ADMIN: New Message Board Software

[Walt Bilofsky (Webmaster)]

A new version of the message board software has been installed.

You should not notice any difference in operation - all the changes were for improved efficiency. However, new software often means bugs, so please email me if you see anything wrong. I can't fix it if you don't tell me about it.

One administrative change: For Sale and Want to Buy messages will now be deleted between one and two months after they are posted (along with all their followup messages). This should not inconvenience people replying to the messages, because you all reply by email to save board space, right?

For those interested in the technical aspects: The major change is to store archived messages more efficiently. The overhead of storing each message on its own file, with all the formatting, forms, etc., eats up a tremendous amount of hard drive space on the server. The cluster size is 4K, so each message file takes an average of 2K in breakage in addition to the data. My ISP allows me 50 MB, but with more than 8000 messages, we were over that limit.

The new software lets me move messages from the main page to the archive page by invoking a program. (I used to do this by hand whenever the main page got too big.) The program also takes the individual messages and combines them into one huge file, with all the formatting stripped off.

When you want to look at a message in the archive, it is reconstituted on the fly. This puts a heavier load on the server, but archived messages are looked at a lot less often. And the space savings are huge. Roughly 35 megabytes of individual message files have been compressed into less than 6.5 megs in two data files. So we should be good for another year or two before having to revisit the space issue.

For Sale messages will be deleted before archiving, since once they are in the archive there is no way to recover the space they occupy.

I also added file locking, so the rare clobbering of the main message page should become even more rare. And the program should now detect double-clicking on the "Post Message" button, so hopefully we'll see fewer of those double posts.

Hope this all works. This change has been needed for some time to insure that our little community can remain in residence on this server.

Walt Bilofsky
Staff Commodore and Webmaster
California Cape Dory Owners Association



bilofsky@toolworks.com

[john churchill]

when i tried to get on last night everything was screwy and i was reminded how much i benefit from Walt's efforts. thanks from all of us out here in cape dory-land

[bob loewenstein]

A new version of the message board software has been installed.

You should not notice any difference in operation - all the changes were for improved efficiency. However, new software often means bugs, so please email me if you see anything wrong. I can't fix it if you don't tell me about it.

Walt, I just tried a search of the archives and get the "no matching messages found" page. This happens for any keyword used...even 'boat'.

Thanks again for managing this great website.



rfl@yerkes.uchicago.edu

[Walt Bilofsky]

Walt, I just tried a search of the archives and get the "no matching messages found" page. This happens for any keyword used...even 'boat'.

Right, sorry. Just some minor brain damage at this end. It's fixed now.



bilofsky@toolworks.com