-women porno again.

Doubtful... recently something's been putting the processors in iowait - waiting for the hard disk longer than should be necessary for anything. So I doubt it. Things seem to be running smoothly today though.

It's doing it again!!

Oh, forgot to mention, cuz I thought it would come out of it.

I got a bunch of reps from Tex last night that kept disappearing.

In the end, the system only kept one of 'em.

Vanished from my control panel, and the board.

We can delete reps now?

*Scrolls down, sees it the first time*

....well, I'll be damned, how long has that been there?

Wow, couple months, and I never saw fit to look down there.
Huh.
Oh! That was when I was away.

Mine never quit.

I never knew it.

Maybe we need some more Tech Gurus. Resumes to my PM box.