Performance Test Feedback / Temporary Search Downtime
 

As you probably know we have taken the search down temporarily. Please post any site performance related feedback here during this time. Thank you,

--Tim

i didnt realize how much I used the search feature til this morning when it was gone.....ack!

Personally, I am not seeing any improvement in speed.

No improvement for me...

Please put it back so that I can find "Today's Posts"

I feel like it is quicker now. I was on earlier before lunch and was searching through the new posts and when I came back noticed it was gone.....I do think it is quicker now as the posts I am checking out seem to pop up quicker. It should be a little quicker (I would think in theory) since there isnt so much search activity going on and seems to me as if it is.

No. We need time for testing.

FT is really speedy for me today. ^^^

It's faster now than it was at 1:21PM (EST).

FT's running better for me today than it has in weeks.

FT's speed is much better :)^^

Yes, noticable difference in loading times. NO freezeups today either! ^

I hope the bugs in the search can be taken care of quickly, definately didn't realize how valuable it is.

I couldn't get into the "search all posts by... [me]" function on my own profile page, which I use constantly to track discussions I'm in... this thread explains why... thanks!

On the upside, FT is running faster than I've seen in months. On a regular day page lag can last 30-40 seconds. Today: bang, zoom.

It is much faster for me since turning off search. However, I have experienced one IE error (the same that everyone else is getting) and one page not loading when entering a forum. BUT, I am getting into each and every forum, thread & post that I try to without any wait.

I sure hope you can find what the problem is without sacrificing search. I never realized just how much I use it.

ditto, much faster ^

But with so many posters and posts, seach is really an essential feature.

I hope a compromise can be reached :)

no faster for me now at 4:42 PST
 

dang....hoping it would blaze along...all other internet sites are fine :(

very slow here
 

It's as slow as I've ever seen it. It took me 40 seconds to load the one page to see this thread. All other internet sites are fast 8:35EST

Speed is much faster today at 5pmEST, thanks

Help! I'm going through "Search withdrawal syndrome!" :eek:

Me too :( On the ^ side FT is faster than its been in months (for me), but I am really coming to appreciate just how much I use search.

I dont know if others noticing but it is harder to reply to folk asking the "common" questions as not so simple to find the thread with all the answers and so instead I give up and type again.

Folks,

instead of complaining about missing the search function, have you considered that Google has pretty much all of FT indexed?

just enter your query there and add site:www.flyertalk.com

For example:

ORD-MKE site:www.flyertalk.com

Scott - Thanks for the tip. I didn't KNOW that FT was fully indexed and never thought about using google.

Why does the ipod banner load no problem? nothing else does. though it DOES seem marginally faster.

It also works perfectly for adding the username to the search query.

Yes, I've used Google for this type of FlyerTalk search a number of times in the past.

It isn't quite as convenient as using the built-in FlyerTalk search function, but I wonder if the Google method actually gives better (more accurate, more complete) results. @:-)

Massive improvements in performance. And for whatever reason, Netscape (7.2) is noticeably better than IE(6.0, SP2).

Just some feedback:

I haven't been on FT this past week very much, but when I have, I haven't seen any stalls. Perhaps it *was* the search that caused the problems...

Yesterday I was timed out while posting several times. :td:

This morning it is extremely fast and I cannot remember the last time it responded this way. ^

It's almost 1 AM in NYC, and it is still extremely fast! ^ ^ ^

It's working great in LA at 1:21 AM Pacific.

Any idea when the search will be back though? :(

Been blazing ever since search was turned off.

VERY much improved. No stalls, no time-outs.

Me too :(

I tried ScottCs Google idea which worked really well although I did have to search AAnother forum for almost an hour to find something posted a few weeks back......d@mn you thousands of active users in the AA forum ;)

Managing a high volume Web site has a unique challenge when you consider all the moving parts. Our latest problem turned out to be related to this:
Performance Hit Since PHP 4.3.10 / 5.0.3
Many people have noticed that vBulletin (and a lot of other PHP applications) suddenly started to run significantly slowed than normal after installing PHP 4.3.10 or 5.0.3 in order to patch the security flaw in previous versions of PHP.
This cause of this slow-down has been identified as a problem with the unserialize() function in PHP. For more details, see bugs.php.net.
This problem has now been fixed by the PHP developers, though the fixed version has yet to be released in a 'stable' version. However, the latest CVS snapshots of PHP 4.3.x and 5.0.x, available from snaps.php.net contain the fix and restore the original speed of unserialize().
While we would not recommend running a 'dev' version of PHP on any production server, we understand that the performance problem has been a major issue for some people. If you are badly affected, you may want to consider running a 'dev' version of PHP at your own risk in order to overcome the performance problem.

As it turns out, when we moved to this latest version of PHP to fix a potential security flaw, it caused the slow down (and as noted, not just for our Web site). We are currently awaiting the official release fo the new version with the fix not opting to go with the 'dev' version because there are risks associated with that and we really are not interested in becoming a statistic. Once this fix is released, we'll install, test and reopen search. etc.

Thanks for being patient as well as understanding there are a lot of moving parts on this Web site and we're not just talking about our members. HA!

Who is this person posting and where did you put our non-techie Randy Petersen.... :)

Thanks for the update.

William

Thanks for the update, Randy. Consider updating the announcment at the top of each forum which indicates that the search will be back on by 2/14 at the latest.

Thanks for the update Randy.

FT has gone very slow again today for me. :( Is this just me?

Getting very slow page loads right now.

Earlier this evening it was very fast (as it has been this past week), but since I signed on 10 minutes ago, it's been taking 40-60 seconds to load forum listings and individual topics.

Other sites load fine, so it's not just my connection. The main www.flyertalk.com site also loads fine during this forum slowness.

(Edited to add: At 10:15p, the site worked great again.)

I notice some changes when I logged back in just now. Perhaps the tech team are changing stuff on the fly to save taking FT down. If so I guess I need to be more patient - hopefully when they are done FT will be zippy again.

Edited to add - straight after post this, FT is zippy again ^ Thanks.

:D

To bring an old thread back to life (I feel like a broken record)...

Pulling up threads was very slow this morning and even now. Earlier this morning I was lucky if I could even get a thread to come up at all (it would just halt after the FT header came up, and then never finish loading any thread - even when I was very careful to not move my mouse over the FT banner during loading). Now, it just takes longer than it should... on the order of 30-60 seconds per thread.

Hopefully these comments help nail the issue down further... I'm getting tired of posting them, and think many people have given up hope of a resolution.

Not sure if you have missed it, but many of the speed issues are related to a problem with the current release of PHP, the backbone of the technology that drives the operation of the board. Over the weekend we upgraded the board software to the latest possible version to take advantage of new optimization features, and we restored the ability to search to see if performance would be improved enough to support searching again.

We know full well that the board is still not performing as well as you (and we) would like. Right now we are just waiting for the developers of PHP to release a version that fixes the current problem.

Thanks,
John