Bulletin Board System Notes / Questions...

Wayne 962 · Wayne 962's Garage

A while ago, a bunch of you complained that good topics were disappearing off into page two and beyond. Obviously, as the board has grown, this happens on a daily basis. I just checked, and it took about 2 hours for posts to disappear off of the page.

However, I find myself looking more and more at pages 2,3,4, and beyond on a daily basis. For me, it's far more interesting, because I'm only looking at topics that I really want to look at, and I have a wide choice of viewing. Very few topics seem to get zero posts and 'forgotten' because we've got such a critical mass here.

I think the growth has been managed very well. The server seems more than able to handle the load (believe it or not, it's a basic Dell Server running Win 2K with dual IDE drives, and a gig of RAM = nothing too special).

What do you think?

-Wayne

masraum · 02-07-2003, 11:47 AM

I'm with you. Sometimes an occasional bump is required (a thread, not me), but for the most part things are great. Couldn't be better.

Thanks for all of your work. I've spent over a grand in the last month, and it would have been more except I had to go through the dealer for a fan housing.

masraum · 02-07-2003, 11:48 AM

PS When's the rebuild book going to be out. I remember something about a delay, but haven't heard anything since. I sold a work colleague on it, he's jonesing to get it, and now it's not available.
He's already got 101.

Jim Richards · 02-07-2003, 11:50 AM

I look over a couple of pages each day. No problem. And you're right, the growth has been managed well. Thanks for this great service, Wayne!

Tim Walsh · Tim Walsh's Garage

Wanye,
This is a great service and I'll keep coming back to you for both the great service I've received and bacause of this BBS.

RickM · RickM's Garage

I'm in agreement with the others. It is well managed and the pace keeps thing interesting.

Rick

Paul_Heery · Paul_Heery's Garage

Wayne,

I think you need to ask yourself, "How important is this BBS to Pelican's business?" The next question would be, "How painful would it be to the business if the BBS went down?"

The reason that I pose these questions is that it appears that you have absolutlely no redundancy in your setup. At a minimum, I believe that you should have a level of RAID implemented to protect against the inevitable hard drive failure. Past that, real-time replication of data to a backup server with automatic failover would be the way to go. (and not that expensive either)

Bill Verburg · Bill Verburg's Garage

Seems much faster to me!

Schuey · 02-07-2003, 12:25 PM

Paul:

Wayne said "dual ide drives"

I believe he's probably mirroring them...if not, better to be safe than sorry...

dd74 · 02-07-2003, 12:56 PM

No complaints at all. I actually enjoy digging three or four pages in. Sometimes I see topics I've initially missed when "drilling down" like that.

I can't believe only a Dell Server and two IDE drives are running this board. Must have a whole bunch of RAM in it, right?

old_skul · 02-07-2003, 01:15 PM

I've been an active participant in other popular online forums, so going to the second page or more is no big deal to me. I like the fact that the new BBS software tells me which threads I've read since they were last posted to, so it makes it easy.

Man, this place has really grown. I can remember logging on to this site....4 jobs ago. And that's been a while!

dean · 02-07-2003, 01:19 PM

Nice job Wayne

Don't change a thing

Jim Garfield · 02-07-2003, 01:21 PM

I usually check the board two or three times a day. It's a simple matter to check
the posts back to the time I last logged off to make sure that I don't miss posts.

The only problem arises if I'm away for a few days..... it takes hours to catch up.
But, that the board gets so many posts is a good problem to have to deal with.

McDaniel · 02-07-2003, 01:57 PM

It works fine for me. As a newby here I just appreciate the
board and all the input from people who have "been there,
done that."
As to digging down a few pages, not a problem.
Thanks

Dave Ploss · 02-07-2003, 02:00 PM

Wayne,
I'm on almost every day and check every couple of hours. I don't mind going to page 3 or 4 at all.

Great Job!

Dave

carreradpt · carreradpt's Garage

Wayne, I thank you for the great service. I go back a few pages all the time. When I am away on "business" trips, going back a few pages makes for good reading. I am addicted to this darn site. BTW, where were you guys on MLK day? I stopped by that morning on my adventure trip and there was no one there tho the lights were on. Thanks again guys!

stealthn · 04:52 PM

Wayne,

I usually go a few pages back, and if I really want to find something I'll use the search button. One suggestion (well two really) is have the date showing when the person who opened the thread started it on the main pages. This way you can see if this is a new thread or just an old one re-visited.

As well having the "Jump to" bar on both the top and bottom would be helpful.

Otherwise love it!

philfran · 02-07-2003, 04:45 PM

I agree with everything that was written above!

Guy Chiattello · 02-07-2003, 04:54 PM

Wayne,

The board is great! It's become part of my life. I check it every evening and have posted questions several times and never failed to get help. Also I have purchased parts off the classified.

You have made a contribution to humanity.

Guy Chiattello
Cold, Cold Iowa
82SC Black coupe on blocks for a few months.

Wayne 962 · Wayne 962's Garage

Paul, how can you possibly tell what raid I'm running on the server? I'm currently running RAID 0 (the best) with two mirrored drives. If one fails, the other takes over immediately.

As for servers, the main pelican parts server still has vB running on it. The database is backed up to the hard drive each night, to tape each Thursday night, and also to my home computer each and every night through the DSL line.

I don't have a failover server, but I could restore the database and have it back up in about an hour, running on the main webserver, or any of the seven servers we have here at Pelican...

The webservers for this site are housed in a fireproof room with 1 fit-thick walls, and a fireproof door. If a nuclear blast hit Los Angeles, I think that the server would still be going (on battery backup - 3 units too). The only problem is that the infrastructure would be destroyed, so the machine would be talking only to itself...

Your suggestions are welcome though!

-Wayne