I’ve mentioned this on a couple of posts, but figured I’d put it here so more people might see it.
We know that performance issued on the forum result in double posting, but we as forum users can often prevent this from happening completely.
Simplyfied somewhat, when you post either a new topic, or a reply to an existing topic, there are a couple of things that happen.
Your new topic or reply is posted
The forum then reloads the topic to show your new reply
From a server perspective #1 is actually a very light operation, and required very little resources. Wheras #2 requires greater resources and is more likely to time out.
In every instance where I have recieved an error while posting #1 happens succesfully. Even though the forum displays an error, the post is made.
When an error is displayed it is common to press the back button and have another go, but this results in the post being applied again, and sometimes another timeout (then click back/have another go)
So, what can we do to prevent this? Here is what works for me every single time.
Press the back button when an error occurs
Your post will be there looking back at you. Leave it there for now
There will be some text above the 'Post a reply' box that looks something like this: -
MX-5 Owners Club Forum » Buying a ‘5 and Insurance advice » Buying Advice » which one to buy?! » Post a reply
Right click on the thread title in that text (it is a link) and open in a new window or tab
Check the topic in the new window or tab to see if your reply is present.
If so, simply discard your post. If not, try your post again.
I have never had to try my post again after first carrying out this check. On one or two occasions I have had to refresh the new tab to force a page reload, but again, very uncommon.
More annoying than double posting has to be the loss of a long thought out post.
I use wordpad to create such posts and then cut and paste to the forum when ready.
Suggest that if you spend time and effort on a post make sure you have copied a backup somewhere until you know for certain it has been added and the thread successfully updated.
Like Rik, I occasionally get an error message after posting that logically indicates a failure to post. Always check the thread as most times logic is defied and the thread has been updated.
Good point about making a copy of long posts first!
This used to be habit for me already. I’ve been using and working on forums for a good number of years now back to when phpbb (which yaf is derived from) was the norm. Unless it was on good server hardware or a small forum these issues were suprisingly common. Not had to for a while, but when I post here I do anyway!
Current (and even previous) generation forum software, particularly premium offerings, manage to handle these issues much more gracefully. Combinations of page refreshes and logic to identify duplicate posts are the norm. Also saving drafts of posts automatically, not always perfect but protects long posts.
I’d love to see the MX5OC forums running on more recent software.
I find it hard to disagree with any of your points, just trying to make the browsing experience slightly less frustrating.
I do know moving to a new forum software on a large forum such as our is no small undertaking, even upgrading new a more recent version is something of a challenge considering how many versions out of date we are. It’s a catch 22 - upgrades are tricky - but the longer they are left the more complex the upgrade path becomes.
Anyway, that my personal view, I’m nothing to do with the OC web team just someone who knows the ropes on such things.
I’ve just tested my steps out on my phone, which will use the same mobile theme as your tablet.
On my phone if I do a long press on a link it gives me a context menu which offers the option to open the link in a new tab. The link I put in bold, while wrapped onto a couple of lines is still present. So after tapping back it is possible to then long press on the thread title link and open in a new tab. Your post should still be there as with a desktop.
This was on apple safari, I’ll have a poke with Mrs Rikks android tab later.
In my short membership I’ve had two double posts - never experienced elsewhere before. Eventually realised it was down to my own impatience in expecting a more rapid download and pressing ‘post’ again. Maybe at peak times a heavy load…?
Slow loads and slow posts are, I think, two separate issues. I think there is an issue with some posts that result in a database lock (though not a deadlock as such) which in turn causes slow loads. So related but distinct.
The issue though is that proving this theory isn’t easy because of the intermittent nature, coupled with the amount of traffic which makes it near impossible to identify individual problem traces (needle in a haystack!)
Changing software is an option, though as called out by a previous post it isn’t a quick or easy job. First hurdle is to choose the software that we want, and confirm it will work nicely with the incredibly high number of sub forums (and to a lesser extent posts + users that we have). I am fairly sure that the issues we experience are because of our somewhat unique scale challenges.
I’m not in a position to comment on the workings of forums but I do use a few.
One of the forums I use has way more sub forums than the mx5 owners club in fact I would say it probably double the size but still works perfectly well even when there are well over a hundred users on there at once.
It’s just not good enough to have to wait 50seconds for a page to open then another 50 seconds to post a reply.
Unless it changes when you login, we have a lot more sub forums than them?
Not to say it wouldn’t handle the load better. It probably would. But would be nice to see it in action.
I think generally threads will scale nicely on most forums, as will (generally) users. We will have more of these than most but substantially less than the big forums/outliers.
When we went with this forum software back in 2012, one of the key selling points was that we could easily integrate it with single sign in with the main site. Most software at the time didn’t support this (and the ones that did usually supported it as an insecure after thought). It’s a very different scene today though with most software supporting some form of single sign on, so the choice is far greater than it was in the past.
