Limits of the projects system

[soapdodger 17313xp 1]

I have noticed on a number of visits to I think the longest project ever  that the response time is very slow and sometimes doesn’t load and goes to bad gateway. Is this approaching the limits of the project system? Should I stop and start a new project to improve the performance?

I know I am expecting too much and extracting the urine with the amount of pictures and length, but I don’t want to harm the OTT site by continuing to post as I can see this going for a few more years.

Could optimisation be the key if not starting again or would this only be a feature for one and not worth it?

 

[limburger 21673xp 1]

I’m not having any performance issues while looking at that project, but maybe it is related to how busy the site happens to be at the moment.

However I do think that even without performance issues it already is tricky to navigate.
Maybe the option to divide a big project into mini projects would help or some kind of bookmarking/chapter navigation ?
This would make it easier for people to find the interesting bits within a project of this size.

[elessar2590 18207xp 1]

How big are the picture’s you’re uploading?

Bigger files can crash the system.

[soapdodger 17313xp 0]

Now that I am trying to replicate doesn’t seem to be happening, happened a few times seems to be leave it for a couple of days and it seem to be at that point when I try and load again.

It isn’t this but it’s like its held in RAM after its viewed and times out when loading to the RAM from the HDD after this it works with no issues until unmounted from RAM after a time period like 24 – 48 hours. Cant describe it any other way. Happens across multiple devices and connections.

Best way I can describe it.

[oriskany 60771xp 2]

The Darkstar Project thread might be one of the longest ones in the site, at over 3,200 recommendations and 114 entries.  I do notice the loading time is sometimes a little slow, but not usually when hard-wired into a solid router.  I try to keep almost all my images less than a MB, just internet “politeness” if that makes any sense.

I would actually really hate to have it “broken off” and start a new one.  I mean, once you build up 3,200 recommendations and you literally present a gaming universe complete with its own small but dedicated fanbase, who would want to start over?  And at the rate new projects cycle to the top, anything that is “archived” would inevitably be buried forever.

I dunno, maybe I need to start my own site, just for archiving if nothing else.

I am posting on Darkstar less frequently now.  In fact, all our Sitrep / Weekend Wargames / Darkstar battlereports aren’t getting the traction they used to anyway.  Well, okay, Darkstar is, but not the other two.

I’ve already told my players I won’t be posting battle reports on the site much more in the projects feature. It’s just a ton of work, and if people aren’t looking at it, what’s the point?  Meanwhile, I might be inadvertently pushing some kind of limitation soon on the site, as @soapdodger mentions .

On a technical side, I think I remember the team saying something like updates / additions to a project would only cycle it up to the top of the running order every 12 hours or so.  I think this was an “anti-spamming” precaution if that makes sense?

[soapdodger 17313xp 0]

Hmm weird, it’s a good point @oriskany dark star project is massive. I can say I am only in every other week or so but don’t have the issue on that project. I however do not limit the size of my images, that could be it. Or your project will have more traffic keeping it in the RAM analogy above so it’s much less apparent.

Good points on starting over though didn’t think of it from your projects perspective. Will need to think more on this.

 

[oriskany 60771xp 1]

@soapdodger – I’m definitely keeping any new projects I start, including the Sitrep / Oriskany Weekend Wargames … much more “modular” – easy to split up into multiple smaller projects.  One beast is enough for me.  😀

[timchubbKeymaster 3166xp 1]

Shall be discussing this with the guys at expo this week, have a few idea’s but the crux seems to be the usual bottle neck we hit when things get social here, which is all the additional information we have to load (comments, calculating votes & likes etc.), currently its not the smartest of queries, pretty much “give me everything in one big bite”, one of the remedies would be to make comments and content “after the fold” i.e. what you have scroll a page down to view, and make that load in the background/on demand.

Pagination could also be a quick win, but im not so sure that would make the best use of the format, to limit it to 15 or 20 entries a page

I like the concept of chapters, but unfortunately the same performance issue would be encountered due to how data is structured in the backend, that said its somewhat gratifying that its taken a year to start to hit the limits of our non burst mode server infrastructure.

In short dont think their is a silver bullet right now, but it will get looked at asap.

[soapdodger 17313xp 0]

@timchubb thanks it is a great system overall and also thanks for your continued efforts! Just as long as I don’t break anything! 🙂

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