Update on performance changes coming to FT
 

In order to keep FlyerTalk running at a useable level (some may say to bring it _back_ to a useable level), we've been speaking with the original designers of the board and have come up with a few steps we'll be implementing in the next few weeks.

Step 1 you've probably already noticed, as it involves truncating the main Miles forum listing into just categories. Don't worry, all the threads are still there, and in the places they were prior. By shortening the main page listing to just categories, we're reducing the amount of data that has to be sent every time a visitor hits that front list. This was a direct suggestion from the creators of UBB, and although we're hesitant about such a dramatic change, and are aware of the confusion it may bring initially, we're going to see if this actually does provide a little alleviation. Just click into the category you want, and you'll be provided with its forums as before.

Step 2 involves setting up another Forum which will serve as an archive area for old posts (greater than a year). You'll still be able to read these posts (in Archives), but since they'll be out of Miles proper, they won't be factored into searches, long display queries, and generally adding to the overhead of serving all these threads.

Step 3 will be adding servers. We've signed contracts for an additional server to pull all non-FT files onto. Based on how that performs, we're planning on then moving FT to a new, and more powerful server, and off the one we've obviously overgrown.

So, stick with us as you've been, and know that we are indeed working on things behind the scenes. And thank you for continuing to give Michael and our other techs your patience as they wrestle equally with our slowdowns as well as trying to squeeze information from vendors. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Thanks Dan! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

FYI, despite the new lead-in mainpage, I still get timed out of and can't get into United and even opening this forum took longer than it probably should.

Ugh. This is even worse than the four-way split. Hard to find things ... more clicks and more page views required to do anything. While I appreciate your efforts to address performance problems, this is a profound step in the wrong direction. Undo it ASAP!

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[This message has been edited by PremEx (edited 09-18-2001).]

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[This message has been edited by PremEx (edited 09-17-2001).]

I agree! There has to be a better way.

Dan, like others I really appreciate your efforts to get FlyerTalk back up and running. However, I do agree -- there HAS to be a better way. The goal should not only be speed, but efficiency as well. Everytime FlyerTalk makes a change to the way information is presented/organized, it disrupts how your users interact with the site. Honestly, it turns a lot of them off -- even if the change is for the better!

I've been in the interactive media design business for six years. Over the years, usability really has taken front stage above all else. If you really want this to work, would encourage you to study how FlyerTalkers use the forums before you chop it up into separate pieces.

Let me give you an example. Here's the way I use FlyerTalk: In the address field I type in "http://www.flyertalk.com/milesfr.shtml" and hit enter. This brings me (or used to bring me) to the main page with all the forums on it. I scroll down the list and right-click-"open in new window" all the forums I frequent. That's just a couple of clicks to get exactly where I want to go.

What can be learned from my usability methods? I know exactly where I want to go, and I want to get there as efficiently as possible. For someone like me, the option to "customize" the Flyertalk experience would be valuable. It would be great, in my profile for example, to say -- OK, I frequent the MilesBuzz, United, Starwood, and Trip Report forums the most... let's have only those forums appear when I start up FlyerTalk. With that option enabled, as soon as I hit the FlyerTalk main page, bam!, there are those four forum links.

While I realize such an option may not be possible given the technology constraints you guys may have I'm suggesting it more as way you can study how users interact with the site, and then make changes that a) make it easier for them, and b) reduce the loads on teh server/make FlyerTalk run faster.

Whew! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

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"What do you mean you didn't get miles for that?!"

Add me to the list of those opposed. I find step 1 particularly troubling, not because it represents a change (some changes are for the better), but because it adds yet another layer -- more clicks, more waiting -- to a site that worked quite well with just two layers several months back.

Bad Bad Bad Bad Bad http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Nice attempt though!

I will find it very annoying to have to climb out to the top in order to enter another area....

How about a "My FT" where we can set the forums each of us use on a regular basis and those are the only ones pulled up upon first entry.. From there we would have to navigate to less often visited groups.

TW

'My FT' is a great idea...I personally only frequent 4 or 5 forums. Surely it can't be that many data points per user. Another useful idea would be an 'Ignore this user' similar to what Yahoo has in it's message boards!

Thank you for your efforts. Your good intentions are appreciated.

Unless I don't understand something, it now takes extra steps to get to the first word of an actual thread. And I have less selection at any given time without having to load multiple topic pages. And that takes more time. A lot more!

Something's not right.

I'm enjoying FlyerTalk less.

Something's not right.

Gotta go with the dissenters here. Extra clicking and looking for threads. Plus, why now on the "Hop To" drop down area at the bottom of some forums, is it so wide that you now have to move the screen over to get to the "go" button? No consistancy there, and extra steps.

bj-21.

P.S.--Really like the "My FT" idea. Customising the forums to leave out the one's we don't usually read would save some time.

[This message has been edited by blackjack-21 (edited 09-18-2001).]

Hi Michael

I've been quite frustrated with the speed on flyertalk, and I have alot of experience with these types of problems, so I hope I can help you.

The first thing: there are a number of tools which can monitor the responsiveness of a connection and the responsiveness of the server (page server and/or DB) and show you where there's a problem. Many of these tools are free or part of the standard hosting software. You should get these tools and install them... so at least then when you have problems you wont sit wondering where the problem is. Most packages even provide alerting, so you know right away when a problem appears.

Second, it seems obvious now that the main problem is with the server being overloaded (not bandwidth).
There are basically four reasons why this could happen:
- processor overload
- not enough RAM (given the corruption occuring, this seems a likely cause)
- poor configuration (cache, etc)
- unnecessary load (having programs running that dont need to be running, or trojans/viruses taking resources).

For each one there are a number of solutions.

The easiest and fastest solution is probably to add more RAM and processors to your server, assuming it is upgradeable. This is not nearly as expensive as you might imagine, especially if you buy the components on e-bay. For $500 you might be able to solve all your problems today. If you have questions about what you might need, please tell me the configuration of your server and I'll try to help. Another solution is to change the server altogether. You might even want to consider moving Flyertalk to a 3rd party hosting center utilizing a cluster. Granted all this costs money, but you make money from banners and when users cannot get onto flyertalk, you are losing that revenue, so it also costs you money not to fix these problems.

Poor configuration is more difficult to fix because you should know how to tune the server. You can hire somebody to do this, but unless it is really badly tuned or you have an inhouse person who knows how to tune the server, it is often cheaper to just overcome this problem by throwing hardware upgrades at it.

Unnecessary load I have seen many times, and it is mainly a result of bad practices. If you are running an NT server make sure of the following: run a virus checker to ensure that there is no virus or trojan hogging resources. Shut down any services you absolutely dont need. Make sure you ALWAYS logout (not just lock the console) after working, as an open console (even locked) uses resources. If you are running Unix/Solaris/SunOS tell me and I can give you other advice.

Hope this helps.

Ron Lewin

Board seems very speedy right now (check the time) with a modem connection.

No real performance issues (yet) with the new front page of FT Miles. However, from a user-friendly standpoint, I have to agree with previous posts: pretty bad.

I can still wing my way around because I work on a computer all day and explain to clients how to do the same. If I were a new visitor, or someone less comfortable with a PC interface, I would definitely feel a bit lost and probably throw my hands up in frustration and miss out on a lot of good information.

Thank you for your continued efforts.

Since I scan FlyerTalk daily, I always read the posts by selecting "Click Here To View Today's Active Topics (all public forums)." I like to scan through everything and read what's of interest to me regardless of forum. I wish that this link appeared on the front page--with the new change, now I have have to go through 3 screens to get to it (assuming I start at the main page).

Well, since it was Monsay when Dan posted an update for you all, I guess it's not to be expected that we have the Monday morning quarterbacks arriving to practice. The three things that stood out most from the comments so far, given that most of you seem to be qualified "experts" on servers and bulletin boards. 1) My FlyerTalk. You're really too late. When the board was introduced back on 1998, the orginal plan called for a custom interface of forums each member could determine. To date, after three years, we have yet to find any board platform that allows such. Have we looked? Well, having invested in licenses to test about 5 other platforms, I'd say we've looked high and low. But since you all seem to know so much, why not supply us with the name and tested perfprmance for such a board replacement. You see, that will be of far more use to us than assuming we don't know anything. 2) More RAM. Gee, I guess the 2 gigs of RAM we're now using doesn't stand for much. How's that compare to the 64k you have in your little Compaq? Truth is we have continued to invest in these things. 3) moving to a 3rd party Web hosting company. You might all be interested to know that we've always been in a cluster firm. Any company? Well, we moved several times over the year to bigger and better netowrks and services. Currently we use Verio. Ever heard of them? Well, owned by NTT, they are considered the largest Web hosting company in the world, right up there with Exodus and others. Bigger is not best. That's always a $64 question but being that big does allow us access to all the latest and greatest technology services for performance and certainly bandwidth.

Now, to back track a little. Read very close the comments by Dan. We did not want to change the user interface, we like the way it was. However, you will notice that Dan references "the creators of UBB". That's right, we wanted the absolute best advice for your board. We've used the regular Tech help desk for UBB all this time, but given the traffic volume on FT, we wanted to be absolute sure we had the best advice money could buy. So what did we do? That's right, we hired (that means paid a lot more) to get the attention of the guy who wrote the orginal code for UBB. No, he doesn't regularly staff the help desk anymore, since they boast they have over 12,000 licenses out there for UBB making it the most popular bulletin board engine in the world. What Dan outlined for you is what he recommnded given our traffic. Last month alone, FlyerTalk pushed 130 gigs of data on the server. This month looks like that will spike to 180 gigs because of last weeks trajedy and the interest in it. Now, all you internet guys and gals, go back to your resources and ask around, is pushing 180 gigs of data a lot of data for some little old bulletin board to have for traffic. Chances are they will all tell you - that is one hell of a lot of data. Bottom line, this is a major board for traffic and one that i am starting to think hasn't yet earned the respect it deserves from some of it's users. Contrary to what you may think, we didn't just fall off the turnip truck, we all don't use Front Page to design the Web site and we didn't learn to run servers from "The Dummies Guide" and we aren't using a dial up server of an old Compaq computer sitting in my closet in an unused bedrrom at home.

As for not knowing how you use the board? Gee, the fact that we know that from Jan 1 to Jun 30 that members of the board in the 6 motnh period only accessed threads from the year 2000 and before a mere 812 times. Clue, there are almost 600,000 threads on this board, and in that 6-month period we had just over 2 million total user sessions and 812 of those sessions were for old data. That is what slows the server, lifting all that data when someone uses any of the threads. Could someone figure out this percentage for me, my calculator doesn't have that many decimal places. Again, advice of the guy who wrote the code for UBB. We are really spending a lot of money and time searching for performance solutions for you. Maybe the solutions is to leave things the way they are and simply add filters to the board that delete complaints about being slow. That way we'd all think things are luvy-duvy. You all go ahead with whatever you want to post here, I'm not reading any of it until a month from now whaen we have completed all the changes we want to do to make FT a better place to surf. Feel free to complain everyday, but it only makes our jobs not much fun. Because of staging issues with servers, changing pointers for the DNS with Network Solutions and a host of other things, it's not as easy as you might think. Dan, Michael, Tim, John, Keary, Mikel, Daryn and Lisa have over time earned my respect here. And when people come to pitch us for new technology and when we do tech business with the likes of American Express and others, they always go out of their way to compliment the staff on their knowledge. So far, we've not met a technology partner who we can't converse at with the same level of conversation.

Well anyway, sorry if i bored you.

Randy and staff: I am not complaining, just asking:

could you please fix the "hop to" bar. It is about one and a quarter screens wide since the new format was introduced yesterday.

i would like to second the above mention of the "go to bar" being too wide . i have the problem w/ other posts, but figured that because i use a mac ibook w/ aol 5, that might be a problem. thanks, don...... also, i've been trying to buy somethings thru webflyer & gave up. can't get there . have the same prob w/aolaadvantage. i just give up!........ also, i wan't you people to know that i have spent a lot of time going thru your sites. & like the info. also, is there a 'whatever" to click on to find out how to help sponsor your bb's?

Randy - fine idea to limit 'search' to 12 months, if that speeds things up and frees up resources, and as you point out the number of folks using the search facility past that window is very small, and you will archive it anyway.

Also agree with others the "go to" bar is far too wide for me to even use. There is nothing to "click" onto at right for me at least. To navigate around now takes 10 minutes to several forums I like reading, not one click as before. Sorry, I dislike it. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif Must agree entirely with MrLimo comment above:



[This message has been edited by sendoisan (edited 09-18-2001).]

I have to agree with Randy's post and compliment him on posting it. I am sure Randy does not want to post something like this especially on how valuable and enjoyable Flyertalk has been. I have been distressed over the last 6-9 months frequenting flyertalk. We lost some really good members or have their voices squelched by alot of people who just want from this board.

As many services online have turned into pay services, pushing more advertisement, and cutting services back, Randy and the Flyertalk team has continued to strengthen Flyertalk as its popularity and usefulness grows. It is sad that at a time of such uneasiness in the travel business, people are worried about how the site works and that "they hate it". I am happy I can get on to this bulletin board and share information and gain information from other frequent flyers. At a time like this, the value of such an online forum is priceless.

Please, we should be praising the flyertalk team for continuing to improve this bulletin board and not criticizing it. I really long for the days when we shared our secrets, bonuses and the ins and outs of the frequent flyer programs.

Please think before you post. This is a gift from the Flyertalk team for us to enjoy, a priveledge, not a right. Please do not make this site more trouble than it is worth for Randy and his team.

Flyertalk, keep up the great work!!

You'll notice I'm not a huge long-term user at FlyerTalk (though I do remember lurking before the 4-way-split change, just vaguely remember). But I would agree that given UBB as a platform, it's amazing the amount of users and posts that are handled here.

I have two words for high-volume message boards, though: Web Crossing. Possibly Randy in mentioning that they've tried several will know why they dismissed this one if they've tried it. I know it would solve the personal list of forums feature, though (even though I personally never use web-based forums that way).

Just a thought. If Web Crossing is *not* one of the platforms that were investigated in the past, it could be worth a look. I don't know how long you're going to be able to patch this UBB together.

Interesting when you got back to an older thread, (see example below) that the settings re the "hop to" box are still as there WERE back before last Monday! So the present settings might easily be adjusted by Michael to how it was then - in respect to that box at least. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum...ML/000436.html

Pointing out the obvious it seems, but from the complaints here it appears that many are not taking advantage of what, for me, was the solution.

Those who only read a few specific forums can easily create a bookmark (what a radical idea!) for each of his/her favorite forum(s), put all these in a FlyerTalk folder under the Favorites menu (in IE), and not have to worry about opening screen displaying or not displaying direct links to desired forums.

Active threads of the day: http://www.flyertalk.com/forumcgi/se...ction=getdaily

Even with a new DSL connection, I don't know why one would want to bother loading up a screen full with the forum list just to click on 4 or 5 of the forums. (Or even more: my FT folder includes 15 forums or so).