As you have all no doubt noticed, the forums have been running very slow the last couple of weeks. This is due to a change in forum hosting provider (I've changed jobs so the _free_ DNAGames hosting service is no longer avaliable to me).

As a test to attempt to speed the forum up I'm bringing a alternative version of the forum online for coming weekend. This version will work off the same database (so no posts will be lost). The test forum (called Speedball) is CSS driven and optomised in many ways over the original forums.

There is, naturally, downsides, the main ones will be loss of the 'extra' features of the forum while the test is going on, namly: avatars, file uploads, members map, webring, Private messages, online status. Please note that none of your files will be lost during this test process.

Let me know how you all find the speed of this test forum over the original one.

http://speedball.soldatforums.com , this url ?

It sure goes faster, but looks a bit prehistoric though :)

yup, that's the one.

I can't see soldat forum clock now..

Whow, the ugliness of the forums is overwhelming..

Glad to see you're trying to fix the forums Styx, however, the original forums were running fine, speed wise, for me for the last couple of days..

awwe, the prettiness of the soldat forums went away :(

This is soldat history in the process. Way faster, but err..well, if the old forums was a woman and I had to choose between the old forums (very sexy, very dumb) versus the new forums, which will be "other woman" (ugliness -> mediocre, intelligence and personality -> ANGELIC), I would pick the hot one. She was pretty smart the last few days, as hitman said.

I feel so naked.

quote:Originally posted by n00bfaceThis is soldat history in the process. Way faster, but err..well, if the old forums was a woman and I had to choose between the old forums (very sexy, very dumb) versus the new forums, which will be "other woman" (ugliness -> mediocre, intelligence and personality -> ANGELIC), I would pick the hot one. She was pretty smart the last few days, as hitman said.


ahahah well said

Rar, this is teh ugly. It's like there was a switch labeled "suck", and you turned it on. Exactly how long will this test last?


And the "last man" post takes up half a page again.

And there is no word wrap.


I guess what I'm trying to say is, I WANT THE OLD FORUMS BACK WAAH!

My issue is I can't see how to get to my bloody PMs :(

Arr, the uglies.

Man it looks much worse in FireFox and Opera than in shIEt. The text doesn't wrap so the pages are 10000 or more pixels wide and margins are much smaller. Please test the forum in standard compliant browsers too.

EDIT: Thanks God Opera 7.6 Preview has 'fit to width' option, so the text wrap problem isn't a problem for me [;)]

Well, we can obviously see it is rendered faster than ever. It also seems that it loads faster but I still notice a high delay time even when it is lowered. I would rather check this on Monday, with a better connection.

Like Aquarius said, This code doesn't work with my browser!
You need to wrap the lines, man.

well.. this sure goes a lot faster..

Rendered in 0.09 seconds.

this is faster, but as Hitman said, the old forum was running fine for me the last couple of days, pages were loaded quite fast.

this is just plain ugly :(

Styx, make it go awaaaaaaay ='(

But to be serious,I'd rather have a slow but beautiful forum than a super speeded uglyness.This ain't a solution...

+ Link to Private messages added back in at the top of the forum
+ Topic header images added back in.


quote:Originally posted by AquariusThe text doesn't wrap so the pages are 10000 or more pixels wide and margins are much smaller.

NOWRAP was tuned off, seems much better now. Can you retest?

Make it an opshun! I'm serious :) Or is it about speeding up the server it is running on?

Yeah, I actually prefer this MORE than the old one now... the only thing I really disliked was the the NOWRAP... and how certain [IMG] tags don't show up (case-sensitivity, i guess?), although not a big problem, since half do show up.

Now it seems to load slower :/

quote:Originally posted by DNA.styxquote:Originally posted by AquariusThe text doesn't wrap so the pages are 10000 or more pixels wide and margins are much smaller.

NOWRAP was tuned off, seems much better now. Can you retest?


Now it's OK, thanks.

quote:TEST test QUOTE quote
quote:TEST test QUOTE quote
quote:TEST test QUOTE quote
quote:TEST test QUOTE quote
quote:TEST test QUOTE quote






LOL. Something wrong with the quote tag I guess. The fonts are to small in the nested quotations.

The speed is OK for me.

it loads a lot faster: Rendered in 0.17 seconds.

the rendering time was never a problem TBH, it was the time it took the HTML and images to be serviced to your browser was where the slow down was.

Just fixed some [ IMG ] tags not working.
Broken again.

Anyone notice how you can't use caps? EVERYTHING IS LOWERCASE :O

IS IT?

haha...so it is :)

Fixed.

Styx, is there anyway we can get the new theme that we were using back again...this one is confusing as I haven't used it in ages..

I like it, Styx is doing a good job making it loading faster

Well, it is faster, but the lack of avatars makes everything so plain... it also doesnt add to quickly indentifying the posters... :)

The speed is great!
quote:Originally posted by DNA.Styx
There is, naturally, downsides, the main ones will be loss of the 'extra' features of the forum while the test is going on, namly: avatars, file uploads, members map, webring, Private messages, online status.I'm sure that if this were to become the way the forums will be, the avatars and things will be back. You'll just have to live without the forum-hosted avys and siggys during the testing.

it does go faster... but i like the other one way better....
i can barly see the quotes to but i can problyfigure out what they mean...

The old one rendered in like .03 seconds for me anyways :-/ this one takes 0.22... but it's not like I could even detect that difference. I appreciate that you're trying to make the forums faster and streamline stuff, and I think that is an important thing to consider when developing... well... anything regarding code.

But the Soldat forum as it was held (for me at least) hands down the most functionality of any forum I've ever seen. The only thing this forum didn't have that I've seen in other forums is that sort of "posting RPG" thing you see in some people's sigs in more fantasy game based sites. The jump now seemed like a huge step backward in terms of functionality, and IMO a forum that loads for me just as fast for this streamline process wasn't worth the loss of features :(

UGLY!!!!

Actually, I'm getting used to it. Obviously it need some work, but right now it's speed is outstanding.

Of course it is, there's nothing on it.

We have our community on it, and that's good enough for me.

Careful Elephant, that was dangeriously close to deep

Rendered in 0.36 seconds.

wabhaa >.<
Still goes slow for me i liked old forums better but i spose i can change

I also noticed that the [:-censored] smiley no longer works.

Hmm, right now the forums seem to be going just as slow as before.

truly, i like this better. simple, fast, without all the crap it actually looks like a forum ^^
i say keep it :)

*stuffs weed in a closet*

Ahh, uhh, ignore the man behind the curtain, err in the closet? I mean, what closet? Hehe...

quote:Originally posted by Weedtruly, i like this better. simple, fast, without all the crap it actually looks like a forum ^^
i say keep it :)


Finally, someone else that likes the new forum.

changed my opinion they are nice and fast but not pretty enough yet ;)

If it stays, I want the old icon system back..this purple stuff is making my eyes bleed...

This page I'm looking at was rendered in 0.31 seconds. Wow, that's so much slower than the old forum rendering... If I actually gave a rats arse then it might be a useful statistic.

The forums load faster because they take advantage of your browser's cache and are less image-intensive. Not to mention that now the server has less payload to fork out to your pc.

quote:Originally posted by Elephant_HunterThis page I'm looking at was rendered in 0.31 seconds. Wow, that's so much slower than the old forum rendering...
W-hat?

I really don't dislike this changed forum. I find it loading a good deal quicker while the layout and grafics do not suffer a great deal, but do in fact simplify things. I do dislike the lack of avatar though.

quote:Originally posted by Spectral[...]I find it loading a good deal quicker while the layout and grafics do not suffer a great deal, but do in fact simplify things.[...]

The exact opposite of what i think about the Speedball-Forum.
___________________

Rendered in 21.2 seconds.
So much for being faster...

The rendering speed is the speed that the data to make the page was pulled from the SQL server, so anytime you see a high rendering time it's the SQL server being killed.

The forum slow down that caused this tesdt to take place was actually caused by the ammount of bandwidth the forum was taking (over a Gb since we moved to this new host and I started monitoring the stats) and swamping our host's avaliable bandwidth.

Ugh, now the forum is uber-slow again. It was like this before, with the old forum, but better-looking.

I've coded the topics page to display some avatars just to see what it looks like.

Due to technical issues:
- Only avatars linked off site will work
- The first post will never have an avatar Fixed
- There is no way to update your avatar in your profile. Avatars can now be updated in your profile.
I'll fix these issues shortly.

(updated)

so does this mean we are not going to go back to the old one?

The objections to the new one (uglyness, icon sets, avatars, webring, logos) are all fixable.

The server logs are showing a 50% decrease in bandwidth used over the weekend while page views are staying the same, so it makes sence to keep it.

The only really big item I need to make a descission on is the file upload system, after all the time we all spent testing and bringing it online I _really_ don't want to lose it....it's a question of which is more important to us: forum speed or built in uploading.
I am very aware that some mappers, modders and sig image makers have used this forum as the only place to store their creations, so I need some way to having them retrieve their files and seek alternative hosting arrangements if we find we are unable to offer file hosting built into the forum.

Well... it's slightly faster now.

I don't care how slow it will be, bring back the old forum!

yeah bring the old forum back
...this sux

it's not bad u can get used to it, besides its very fast now

This forum looks great now that logo filler image and avatars work. :)

Btw demonic, this icon set was actually used before the 'old' one. :P

Toumaz and blackdevil0742...if you want be to even take notice you have _got_ to tell me _why_ you want the old one back

<Dr. Cox>help me to help you, help me to help you, help me to help you, help me to help you</Dr. Cox> :)

I like this one more. Errr, there was a problem with the user stats yesterday though -- it showed as highest active users was 561 (And it kept rising), and usually when I visited it showed there being 200 users logged in. Right now it says

quote:Active Users: 29 Visits Today: 29 Highest Active Users: 29

And Highest Active Users should be 561 as well :O

yup, that's bust am going to remove it.

It's not primarily DNA.styx's fault. He lost his old host so it had to be changed.

I hate this new [:-censored]ing change
PM box only 20 MaX [:-censored] this!

Stop [:-censored]ing being such a [:-censored]ing ungrateful little [:-censored], you [:-censored]wit. It's not like you [:-censored]ing use the [:-censored]ing PM box all the [:-censored]ing time, is it?

This new forum is ugly (but could be fixed), and the PM max 20 is bad as well.
I want 'My Page' back, as well as the old header links.

How about a make the Max PM 40?
Ok, will add my page to the wish list to get set up again.
I've already started coding last night a new header menu.
Thanks for the feedback.

40 would be fine
the older forum was easier to navigate and it look so mutch better.
i guess that i'll have to live with this ugly design

How do you mean "easier to navigate"?
Was it the blue icon sets that made the other one look better?

oh, and add the cencored smiley back, just [:-censored] all the time is hard to read :)

the other forum was easier to use.
I think that the profile and members links should be at the same place as they were before

quote:I've already started coding last night a new header menu.
Thanks for the feedback.Yup, the new header will have the links set up similar to they previous forum.

AHHH! Why the change, the old icons were better, now the default? Oh, but it is fast!

quote:Why the changeRead the thread :)

How's it going, Styx? Any updates comin' or something?

Afriad not at the moment, RL's getting in the way at the mo. (doesn't stop me reading the forum from work...just not able to do any coding) but I've got a to-do list the length of yer arm :)

Sounds good. The more the merrier. ;D
Take your time, Styx. Noone's stressing you.

Boosta this is the 'change' i was talking about a while back when i said my forum is all weird and ugly for me now, i hate it >_> faster, but i had no problem with the other one ;(