is it extremely slow for anyone else or just me???
it's taken nearly 10 mins for me to be able to open the page to start this thread
is it extremely slow for anyone else or just me???
it's taken nearly 10 mins for me to be able to open the page to start this thread
UBER slooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
i guess thats why nobody has posted anything this evening thenIt is slow and i'm on a brand new mac as well.
I thought about re-starting the web server but there are so many people on line that I thought maybe it wasn't slow for everyone. It is slow for me tonight.
still so slow
For anyone using the live window who will see this message....
I'm going to re-boot the server in a couple of minutes to see if it helps.
So please stop any messages you're posting as they will be lost.
Thanks.
Ok, done.
Can't tell yet if it's made any difference.
still dog slow, made a cup of tea while waiting for this reply window to open
I just phoned Webfusion Support. They just have a message playing that they are having some problems and are aware of it and are trying to fix it. I don't know if that is the cause of this websites slowness.
Nothing more I can do at the moment.
glad its not only me, its not bad really considering im on many forums and they all experiance website downtime etc rtoc is pretty sturdy most the time, look forward to it being sorted.
still very slow check things my end seem,s ok
Maybe try a different hosting company?Originally Posted by Ian S
We are trying but it's not that straightforward .There are many unique features to this site ( apart from the deathly speed ) and finding someone to take it over is proving difficult .
Maybe some extra funding could be released to enable us to look at companies that can handle the 'uniqueness' of this site then?
errr yes .That is what we are doing .
Scoff no longer has the time to do much more than firefight, we are trying to find a paid alternative .
There is a lot of stuff that needs attention besides the speed issue .We have already been down a couple of dead ends even with the ' professionals '
It has become rather slow of late, putting me off the site somewhat.
Iam sure its in hand mart
I'll see you on the balcony later to moan and shout abuse at people
The last thing I read from Ian is that he's speaking to the hosting company; nothing regarding speaking to alternative host companies.
I'll check my crystal ball before posting next time...
Give it a polish first though to make sure you see in properly
•We moved to this new VPS with the same host, Webfusion, it was slower. I complained a few times. They looked into it a few times and didn't find a problem but offered us a free return to the previous VPS.
•We were considering that when it became apparent the old VPS has been hacked and third paties are using it to port scan the world and make hacking attempts. So I had to disable that one.
•I spoke to a couple of people who might have been able to help but couldn't really.
•I spoke to a recommended programmer who had a look at the various problems and said he could help. Then he said he was not able to, not due to him move to the middle east, but due to having found out that any UK income means the UK tax office make him pay 9% of his middle east earning to them!
•I then communicated with the comapny who took over his UK business but they were too difficult to communicate with and didn't seem to understand what we have, needed, wanted.
•Gordon became involved and has set up a new VPS with another host and has copied over all the site files and databases and got some of it working. Then he went on holiday for two weeks. But during that time this VPS was quite a bit quicker than it had been. Now these last two days it's been rubbish.
•Last Saturday I found and communicated with another hosting company / programmer who does have experience in the various areas needed and have asked him to look at the site files, servers, databases, vB code, PHP pages, server PHP, server error flags, and everything else to see if he can spot any cause(s) of the slowness and very high traffic the servers are reporting; traffic not caused by RTOC use.
•Gordon meanwhile over the coming week might be attempting to get copy of this site working, if he does, we might be able to move to that VPS temporarily at least.
•In parallel with that, I've asked the new programmer / host to look at building us a brand new website and create the features that have been missing for the last three years plus improvements to the basics of how this site works.
•It all takes a lot of time. And we've already spent money, £550 on this current VPS that is so slow. Actually, within the VPS itself it's lightning fast, faster than Gordons new VPS but a lot slower to load pages for end users. We don't know why.
•I spent a few hours this week trying to get the article photos to work. The links somehow are pointing to the old .asp site and with that site on the old server which is turned off, the photos are not working. There are hundreds of them so manually re-writing the links would be a very long slow process which I'm not going to do, especially as the editor this site has will not show the html and therefore will not allow links to be edited, only replaced. I need someone who knows what they're doing to somehow re-point all the photos in all the articles in a batch process to a new folder in the new site.
It's not that straightforward. There are many unique features to this site.
I don't understand this. I thought from the outset this incarnation of the website intended to get rid of all the bespoke stuff of the original site that no-one but Mark could understand? I thought that one of the draws of the current site infrastructure was that it was a format that was far more mainstream such that in the event of problems/changes to admin staff, that it would be far easier to troubleshoot/find support?
Ian, as ever you seem to be doing a cracking job. The amount of walls you must have banged your head against over the RTOC years is boggling. I hope one of the avenues you're looking into for a solution to this latest problem proves fruitful.
Trev, I don't believe anyone ever said that we'd "get rid" of all the bespoke stuff, but rather the objective was to build a site with as little bespoke stuff as possible - and that's what we did.
Unfortunatly when a website needs a 'turbo wizard' feature or a 'contacts' section or some code to deal with area rep management then there has to be a degree of bespoke work. Fortunately it is all written in PHP now, which as of a few years ago when I wrote this site was the most widely used platform and is still a commonly used language today but even so it's proving hard to find anyone that wants to get involved with even that small amount of bespoke work.
If we had of been using some brand new content management system then more designers might have been willing to get involved, but we dont because our requirements were very specific and so writing things from scratch was the only way to go.
You see, we were stuck. On one hand we wanted a system that was easilly expandable, modifiable by anyone. On the other we had a very exacting list of feature requirements and so some compromise was needed.
The site would actually be working perfectly well if we hadn't of become a target for hackers of late. God knows why, it seems they managed to invade our old VPS and now, perhaps, they are upset at being locked out of the new system and so we are being subject to some kind of DOS attack or brute force login attempts. Who knows. The slowness problem is not within the RTOC website - it's a problem thats affecting its connection to the rest of the world. If we move VPS the problem may follow us. Or maybe the problem is being directed at our IP, in which case it may not. So whatever is done will be a bit of a gamble.
Hi Scoff.
That's fascinating stuff, thanks for explaining some of the background. What you say makes complete, logical sense.
As for the problems/hacking, it dismays me that there are so many delinquents out there wishing to disturb others' lives for the sake of it and because they can. Utter w*n*ers.
I'm surprised that we can't attract a professional php coder to do the site admin/dev given there must be a fair few out of work at the moment. You'd think someone would relish the chance to do a bit of paid work that requires some head scratching and initiative within a well-known framework.
At least some of the hacking appears to be organised crime.
At one point they were intercepting and stealing payments to PayPal for items sold from our shop. PayPal were on to them immediately and informed us of the hijack and refunded the buyers.
A few people have said to me that forums, including this vB one, are know for being insecure and need to be updated often. Because of all the vB source code customisations done at the beginning, this was not possible for this forum. We don't know if that is a factor or not.
A problem is largely that Scoff has been too busy for a very long time to give enough time to develop this site and despite repeated asking, no-one else in the club has been able to help either directly or by finding someone / a suitable company who could do it for us. There was one offer for me to chase up but I've been unable to follow it up or search the www for suitable companies and phone around.
And it's hard of me or anyone else on the committee or in the club to really ascertain if they can actually do it as we don't have sufficient technical knowledge to have a proper technical conversation with programmers and companies.
I did hire one company who said they could do all the languages and softwares but that proved to be far from the fact. I've had conversations with others who also could not do it.
You have to bear in mind that a top programmer might be earning £1000 (or more?) a week. Unless they already know what to do, we could not afford to pay them to learn as they go, reverse engineering what has been done before so they can understand it. Hence finding someone / a group already in possession of the various skills required.
Could we have a new thread started by one of the committee stating the club website support requirements please? Such that anyone who has IT contacts can use the info to send out some feelers within their sphere?
Could the club use an employment agency to officially recruit an external resource for an appropriately remunerated retainer/part-time position, say for an initial 6-month contract?
It would seem that keeping the website maintained is the core of the club, the glue that binds the members together. If it's worth spending club monies on anything at all, surely it has to be the site itself.
One problem I could foresee is the management of such a technical resource. Who from the committee would responsible for the interaction with the individual and assessing whether they were value for money on a weekly basis. The other issue is whether the club can afford it and how much club funds should be diverted.
What is clear is that something in the current website management/support/dev situation needs to change.
agree just takes up way to much time.....
Try doing admin crap & reading membership emails... utter joke
no problems on the http://pmt-trackdays.co.uk/phpBB3/index.php forum for those who want to use that in the mean time...
Stop moaning Penfold
Took me all morning to process the last shop orders ...still , all done now,posted and I'm shutting up shop for stocktake purposes till after National day
Don't know if he does but my mate simon runs this site http://cmmoc.co.uk/forum/index.php and he does some private website work on the side for others.
He does have a company website with his portfolio etc but i can't remember his web address
i don't know if he knows the system your using on here but here's his email address if you want to contact him and pick his brains just say fordy sent you ph33r_zerot@hotmail.com
Last edited by Fordy; 31-05-2011 at 20:04.
Site seems to be working nicely this morning.
Anyway, Committee types, any ideas in response to my post above at 10:33 on the 31st?
FWIW - you lot need to give this man some credit and thanks. I know that he has worked hard in trying to find a dev. They are thin on the ground and sat on top of wedges of cash. Its not through Ians lack of trying that RTOC is in this position.
I have tried to help - but I dont have the required knowledge.
What's going on this site is getting slower and slower !!!!!
Likewise, cba to read all above yada yada, but still getting painfully slow on a decent Mac.
I also use Liverpool Football Clubs Chat boards and they too are powered by vBulletin..Needless to say they have gone completely tits up today..
What is it about vBulletin....
*EditLiverpool Football Club have gone completely tits up...
Ever thought about becoming a journalist?*Edit
AS WELL as being the Dancing Chef?Ever thought about becoming a journalist?
Any updates Ian?
The site is miserably fecking slow again today
I'd like to have some positive news but there isn't any.
I keep hiring / trying to hire programmers that keep being unable or unwilling to do it. Takes weeks each time. Even offered larger payments and that didn't have any effect.
Two who were recommended by members both declined to take it on. Neither had all the required skills. I spent a few hours in communications with them to no avail.
I guess a lot of programmers already get large payments but for easier work.
As a temporary measure to try and get a working forum, if not anything else, a couple of weeks ago for £360 we bought the latest vBulletin version and Gordon B has been trying to get that to work since but it's not compatible with the version 3 we have and the attempts to carry over the configuration keep failing on new problems each time one is overcome. Seems like that idea has run aground.
Monday this week I engaged yet another company, this time they claim to have 170 staff based in India with offices in Watford, UK and in USA. The sales man in Watford said they'd assess this site and let me know by today, which they haven't.
The Indian firm got back to me. They can't do vBulletin so cant' help.
This morning I Googled for vB developer. I wrote to one I found but vB people seem to be very thin on the ground.
forgive me for my ignorance as ive not really read up on this thread,
but if the website is causing so much of an issue (the slowness is definitely keeping me off the forum more now ) then can rtoc not start from stratch.? im by no means a pc boff but if all other car forums out there are doing well they why cant rtoc?
ive just joined briskoda which is £20 for 2yrs and the website is spot on.
i use to enjoy coming on rtoc, but now if the page takes too long to load i simply X'erase the page.
there has got to be a solution for the laggyness as i use to really enjoy rtoc and still want to, but i feel the same now.
i know the committee is doing what it can but it still doesnt stop one from thinking "what the feck is going on with this site" no disrespect intended.
Briskoda have 55,000 members. So more money. I wonder who does there site and what software they use?
Their forum uses Invision Power Board. http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/
Ian, is this of any use: http://www.phpbb.com
I know Shopboy has this type of message board on his PMT trackdays website, and that seems to work nicely enough.
Perhaps Raj is onto something with the 'starting from scratch' thing...
anything happening with this, unfortunatly my time on this site is slipping purely because its so much trouble to get on it and post, which is a massive shame, i understand all the points above etc.
To summerize:
1) Ian has spent endless hours, days and weeks trying to find a company or programmer to do the work for us. No one is interested, even after offering more than their normal rate of pay.
2) Gordon has put time and effort in to setting up a brand new version of forum software (this one is a few years old now, which is considered old when you're looking for a developer) but was having problems making it work with the database properly. He, like so many of us has only a finite amount of time to fit these things in. Hopefully this will work out at some point or other.
3) About none of the other committee are doing anything to help, largely because they don't know the ins and out's of all this hosting and web site stuff, but neither did I or Ian until we'd spent hours looking at and considering the options.
4) I don't have the time to do half of whats needed anymore but I hope to be able to spend a day or so on the site next week to hopefully try and get us up and running with this (old) website on the new, new server, away from the current hosts who have caused us nothing but headaches.
rather than clog up the issues thread with congratulations posts I though I'd put mine here.
Cracking job guys, I'm certain it's a been a stressful time for you all. So far my only concern is epilepsy from flitting between threads
Much better, feels more like a t28 now
its spot on at the mo, good work.. its been a pain in the assss for a while, posting, editing or just lookings been a nightmare..
it'll be buzzin on here again
hm, yes apart from every photo of mine dissapearing its great......
so it was your photos slowing it all down, typicalhm, yes apart from every photo of mine dissapearing its great......
Will look into, we've got lots of backupshm, yes apart from every photo of mine dissapearing its great......
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