Forum woes

[GriffinCheng+]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Maximus:

Forgive my ignorance, but what is PERL?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Let's see if I can make you understand this:

PERL is a scripting lanuguage available on many platforms including Win PC, Mac, Linux, etc. (Actually it is a acynomn but I cannot remember) It is created by Larry Wall and its strength mainly lies on string processing, pattern matching and file I/O. It was the CGI language of choice back in the early web days around 1995 but now we have a large variety of competitors like servlets, ASP, SSJS, PHP, etc who works better and safter than Perl in CGI department. It is not object-oriented in mind. Another problem is the syntax of Perl can go really wierd especially in the hands of experts -- their codes can be difficult for others to read.

Various modules and revisions expand its functionality to database access, object-oriented data handling, graphics, BBS like this, etc.

Griffin.

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"When you find your PBEM opportents too hard to beat, there is always the AI."

"Can't get enough Tank?"

[Geier]

For an example of the O'Reilly web board you can check out: http://webboard.interplay.com:8080/~neverwinter/guests

The load this one is forced to work with is ... heavy. Since I'm swedish I refuse to have any opinion but I hope this can be of help. I know the guys responsible for these boards know of several arguments, pro and con, for the O'Reilly board. They've certainly heard all the con, but it seems peope have chilled now.

Expect the feces to hit the air cycling equipment when you switch (whatever you choose). Change is bad. For some people anyway.

Johan

[I/O Error]

PERL = Practical Extraction and Reporting Language

BTW: my vote is on www.vbulletin.com , but then that's what we use. But I figure, if it works fine for us (with 21'000+ users) than I figure it can work for you too...

www.counter-strike.net

[Fuerte]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by John Hough:

The big drawback of doing that is that you need to have instructions about how to view the forums somewhere on the site, and a few less technically inclined people may not see the forums at all, 'coz it's too much trouble to configure the newsreader properly.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In fact it is very easy to setup a news group. Just have a link like news://battlefront.com/Combat_Mission and when you click it, it is automatically added to your Outlook Express or Netscape newsgroups.

But maybe Battlefront.com wants to have a username and password for every user, then it may be a bit more difficult.

[I/O Error]

That WOULD be a pretty big problem man...

Like I said, my vote is on vBulletin. We use it. =D

[Grisha]

Steve,

check this out. It's PHP-based, and can mimic UBB pretty well.

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Best regards,

Greg Leon Guerrero

[Dr. Brian]

This may, or may not help you.

I also visit a bbs that has WAY MORE activity than this. It's at http://jeepsunlimited.com

If you visit it, you can ask the moderator? In any event, they seem to handle the load w/o any problems.

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Doc

God Bless Chesty Puller, Wherever He Is!

[Croda]

I personally like the way that Anandtech's forums work forums.anandtech.com . They use fuse-talk 2.0, which can be found at http://www.e-zonemedia.com/fusetalk/ .

It's similar format to what we have now, and I believe that they handle a decent volume.

Key Features:

User Customization

File Attachments

Real-Time Integrated Chat

ColdFusion Linux Support

Oracle,MySQL,Access, MSSQL

Administrator Customization

Moderation Capabilities

Thread Subscriptions

Using Nicknames or Real Names

Personality Icons

Polling System Built-In

Complete Private Messaging System with a History

ICQ Other Users

Custom HTML Tags (includes IMG tag)

Tag Editor to help users with putting custom html and emotions into their posts

Workflow approval of messages, allows admins to set per category if they want to approve messages/threads prior to posting

Anonymous Login

Moderation per category

Locked categories allowing admins to set permissions per category

Thread hit counter

User ability to not see categories, user can block categories which don't appeal to them.

Text viewing of threads.

Print version of threads.

Forum Faq, administrated by the forum admin

Time zone adjustment for user and admin side.

Complete Today page, featuring summaries of hot threads, subscriptions, private messages, forum announcements, Top ten posters

User rating schema built in for those forums that have trading of items or for sale sections.

States & Provinces added, Admin can also set default country for their forum

lot's of other info at the above link.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Elijah Meeks: You rock, Croda<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Mark IV]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dr. Brian:

I also visit a bbs that has WAY MORE activity than this. It's at http://jeepsunlimited.com <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's an older version of this same software (v. 5.45c). They may just have a bigger server.

Thought: Come out with an "upgrade" that saves turns into one single movie, features the Maus and rocket tanks, and has blood. Charge $20 for it. Buy a new server.

[John Hough]

Vbulletin looks pretty nice... I'd say go with that if nothing better shows up...

[Fuerte]

I believe that the current newsreaders automatically ask for the user id and password if needed, so that would not be a problem either. NNTP is easily the fastest system around, it only downloads the unread headers, and the server does not need to build HTML pages all the time. No need to send the same messages in a thread over and over again. And what's best with NNTP is that I could then easily filter out the Peng thread.

[Warren Peace]

Please pardon my ignorence. I kind of like this forum the way it is. Why not just archive the older posts? Would that solve the problem?

Warren

[Henri]

Why don't you just start a moderated Usenet newsgroup? (I prefer non-moderated, but...). It is much more convenient than this forum, because one sees only the unread messages that one has not seen before, so one is less likely to miss interesting posts; and one can do a search on all messages by marking all messages as unread first.

The only downside is that users don't have to register, but I don't se why that is useful, since the moderators can reject any message that they decide is not relevant.Another downside is that messages are removed from the servers after a while.If you need the archives, you can always copy them into a text file and put them on your site where people could acess them, although I personally don't see any reason to do that.

The upside is that you don't need any server AT ALL!

[Robert Mayer]

As the editor of <A HREF="http://www.cdmag.com>Computer Games Online</A>, I have to agree that WebCrossing is not the way to go. We're not happy with it, though I'm sure it's a great program for other sites. It's too unwieldy and slow for us, and hard to organize without some heavy-duty attention. I realize our members aren't terribly happy with it either .

Luckily, we're heading for a complete redesign of the site "real soon now," and along with that will be a new BBS. Oddly, we've been looking at UBB, but if it's collapsing here, we might have to look elsewhere.

I think, though, that all forum software, well, just sucks.

[Col Deadmarsh]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>PERL is a scripting lanuguage available on many platforms including Win PC, Mac, Linux, etc. (Actually it is a acynomn but I cannot remember) It is created by Larry Wall and its strength mainly lies on string processing, pattern matching and file I/O. It was the CGI language of choice back in the early web days around 1995 but now we have a large variety of competitors like servlets, ASP, SSJS, PHP, etc who works better and safter than Perl in CGI department. It is not object-oriented in mind. Another problem is the syntax of Perl can go really wierd especially in the hands of experts -- their codes can be difficult for others to read.

Various modules and revisions expand its functionality to database access, object-oriented data handling, graphics, BBS like this, etc.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Griffin,

Thanks for your explanation on Perl. One question: Is PERL a certain "flavor" of CGI? Are there other forms of CGI? It seems CGI and PERL are always brought up in the same sentence as if it's one language. Can you explain their relation?

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Youth is wasted on the young.

[Fuerte]

Perl is just a programming language, you can program cgi scripts with whatever language you want.

[JeffRaider]

I'm definitely with I/O Error. VB is very slick.

"1337!"

[apex]

You might try disabling the search feature on the UBB - it's a known performance hog, and I know of several forums that have disabled it. Pure load can't be the problem, this UBB doesn't handle more posts per day than say agw.dogfighter.com.

apex

[Hakko Ichiu]

Just another vote for vBulletin.

The Private Messaging feature is useful, and could take a lot of otherwise OT clutter out of the main system.

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Ethan

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"We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech." -- Dr. Kathleen Dixon, Director of Women's Studies, Bowling Green State University

[robo]

You'll get a speed boost if you precompile your perl cgi scripts, if you're not doing that already.

[robo]

What computer are you using? Processors? Memory? Need more info. If you're just running out of memory so that you're paging too much simply getting more memory would fix the problem. What's the process table look like? How many perl processes are running at the same time and what's their size? If you're running any sort of UNIX box I can help but I need more specific info. I help run email/web/news for more than 20K users. My services to you would of course be free.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Thanks for the suggestions guys...

vBulletin is almost exactly like UBB's software, at least from the end user perspective. However, I am not convinced that it will solve our problems.

The Jeep BBS is probably running on several servers, which would explain why it is still running even with that post load.

Honestly, I think there is some sort of bug with UBB or somefink. After we restart our server, and shut down UBB for a while after, we have no problems with this forum for about a week. Then, bingo... problems. So I am thinking that it doesn't clean up after itself very well, or perhaps there is something else wrong on our server.

For the time being we are not switching to anything. If and when we do, it will be after a lot of careful planning!

Steve

[Lepton]

Steve -

Apex is right, the forum over at agw.dogfighter.com runs a much larger and more active forum than this one on UBB without any apparent problems. Sorry I don't have a silver bullet for you

[Vadr]

Gonna throw my $0.02 in here...

I've got a lot of experience with O'Reilly Webboard. Reasonably robust and full-featured, but dog-slow, even with a SQL Server backend.

UBB is prolly the best product on the market, but ya gotta manage it right.

At this point, your options are:

A - Throw more hardware at the problem

B - Do a better job of managing the board.

Archives are good, but have limitations. Do away with the search feature altogether if you are going to leave old threads available.

Sorry to say it, but you folks in the Peng thread need to bid that sucker a graceful goodbye. I've never seen a UBB thread over 300 posts before I cam here. 2400 is insane. Great fun I'm sure, but you're killing the server.

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Vadr

Kommandeur

III/JG2 'Richthofen'

[Binkie]

In fact Steve himself has publicly stated his suspicions about the Peng thread causing technical problems with the board. But I got locked down when I tried to start a discussion about it (although I suppose I could've been a little more tactful with my topic title... )

I guess the Pengers have friends in high places.