[rickey939]

The list of improvements in vB v3.6 look nice (see below). Is the 'NN going to update soon? I especially like the auto-resize of large attachments, as well as, multi-quote. Very useful!

Multi-Quote
Allows users to tag multiple posts that they wish to respond to by clicking a small button on each post. Once the user clicks the reply button, each tagged post is quoted.

To increase usability, by default, only posts within the current thread are automatically quoted. If you wish to quote posts in other threads with multi-quote, you simply need to click a link on the reply page, and the text of those posts will be added without a reload.

Makes replying to several people in one post easier.

Quote Tags Link to Quoted Post
When quoting a post, the ID of the post is automatically included with the [quote] tag. When the quoted text is viewed in a thread, a small icon links back to the quoted post.

Mark Forums Read with AJAX
If you wish to mark a forum read, you can simply click its status icon on the index page and the change will be processed without a reload. You can even mark individual sub-forums as read in the same way.

Private Message Preview in Notification Emails
If you have elected to receive emails when receiving a new private message, the email will now contain more than just the name of the user who sent you the message. The title and body of the message will be included.

Auto-Resize Oversized Image Attachments
If a user attaches an image that has dimensions larger than the administrator allows, the image will automatically resized to fit.

New Buddy/Ignore List Editor
The new buddy and ignore list editor allows users to be quickly added and removed from your lists, with AJAX-based assistance for name suggestion along the way. If an error occurs such as a user not being found, you can simply correct the error and continue without reloading the page.

Pop Up List of Attachments in a Thread
The paperclip icon that denotes whether a thread contains attachments is now clickable. It will pop up a window that shows a list of all the attachments in the specified thread, including file size and number of views.

RSS Poster Robot
vBulletin 3.6 includes a new scheduled task that can check RSS feeds from the internet, read their contents and insert items from them onto your board.

Receive Private Messages from Buddies Only
You may now select to receive private messages only from users on your buddy list. If a non-buddy tries to send you a message, they will receive an error saying that you do not accept private messages. Administrators and moderators are automatically able to bypass this restriction.

Podcasting Support
Podcasting is a means of distributing multimedia content via RSS feeds. vBulletin 3.6 includes support for podcasting attachment files via the built in RSS feed. This system is configurable on the per forum level.

[mkbhatia]

This will defiitely happen, but it wont' happen for at least a week (after WWDC), and maybe not until v3.6.1 is released to fix the bugs in v3.6.

m.

[Peter]

so about next may then?

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

This will defiitely happen, but it wont' happen for at least a week (after WWDC), and maybe not until v3.6.1 is released to fix the bugs in v3.6.

m.

Take note that many of the default and custom 'NN templates will need to be updated to take advantage of all of the new features.

[Demonhood]

yeah, the templates are my arena. that part is generally not too painful. upgrading to 3.0 was the tough one.

while the image attachment resizer sounds nice, we don't allow attachments here. but we have been playing around with a separate resizer for images in general.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Demonhood

while the image attachment resizer sounds nice, we don't allow attachments here. but we have been playing around with a separate resizer for images in general.

Good point, I guess I was thinking of linking to external pictures this would work as well, guess not.

However, I've heard that v3.5 had a feature that could automatically reduce signature images to a pre-defined size. Is that being taken advantage of on the 'NN or not?

[Demonhood]

as far as i know that was only for avatars.

[gururafiki]

Will v3.6 also bring about a new look...or are we still going along with the current look?

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by gururafiki

Will v3.6 also bring about a new look...or are we still going along with the current look?

[besson3c]

You guys really ought to put a lot of thought into how well these new Ajax features will scale, since the forums have had a history of serious performance bottlenecks (although things have been much better as of late). All of that real-time interaction with the server can either be less or more taxing depending on what is being done, and how it is being done. It is very easy to develop bad and inefficient code in PHP, I speak from personal experience =)

I don't know what kind of testing you do, but I'd suggest installing 3.6 on your test server (assuming it has similar hardware), set it up to replicate the MySQL data on your production server, and find out what operations tax the server the most. Then, multiply this sort of footprint by the number of max number users you anticipate doing this simultaneously, and try to estimate how well this will scale.

You can also just skip the performance testing and react to problems if or when they arise by disabling features as you go along, but I'd suggest getting a head start on this process. It is very difficult to accurately simulate load testing, but one can still get a sense of some of the bottlenecks ahead of time, especially since the new Ajax features are probably well documented.

Also, if you're just going to be disabling the features available in the upgrade, the upgrade doesn't buy you anything, so it would probably be best to just skip it.

Hope this helps.

[besson3c]

Another popular strategy is to have your MySQL server and forum web server run on separate hardware, and to create a pool of modestly equipped hardware running vBulletin that read data from your MySQL server and operate in a round-robin fashion. This way, it is very easy to pull one machine out of the pool if you need to without skipping a beat. You'll of course need a master machine or router to respond to your forums.macnn.com DNS requests and to faciliate the load balancing (e.g. round robining).


Perhaps it might also be worthwhile thinking about consolidating a little, and using the MySQL (or Postgres) server with your main site, but of course I know nothing about your server structure, and I don't mean to sound insulting as if I'm trying to imply that this is something you don't already know.

[mkbhatia]

Simulating load is very difficult. We've been slowly adding new features, upping the machine specs (we're adding more memory to increase it to 4GB in the next day or so). I think that we'll have to see how things go. The biggest load change was the vBSEO (i.e., new URL system), which added significant load. We are working with them to reduce the CPU load. This may, unfortunately, require a beefier machine, but I hopeful it won't. Stuff we have done to improve load:

1) Moved forums to a separate machine (Intel Core Duo processors).

http://www.dell.com/content/products...aspx/pedge_830

2) Move from IonCubeLoader to the Zend extension to increase performance, following the vBSEO installation.



4) Installed e-accelerator for php caching.

eAccelerator - Trac

3) Disabled the .htaccess (using the rewrite rules in the httpd.conf file itself), which should help even more. [updated]

Using .htaccess Files with Apache

4) We've also turned on persistent connections, which is supposed to help larger boards.

5) Our database server is not really taxed at all, but I have ordered more RAM to increase that to 8GB (those 2GB modules are expensive!). More cache shoud speed up responsiveness even more. Right now, i think the forum server itself (not the db) is limiting. Unfortunately, upgrading the forum server is not only about $3-$4K, but the ISP will increase the monthly hosting charges due to more power consumption by a more powerful server. I'm hoping to avoid this for at least 6-8 months--hopefully longer--as this server is less than six months old.

6) Our replication is mostly for backup purposes (allows us to backup the db without interrupting function, i.e., locking tables), but also provides for near-realtime redundancy (in addition to nightly on-site backups and weekly off-site backups).

7) At some point, I'd like to use the slave mysql server for stuff like searches, so I'll probably have to move slave to a different machine. That should help speed up searches. Right now, the mysql slave resides on the forum server (which is bad because it can't be used for anything but replication b/c of the load vBSEO brought to the machine).

We will move to vb3.6 sometime in early September; hopefully we have ironed out some of the performance bottlenecks from vBSEO, gained performance by the memory upgrade(s)--to both the forum server and the db server, moved the mysql slave server to a different machine.

If you have further suggestions, let me know.

m.

[Oisín]

I just wanted to say that this thread is great.

to that last post, Monish—that’s exactly the kind of information and communication about the forums that many here have been asking for for a long time. It gives you a feeling that you actually know what’s going on behind the scenes. Really great

[rickey939]

Thanks Monish for the information, I appreciate that. I look forward to v3.6 in early September.

[besson3c]

Suggestions:

- turn of all unnecessary Apache modules

- what is your PHP memory limit set at?

- run your web server out of a jail (you'll gain additional security)

- setup a cronjob to do regular mysqldumps so that you have DB snapshots you can back-peddle to if you aren't already doing this

- are you encrypting the data sent to your slave server?

- if your DB server is not being taxed, why not set it up to be your syslog-ng server? This will save you in disk I/O



Good to see you guys being receptive and sharing (not that you'd ever have to be, but it is still thoughtful)

[mkbhatia]

most (but not all--yet) apache modules turned off =)

php limit is at 24MB

jail, eh? i'll talk to our sys admin about that.

mysql dumps take too much processor power and unnecessarily lock the tables. nightly file-based backups are being done.

no encryption on slave traffic as it is going through our own switch to another server. none needed.

syslog-ng server? why would we need that?

m.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

php limit is at 24MB

Cool... I'm not really hip to vBulletin's memory requirements for a board like this, but as long as you are aware of this setting (which you obviously are), cool...

jail, eh? i'll talk to our sys admin about that.

We had some sort of attack on one of our servers using an exploit in code from a version of a web-based email client we were using. The attack didn't succeed, but a jail would keep attackers away from any executables they would need to cause harm.

mysql dumps take too much processor power and unnecessarily lock the tables. nightly file-based backups are being done.

You can disable the table locking, not to say that would be at all ideal. You could also just rsync your MySQL data directory. Obviously, this wouldn't prevent file corruption in your backup, but it would take much fewer time and resources, and you'd have something that would cost you very little (aside from disk space and bandwidth).

no encryption on slave traffic as it is going through our own switch to another server. none needed.

Cool... so both machines are behind the switch?

syslog-ng server? why would we need that?

If disk I/O is a bottleneck for you (and/or you wanted a centralized log host), you could push out your logs to the server, syslog-ng uses UDP packets for this. Doing so would do all log file writes to your log host, taxing your local hard disk less.

If you ever decide to add another machine to the mix and do some sort of load balancing, a log host server would also make things much more convenient for you, in having a single location where logs from all machines in your cluster are written to.

I'm sure that your Apache logs probably also consume a fair amount of disk space. If your log host server was the same server as your DB server, you could also save in not having to buy a huge disk for your web server.

Just some ideas...

[mkbhatia]

Ok, we've upgraded the memory on the forums machne to 4GB..this should help remove some of the performance degradation of vBSEO (still takes much CPU power). I'm working to adjust the caches to offer even more speed improvement.

m.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

Ok, we've upgraded the memory on the forums machne to 4GB..this should help remove some of the performance degradation of vBSEO (still takes much CPU power). I'm working to adjust the caches to offer even more speed improvement.

m.

Have you guys ever analyzed the costs of getting two modest machines, instead of one beefy machine, and doing load balancing between the two of them?

Just wondering what your conclusion was, particularly in terms of cost involved.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

This will defiitely happen, but it wont' happen for at least a week (after WWDC), and maybe not until v3.6.1 is released to fix the bugs in v3.6.

m.

v3.6.1 has been released that fixes over 100 bugs, and has some additional new features. What's the game plan to get this version installed here at the 'NN?

[mkbhatia]

Just ordered a new server today (again): dual-3.0GHz dual-core Xeon with 10Krpm disk (2x146GB). This was required b/c of the vBSEO stuff we installed in August. It should be at the colo facility from Dell by Sept. 24 or so and installed/migrated by Oct 4-5. That means vb3.6.1 will wait until then. That machine should hold up for at least 18 months.

m.

[seanc]

Only 18 months??? Thats a short lifespan and an expensive machine!

[Dakar]

Originally Posted by seanc

Only 18 months??? Thats a short lifespan and an expensive machine!

Yeah I thought I was crazy.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

Just ordered a new server today (again): dual-3.0GHz dual-core Xeon with 10Krpm disk (2x146GB). This was required b/c of the vBSEO stuff we installed in August. It should be at the colo facility from Dell by Sept. 24 or so and installed/migrated by Oct 4-5. That means vb3.6.1 will wait until then. That machine should hold up for at least 18 months.

m.

I've heard the 'NN skin will run really well on that machine as well. Is that what you heard as well?

[indigoimac]

Just curious, but what's with the Dell's, I'm guessing that the ISP prefers them, any other reason?

I'm assuming it's running linux/unix tho right? It would be kind of ironic to have a mac forum running on a windoze server.

[mkbhatia]

Dell machine will run 64-bit CentOS (Enterprise Red Hat Linux Derivative). Better support (24-7/4hr response) and cheaper, despite what Steve said in his keynote! (I mean the Xserve starts at $2,999--It may be faster, but I'm sure that's a barebones machine).

Re: 18 months. At least 18 months. I'm hoping for 24-30 months. And yes, it was expensive!

Re: Skin: Was just talking to Frank about that now!

m.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

Re: Skin: Was just talking to Frank about that now!

m.

Let us know what comes out of the conversation please.

[mkbhatia]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Have you guys ever analyzed the costs of getting two modest machines, instead of one beefy machine, and doing load balancing between the two of them?

Just wondering what your conclusion was, particularly in terms of cost involved.

So modest machines are about 70-80% of the price of 1 good machine, but the on-going costs are about 50% for two machines (versus a single machine). So you save some money upfront, but the on-going costs (rackspace/power/maintenance--mostly power/maintenance) are much more. Two machines is better redundancy (and we'll probably sync it with our main web server for failover), but it seems like lose situation to have 2 machines.

BTW, the database is already on a different server.

m.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

Dell machine will run 64-bit CentOS (Enterprise Red Hat Linux Derivative). Better support (24-7/4hr response) and cheaper, despite what Steve said in his keynote! (I mean the Xserve starts at $2,999--It may be faster, but I'm sure that's a barebones machine).

Re: 18 months. At least 18 months. I'm hoping for 24-30 months. And yes, it was expensive!

Re: Skin: Was just talking to Frank about that now!

m.

Our department has had good luck with HP servers, but I certainly agree with your assessment of not going with XServes. The Mac guys I know doing the labs for the University are not terribly impressed with Apple's Enterprise support. I personally wouldn't touch OS X Server with a 10 foot pole for doing web stuff. I suppose you could run Linux on the XServe, but I have no idea how this would change your business relationship with Apple (I'm guessing that Apple's Linux support is just about ziltch).

[mkbhatia]

I looked into HP machines, but no luck =(. They were about $600 more expensive and harder to configure/build. we've been buying dell boxes for sometime and not had any problems (even though we pay a small premium for 24-7/4hr service). We're trying to sell our Dell dual-core 3.0GHz PD with 4GB of memory and 2x160GB and Hardware SATA RAID! (the current machine)

m.

[indigoimac]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

Dell machine will run 64-bit CentOS (Enterprise Red Hat Linux Derivative). Better support (24-7/4hr response) and cheaper, despite what Steve said in his keynote! (I mean the Xserve starts at $2,999--It may be faster, but I'm sure that's a barebones machine).

Interesting, I would have expected XServes, silly me. That is a nice server though!

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by rickey939

Let us know what comes out of the conversation please.

What did Frank know?

[mkbhatia]

Frank said he has two weeks to fix it, so we are scrambling to get the test site back up now, so he can finish it!

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

Frank said he has two weeks to fix it, so we are scrambling to get the test site back up now, so he can finish it!

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by rickey939

Auto-Resize Oversized Image Attachments
If a user attaches an image that has dimensions larger than the administrator allows, the image will automatically resized to fit.

Wow, that will make the tooki-bot obsolete

-t

[seanc]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

Wow, that will make the tooki-bot obsolete

-t

LOL

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

Wow, that will make the tooki-bot obsolete

-t

Do you know, that was eerily funny. No offense to tooki, of course.

V

[seanc]

Originally Posted by voodoo

Do you know, that was eerily funny. No offense to tooki, of course.

V

I don't mean any offense to Tooki either, I just thought it was quite funny.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by voodoo

No offense to tooki, of course.

Nah, tooki is not humor impaired.

-t

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by mkbhatia

Frank said he has two weeks to fix it, so we are scrambling to get the test site back up now, so he can finish it!

Hang on... Frank hasn’t just simply dropped off the face of the earth and vanished into utter nothingness?

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Hang on... Frank hasn’t just simply dropped off the face of the earth and vanished into utter nothingness?

That's what I was thinking.

Nonetheless, is the test site back up so Frank can hammer away at it?

[besson3c]

To be frank, who is Frank?

[seanc]

Originally Posted by besson3c

To be frank, who is Frank?

\

Thats what I'd like to know actually.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by seanc

\

Thats what I'd like to know actually.

Hey Seanc, I've always wondered... is your name actually "Sean C." or "Seanc"? What is your last name?


Also, what is your social security number? Curious about that too...

[seanc]

Sean C..... (dots repesent the other letters in my last name)

Social security no....... would that equate to my National Insurance no.?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by seanc

Sean C..... (dots repesent the other letters in my last name)

Social security no....... would that equate to my National Insurance no.?

Just trying to be secure. Security is important. We need to fight for our statue of liberty and freedoms, and always remember our pioneers who cared about our justice and America being a free nation free from oppression and guns and wild animals and weapons of mass destruction and dictators and diseases and famine.

And MSG too.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by besson3c

To be frank, who is Frank?

Frank is "effgee"...

http://forums.macnn.com/members/effgee/

http://forums.macnn.com/89/macnn-lou...-your-machine/

[seanc]

Erm.... I stopped reading after "Security is important". I'm not an American.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Hang on... Frank hasn’t just simply dropped off the face of the earth and vanished into utter nothingness?

No, I think what took longer than expected was to teach that hampstor some new tricks.
You know, that saying, you can't teach an old hampstor new tricks is actaully not true. It's old dogs that you can't teach

-t

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by seanc

Erm.... I stopped reading after "Security is important". I'm not an American.

Neither am I, actually...