Downtime

Älphämönkëy

Sorry about that. I dont know what caused it, but since I was online I stepped in and fixed it. I found the error, fixed the main site, waited a few minutes, brought up the main site, waited some more, brought up the forums.

All in all not terribly exciting. If someone noticed I added these two lines into .htaccess for the main site

Redirect temp /index.php3 [url]http://www.penny-arcade.com/index.html[/url]
Redirect temp /view.php3 [url]http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.html[/url]

this is what let me run the site cached while I fixed things.

Just giving you guys the heads up.

Wally

:^:

futility

you're the man now dog!

Litejedi

futility wrote:

you're the man now dog!

http://www.yourethemannowdog.com/

wayne

While I know it's not Alpha's fault, as a PA reader in general, forums or not, I'm getting real tired of weekly or more frequent downtime. I know the site, hosting, and forums are free, but this kind of thing is all the more reason why I think something needs to be done about all this downtime. I can't imagine a site this popular doesn't lose traffic, which of course is a loss in ad revenue, every time the site or forums go down.

No, I don't know any ways to fix this, but I do know that it aggravates me. PA is one of the half dozen sites I go to daily, and with the Snackbar forums being down at the same time, it made it that much worse.

BUT, I must give Alpha credit. He gots things back up and running smoothly pretty quick, so kudos to him, but I still think the frequent downtime around here, regardless of who's fault it is, is getting rather annoying.

Thandor

:^:

Älphämönkëy

Ive been talking with Ramius, and we have a pretty swanky idea that should make things a look smoother. It will take a little bit of time before it gets integrated, but you will be able to feel the speed increase.

Slungsolow

Perhaps its the fact that you are running a very non-scalable database on a very large scale website.

You guys should drop some bank down on some oracle. I know everyone but me would be willing to give some donations for that.

Älphämönkëy

Slungsolow wrote:

Perhaps its the fact that you are running a very non-scalable database on a very large scale website.

You guys should drop some bank down on some oracle. I know everyone but me would be willing to give some donations for that.

Oracle? For the forums?

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Maybe if we consistently had several million users online at one time oracle might be worth it. But for now MySQL does the job just fine. The site proper can be sped up without having to drop several thousand dollars on a database solution.

Ramius

wayne wrote:

While I know it's not Alpha's fault, as a PA reader in general, forums or not, I'm getting real tired of weekly or more frequent downtime. I know the site, hosting, and forums are free, but this kind of thing is all the more reason why I think something needs to be done about all this downtime. I can't imagine a site this popular doesn't lose traffic, which of course is a loss in ad revenue, every time the site or forums go down.

No, I don't know any ways to fix this, but I do know that it aggravates me. PA is one of the half dozen sites I go to daily, and with the Snackbar forums being down at the same time, it made it that much worse.

BUT, I must give Alpha credit. He gots things back up and running smoothly pretty quick, so kudos to him, but I still think the frequent downtime around here, regardless of who's fault it is, is getting rather annoying.

This is before your time, I'm sure, but there was a period once where all there was of penny-arcade was a "We'll be back soon" page, for at least a couple weeks.

Penny-Arcade works hard at presenting a professional image. But behind the scenes, it really is nothing more than a couple guys with ideas about games that are trying to use the WWW to share those ideas with whoever is interested. They've had some tough breaks along the way, and some lucky breaks. They've made some terrible decisions and some excellent decisions. They have lived the "do more with less" motto for several years, and I applaud them for it.

I'm sorry they are not living up to your high standard of quality, but I'd appreciate you not bitching and moaning about every downtime. Nobody likes a whiner, and that is the impression you are painting, whether you mean to or not.

Orthanc

alphamonkey wrote:

Slungsolow wrote:

Perhaps its the fact that you are running a very non-scalable database on a very large scale website.

You guys should drop some bank down on some oracle. I know everyone but me would be willing to give some donations for that.

Oracle? For the forums?

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Maybe if we consistently had several million users online at one time oracle might be worth it. But for now MySQL does the job just fine. The site proper can be sped up without having to drop several thousand dollars on a database solution.

I think he's realy talking about the main site. But since the content doesn't change much, you should probably look at one of the apache modules that cache the PHP output for certain pages rather than running the PHP each time.

Ramius

Orthanc wrote:

alphamonkey wrote:

Slungsolow wrote:

Perhaps its the fact that you are running a very non-scalable database on a very large scale website.

You guys should drop some bank down on some oracle. I know everyone but me would be willing to give some donations for that.

Oracle? For the forums?

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Maybe if we consistently had several million users online at one time oracle might be worth it. But for now MySQL does the job just fine. The site proper can be sped up without having to drop several thousand dollars on a database solution.

I think he's realy talking about the main site. But since the content doesn't change much, you should probably look at one of the apache modules that cache the PHP output for certain pages rather than running the PHP each time.

caching php output.

hmmmm, what an interesting idea.

:rotate:

(This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and just started attacking recently. )

Raijin Quickfoot

Is it just me, or is Alpha's Admin badge missing?

Ramius

It's just you.

Orthanc

Ramius wrote:

caching php output.

hmmmm, what an interesting idea.

:rotate:

(This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and just started attacking recently. )

Well fine be like that.

I'm curious though, do you allow client side caching of the PHP pages at the moement (by sending the 301 header) ?

Orthanc

Alpha is online and hidden. That bastard.

Slungsolow

Orthanc wrote:

alphamonkey wrote:

Slungsolow wrote:

Perhaps its the fact that you are running a very non-scalable database on a very large scale website.

You guys should drop some bank down on some oracle. I know everyone but me would be willing to give some donations for that.

Oracle? For the forums?

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Maybe if we consistently had several million users online at one time oracle might be worth it. But for now MySQL does the job just fine. The site proper can be sped up without having to drop several thousand dollars on a database solution.

I think he's realy talking about the main site. But since the content doesn't change much, you should probably look at one of the apache modules that cache the PHP output for certain pages rather than running the PHP each time.

Actually I was kidding. Do you know how much oracle costs? ...



EDIT Would you have taken me less seriously if I said you should run the main site off of flat text files?

Orthanc

Slungsolow wrote:

Actually I was kidding. Do you know how much oracle costs?

Come to think of it, I don't. We get it for free at work.

Älphämönkëy

Orthanc wrote:

Alpha is online and hidden. That bastard.

I am a bastard like that. Sometimes when I work on things behind the scenes I dont like to be bothered. Also, I enjoy posting without my admin badge because I get a more pure response from people who dont know me.

As to caching Orthanc, Ramius and I have been talking about it for a while....

GABBO GABBO GABBO

Slungsolow wrote:

Orthanc wrote:

alphamonkey wrote:

Slungsolow wrote:

Perhaps its the fact that you are running a very non-scalable database on a very large scale website.

You guys should drop some bank down on some oracle. I know everyone but me would be willing to give some donations for that.

Oracle? For the forums?

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Maybe if we consistently had several million users online at one time oracle might be worth it. But for now MySQL does the job just fine. The site proper can be sped up without having to drop several thousand dollars on a database solution.

I think he's realy talking about the main site. But since the content doesn't change much, you should probably look at one of the apache modules that cache the PHP output for certain pages rather than running the PHP each time.

Actually I was kidding. Do you know how much oracle costs? ...



EDIT Would you have taken me less seriously if I said you should run the main site off of flat text files?

More than the 5 spot in my wallet.

Älphämönkëy

Slungsolow wrote:

EDIT Would you have taken me less seriously if I said you should run the main site off of flat text files?

Yes.

Dog

alphamonkey wrote:

Also, I enjoy posting without my admin badge because I get a more pure response from people who dont know me.

I dislike you equally either way. Jerk.















I don't think deni is on to us anymore.

Slungsolow

Orthanc wrote:

Slungsolow wrote:

Actually I was kidding. Do you know how much oracle costs?

Come to think of it, I don't. We get it for free at work.

The Standard Package for a commercial version of Oracle is $3,666. On top of that you have to pay $15,000 per processor. Its not cheap.

Corvus

Ramius wrote:

It's just you.

Hmmm. I can't see it either. All the other badge show up though.

wayne

but I'd appreciate you not bitching and moaning about every downtime. Nobody likes a whiner, and that is the impression you are painting, whether you mean to or not.

Perhaps if there wasn't so much downtime there wouldn't be so much bitching

Dog

wayne wrote:

but I'd appreciate you not bitching and moaning about every downtime. Nobody likes a whiner, and that is the impression you are painting, whether you mean to or not.

Perhaps if there wasn't so much downtime there wouldn't be so much bitching

If you were banned from the site, you wouldn't notice any downtime. Think about that next time you think about bitching.

Älphämönkëy

wayne wrote:

but I'd appreciate you not bitching and moaning about every downtime. Nobody likes a whiner, and that is the impression you are painting, whether you mean to or not.

Perhaps if there wasn't so much downtime there wouldn't be so much bitching

Im feeling really really cruel right now. I am tempted to add a 5 second pause before any of waynes pages load.

wayne

There's already a 5 second pause before any of my pages load. That's nothing new. Heh...

Besides, if noone complained and everyone just sat back and accepted the problems, something tells me they would happen even more often than they are now.

Slungsolow

wayne wrote:

There's already a 5 second pause before any of my pages load. That's nothing new. Heh...

Besides, if noone complained and everyone just sat back and accepted the problems, something tells me they would happen even more often than they are now.

Good attitude.

denihilist

wayne wrote:

There's already a 5 second pause before any of my pages load. That's nothing new. Heh...

Besides, if noone complained and everyone just sat back and accepted the problems, something tells me they would happen even more often than they are now.

There's a difference between bitching, criticism and constructive criticism. Orthanc comments on every downtime and while he can annoy me, he always, ALWAYS adds some bit of advice or piece of knowledge in a helpful manner.

Tube

wayne wrote:

but I'd appreciate you not bitching and moaning about every downtime. Nobody likes a whiner, and that is the impression you are painting, whether you mean to or not.

Perhaps if there wasn't so much downtime there wouldn't be so much bitching

What the fuck have you got to bitch about? The free site you like to go to doesn't always work? Somebody phone the fucking wahmbulance. Grow up kiddo. No one forces you to come here, and if I see you bitching here one more time I'll be seriously considering removing that option for you altogether. Keep it zipped.

Angry

jesus christ wayne, shut the fuck up already.

you've been bitching and whining about this for months now, yet you never take the time to educate yourself as to solutions or add any fucking ideas on how to solve anything.

you bitch and whine just for the sake of bitching and whining and it's gotten old.

Älphämönkëy

Wayne, we have a rule: If everyone says you are being a dick, you are probably being a dick.

*LOCKED*