I've been noticing some pretty wierd errors coming through the site lately. So, I went looking around in the log files. Finally, I came across evidence that we've been pushing our server to the limits. Fortuntely, these limits were due to software defaults. So, today I increased the number of database connections, made a few buffer size increases, and simply optimized the databases.

We are well beyond a 'typical' website at this point. If enough usage causes the sysadmin (me) to dig in and optimize databases, increase memory settings, and simply make it work better.... I think we are growing!!

Anyway, let me know if you see any problems. -- Mike

I knew something was going on, because I could not access the Home page all day at work. I kept getting an error message that said something about too many connections and emailing the sysadmin. Finally at 4PM I deleted cookies and temp files and everything went back to normal.

Mike did you get my email about volunteering for the club. I sent it on Tuesday night? Let me know, please.

Mike - would it help to delete old items from the site?

I.E. : have the server delete posts that are over - say - 8 months old. The reason I think thats OK to do is I see so many posts asking repete questions. We answer them anyway - well sometimes tell the asker to do a search - but still someone answers the question anyway. Wouldn't this make a lot of room on the site data base? Wouldn't it make the site faster?

Maybe I'm up the wrong tree.

- Jeff

But who's gonna go through all those old posts and decide if they are worth keeping or not? Some could be deleted.. some should stay for future reference.....

I'd say leave it as is....

I'd also say a lot of space is being taken up by our gallery which is getting huge compared to most of the other sites....

I think the server could be set to automaticly delete old info. It will be posted again when someone asks anyway.

Maybe the personal gallerys could be limited to 1/2 dozen pics. or so. If some one wants more to be seen --- they can rotate them in. In the event of a member having taken a bunch of pics. at a show, they could be given allowance to post them all at one time and leave them up for say 2 months or so. What do you think of that idea?

- Jeff

The only thing having lots of pictures hurts is disk space. The gallery statistics say that there are currently 2,267 photos taking up 425.6MB of disk space. I recently bought 2 120GB Western Digital IDE drives for $80 each after the rebate. Therefore the entire gallery is using about 28 cents worth of disk space.

If people are downloading them then that eats bandwidth but that's a good thing for a popular web site.

Naw, deleting old posts doesn't necessarily help when it comes to server 'resources' because that data is stored in a database. The lack of memory (or too many connection) errors come from the system load at certain times.

I changed a few settings on the SQL database server to allow for more memory useage. I also increased the amount of allowed database connections from 100 to 500.

The hardware is capable of a lot more than we are giving it, I just needed to change a few things on the software server side.

[m]

And, yes I have received all of your messages about helping out around the site. Thank you SO much! I just need to figure out who can do what and then hand out the duties.

-- M

Mike, since yesterday the server time (time that indicates when posts are made) is WAY out of whack. I posted at about 6:15 AM this morning and the server indicates 4:40 AM. My settings are correct for Pacific time in my User Control Panel. It used to be out of whack by 15 to 17 minutes, now it's out of whack by over an hour and 1/2.