Posted on 10/31/2012 6:35:41 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Very sorry about the problems with our servers causing FR to get bogged down under peak traffic loads. Praying that John finds a solution or workaround soon.
In the meantime, here are some suggestion you can use to possibly make your FR pages load faster:
Select "Disabled" in the "Region" pulldown for each sidebar block you wish to temporarily disable then click "Modify":
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/manage-blocks
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/settings
And its simply a click to toggle "Brevity" from "Text" to "Headers" or back the other way when needed:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/news-forum/index
If enough of us did this we would reduce the amount of data downloaded on each click, reducing the load on the database and the server and possibly increasing overall systems performance.
To reset your preferences next week after Obama is evicted and the tea party tsunami sweeps the socialists out of office from sea to shining sea, click on "Account" at the top of any of the main index pages and then "Manage Blocks" to configure your sidebars and "My Preferences" to reset your number of threads and replies per thread preferences.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/my/
Also, we have FR contingency standby pages on yahoo and facebook. You may wish to visit and bookmark these pages:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/26012226159/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freerepublic2/
Our system didn't actually crash during the debates, but when a hundred thousand or more users tried to access it all at once during a short two hour window, it bogged down to a crawl. Hopefully it won't do that on election day as the window will not be so short. The news and results will be coming in all day and all night. But if it does crash, we can leave messages on the contingency sites linked above.
Thank you all very much and good luck.
Prayers up for our nation.
::::giggle::::
((((PING))))
Depending on the actual technical problem that is causing FR to not respond, money may not be the issue.
Once you set up FR to provide levels of service based upon the amount of money contributed, you will begin to have in FR what Obama is doing to America. You will balkanize FR. Once you trigger levels of access to money, most of the people on FR will leave for other websites that have the actual technical wherewithal to provide a platform like this. Once money becomes an issue, the very nature of FR will change and soon the 1% will be able to message each other without a problem.
Completely bogus thesis, bordering on socialism.
So unless everybody has the same car, it would destroy the car market. After all, there's no benefit to having the wealthy fund new features that then find their way into subcompacts a few years later.
It absolutely sickens me how few FReepers have any concept for how product development and marketing works.
Interesting analysis, it sounds like you have some expertise in database design and optimization. FR is a treasure trove of expertise in countless disciplines. Given your expertise don't miss his quoted post below.
FR is broken. Hours before the last debate half the posts concerned when FR would crash.
Even today I get "Server busy" errors day and night - even at "non-peak" times on short threads with 5 posts. I'm on cable with 20MBPS guaranteed and tested. During the debates any site I visit just pops up like magic - except FR, my home. Sigh.
FR software is proprietary - homegrown but the compilers, language base, support routines, hardware, etc. all could figure into the problem but our expert FReeper user base have no idea what the layout is so its impossible to do more than offer generalized "maybe its this ..." suggestions.
My proposal:
POST AN INFORMATION/TEST THREAD - Put it in breaking news
Get JohnRob to post three paragraphs outlining the physical layout/net connection; the base software and support routine info and lastly perhaps revive access to hits, throughput, logins etc.
We used to be able to see the FR usage stats but all my old links are dead.
Give the FR community some info on the system layout above source code level and then maybe one of our own can spot a fix. Before election night would be great. ;-)
From an earlier thread, from the man himself, as "detailed" in describing the problem that I've seen:
"To: YaelleThe system is not handling the increased loads and we do not know why yet. John says the system is not getting overloaded, the db is not overloaded, the cpus are mostly idle, the load averages are low, the db load averages are low, just reaches a point where throughput stalls. Im not a techie and I have no idea how to fix it. I thought maybe we could add another server or more RAM or replace some older servers or something, but I guess John doesnt think that will do it. Theres something wrong in the system software or the configuration but hes having trouble finding it.
And Im really upset too, but theres not a freaking thing I can do about it until John gets it figured out.
Thanks.
63 posted on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 2:01:19 PM by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!!) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies | Report Abuse]"
Give us some real information to work with - your FReeper minions would be happy to analyze, assist with "Testing - Do not reply" posts, pre-election night tests, whatever. Please? ;-)
Preview gave me a "Connection timed out error" ... fingers crossed.
Reference bump!
Have you thought about putting your web site on a variable-load hosting service like Squarespace? That way, since Squarespace can dynamically adjust the number of servers needed, Free Republic will never go down due to overload issues.
John is researching it. Thanks.
I did a lot of the suggested changes. Now, spelling preview shows every word as wrong or to check. Seems to have arrows for every word. ( Now this post spell ck did not...oh the humanity) Maybe I corrected the problem. Hum?
Thanks for the tips, Jim. They did help some.
I added one of my own. I disabled the Link Banner. That has speeded everything up considerably!
Big it works bump!
any thought to doing a freeps app for iPhone? could be a revenue source with a charge to download, i certainly would pay for that, and i find myself more and more using my iPhone for everything.
most, if not all, of the the other news type sites have iphone apps.
i wonder how big a deal it is to get one written.
Cars and posting on FR are not even remotely the same.
What has made FR so special is the ability of anyone to contribute their two cents worth on any topic. Change that dynamic, and FR will cease to exist as we know it.
You suggestions have been helping me. Might I suggest you guys make them mandatory until after the election?
Almost every product line that requires development capital follows the same path from high-end to down-market, with very few exceptions.
What has made FR so special is the ability of anyone to contribute their two cents worth on any topic.
None of that would change in anything I've proposed. What might improve are access to old FR archives, search capabilities, customized sidebars, and the like, not to mention speed.
good idea
Bookmark
Thanks Jim! I don’t have a problem but bookmarking this thread just in case.
I cannot miss one minute of anti-American POS barry being kicked to the curb by Americans.
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