Is this site FASTER? (Round 1)

[Frisco]

Alright, so I asked Rob..

Rob owns NeverStill and it acts as the ad server for Android Forums.

NeverStill goes offline due to ads that run and get stuck. It isn't the fault of NeverStill's server. So, when NeverStill drops down, Android Forums is constantly trying to fetch the ad data and it ultimately ends up slowing us down.

So the right course of action for the owner of this site would be:

 

[Trident]

So the right course of action for the owner of this site would be:

Well, Rob is the owner of Android Forums, too...

I'll talk with with him about it more in depth later when he gets home. He's flying back from the Google I/O today.

 

[Frisco]

Well, Rob is the owner of Android Forums, too...

I'll talk with with him about it more in depth later when he gets home. He's flying back from the Google I/O today.

Cool.

Speaking of flying, the forums picked up a lot of speed since you talked to him about Neverstill.

Don't make him mad.

 

[Slug]

do they show in your "sent folder"

Yup, plus the other 200-odd sent this month.

 

[Caddyman]

you will see in that URL openx, openx is a ad delivery service...a very popular one, you can basically plug all your add networks into openx and via analytics and data analysis it will deliver the best paying ads per page view.

of course the downfall of that, as you guys have concluded, is that if you have a site trying to serve an add and that site is not loading or down...it will slow your site to a crawl.

 

[Trident]

you will see in that URL openx, openx is a ad delivery service...a very popular one, you can basically plug all your add networks into openx and via analytics and data analysis it will deliver the best paying ads per page view.

of course the downfall of that, as you guys have concluded, is that if you have a site trying to serve an add and that site is not loading or down...it will slow your site to a crawl.

So what's the best solution?

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

 

[Frisco]

So what's the best solution?

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

I'd like to see the all ads replaced by a tiered membership here for the revenue.

- Free Membership: Member can view and post in only certain forums

- 1st Paid Tier Membership ($10?): Member can view and post in more forums than Free Membership

- 2nd Paid Tier Membership ($25?): Member can view and post in all but VIP and Premium forums

- Premium Membership ($35?): Full viewing and posting privileges.

.. etc... so on and so forth..

 

[Trident]

So what's the best solution?

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I'd like to see the all ads replaced by a tiered membership here for the revenue.

- Free Membership: Member can view and post in only certain forums

- 1st Paid Tier Membership ($10?): Member can view and post in more forums than Free Membership

- 2nd Paid Tier Membership ($25?): Member can view and post in all but VIP and Premium forums

- Premium Membership ($35?): Full viewing and posting privileges.

.. etc... so on and so forth..

Nice idea, but it wouldn't work...
Only a handful if people would actually pay to be a member here.

Plus, I'm pretty sure they'd make more money with the current meathod anyway. Ads bring in a lot of money.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

 

[Caddyman]

you are right trident, and restricting anything from a user cause they don't pay rubs me the wrong way in general.

back to the openx thing, if i am not mistaken they do have a feature that will stop a ad service in openx is the site trying to serve that ad is delayed, lagging, etc. been a long time since i set up and used openx....it is pretty complex.

 

[Trident]

you are right trident, and restricting anything from a user cause they don't pay rubs me the wrong way in general.

back to the openx thing, if i am not mistaken they do have a feature that will stop a ad service in openx is the site trying to serve that ad is delayed, lagging, etc. been a long time since i set up and used openx....it is pretty complex.

Hmm... might be something for Rob to look into. I think that would solve a lot of our problems here.

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[Frisco]

..restricting anything from a user cause they don't pay rubs me the wrong way in general.

It rubs me the wrong way, too.

But I'm willing to make that sacrifice and suffer being rubbed the wrong way for the betterment of the site and for all mankind.

jk

 

[Rob]

A few things:

• AF will be getting its OWN database server in the coming days which should not only help this site FLY, but also relieve stress from the database server on Phandroid, Neverstill (ad server), and our android applications website. All of this should help things improve across the board.
• When 3rd parties have slow loading ads, there isn't anything we can really do about it. We'll nag whoever we can to improve speed of content that loads from another source and we're already doing everything we can to make sure our own content loads quickly.
• We'll always keep AF free to everyone for the vast majority of features, with premium memberships simply being a way to offer special priveleges and features that are "perks", not typically standard requirements.

We will probably wait until this upcoming weekend to move the database server to reduce the irritation of downtime. But maybe not, we'll see. If the site is down for an extended period of time, cross your fingers that it is because we're changing servers!

 

[koppit]

I'll make a suggestion: drop the number of posts per page in the forum to limit the amount of data transferred at once between the database server and the end user. Sure it will increase the number of requests, as people will have to click "next page", but it will decrease the size of the response. I've had to do this on several databases, if you find the right median it should improve things.

 

[Phases]

By the way, the new DB box was installed last night.

Let's hope things smooth out!

 

[Frisco]

By the way, the new DB box was installed last night.

Let's hope things smooth out!

The site seems quite smooth now.

 

[Trident]

Alright! So time to add the top stats back?

 

[Rob]

Yup... AF now has its very own Web Server AND its very own super-powered DB server so let's hope it kicks some serious you know what for the forseeable future. Of course if this place keeps growing at an alarming rate, you never know.

This should also make Phandroid and our upcoming Applications site much, MUCH faster since they don't have the burden of AF's ridiculous traffic.

Regarding the "Top Stats"... I'm not sure about that but we can discuss. If we test it out I'd like to have our contracted server expert around and available just in case. So perhaps we'll test drive it next week, but I wouldn't expect to see it before that.

I miss having it too... but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

 

[SteveJobCutLine4myLiver]

neverstill.com acting up again. lets hope this site grows and when u guys generate some serious ad revenue, u can get better server and ad provider.

 

[Rob]

Neverstill isn't actually the problem. That is owned by us and is our "ad server" but isn't the source of the slow loads.

Phandroid has been getting hit by malicious users trying to bring down our servers. AndroidForums shares some of the code with Phandroid, so when Phandroid gets brought down, AF struggles to load at an acceptable speed.

We continue to look into these server issues and while things HAVE improve drastically, we continue to feverishly pursue continued improvement. We appreciate your feedback and keep it coming. The more specific the better.

 

[ewingr]

JFYI...this site is frustratingly slow when I go to it 95% of the time, no mater where I access it from. My fastest access point is at home, cable modem, wiht 35Mbits of speed to my provider.

Love the site; hate the performance.

And, tried the new APPS site. Even worse.

 

[Caddyman]

sites almost always fast for me now, attacks are no good, hope it works out Rob.

 

[ewingr]

Today, it is faster than it has ever been for me. Looking good.

 

[clipperqb]

I am continually getting a pop-up box asking for:
"The server phandroid.com at phandroid/team/ requires a username and password."

 

[Frisco]

I am continually getting a pop-up box asking for:
"The server phandroid.com at phandroid/team/ requires a username and password."

The site has been unreachable for me for several hours, showing various server errors.

Now it will not finish loading, although it is usable.

 

[kratos]

Yes, I too had not been able to get to any or these sites from 0430 to about 1200 today. When I went to Down for everyone or just me? , phandroid.com was showing that it was everyone, androidforums.com was showing that it was just me, and androidapplications.com was showing that it was everyone.

When I tried to connect to phandroid.com and androidforums.com, I would receive many different error messages and one time I actually was shown the root directory with cgibin being the only folder on it. For some odd reason, androidapplications.com would load, but not fresh data. I believe that it was loading cached pages, but was not actually up and running.

I have not had any issues since.

Kratos