News Announcement - Ford Forums - Mustang Forum, Ford Trucks, Ford Focus and Ford Cars

LunaticSVT · 07-04-2002, 22:33

Just to let everyone KNOW!

I am going through the database tonight. aka in the next 2 hours of this posting and cleaning up the forums. I am going to be removing attachments that are over 10 days old. This means any images that you want that are on the forums as an attachment you better get.

This does NOT include pictures that were placed via linking from the new showroom area.

There is a difference between the two. The attachments are signified by image attached: in the threads.

The reason behind this is as follows.

The forums database is almost 4 gig in size i have done some reducing already and the attachments take up 2.3 gig of this. I am going to remove this to SPEED up the forums search indexes.

Attachments should not have to be made in here. There is the picpost area of the site that will allow you as members to post pics in. There are instructions on how to upload and to link to the images.
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Other changes. I will be changing the smallest words you can search from 3 to 4letters. As well as adding certain terms that dont need searching but are in the database.

These things will all speed up the database increasing your viewing pleasure.

Troutman · 07-04-2002, 22:43

Sounds good to me. The only problem I've had with the search facility is that it does not actually search old imported posts, such as those from the old EA-ED ezboard. Can anything be done about this?

RAPTOR · 07-04-2002, 22:56

Quote:

Originally posted by LunaticSS
.....Other changes. I will be changing the smallest words you can search from 3 to 4letters......

John is this really necessary, I would prefer you went down to 2 letters.

Why, well if searching for a particular Aussie Falcon topic the designations are usually 2 letters, such as XM, XF, EA, AU etc. Also a number of the more colourful Aussie posters now have 2 digit sign-ons who occasionally post something useful, eg DK, FM

Going from 3 to 4 letters won't make things any harder but a change to 2 characters would help.

LunaticSVT · 07-04-2002, 23:20

actually changing from 3 to 4 letters makes the searchindex tables in this database change from 149.8mb to a 42.3mb table.

The reduction of the size will increase the speed as well as reduce the load that the database has to do when doing a search. The querie time will of course take less. I am doing this to reduce the load that the database has on the server itself. If i do not do this then I run into issues.

I will have to either get another server to dedicate to run strictly the database itself or change the server again. Either choice is a large investment that I can not make at this time.

Jack: that will change in the next 2 hours. I am rerunning the search indexes this takes on average 2 hours to run and is a major load on the server. I normally run an index rebuild once a month to clear out the BS and deleted posts and to import any new messages that were added due to an import or merger.

So you should see the search engine working with the new imported messages later today.

Also the server will be a tad slow. This rebuild is an intense load to do and considering that there are close to 200k messages then we are looking at some time to complete. Sorry that this is peak time in AU, but is not for the US and for the sites that I host to help pay for the BW.

Troutman · 07-05-2002, 03:09

Thanks for that John. I appreciate your efforts as always.

snafu · 07-05-2002, 03:23

I'd like an enlarged (screen dominant) Active Topics box on the index page/cover page. You could stretch it vertcally and bin the calendar and Forum menu boxes.

My .02

LunaticSVT · 07-05-2002, 10:25

The calendar is staying for the use of the clubs to post their events coming up. Have been considering making the active topics a center piece. Looking at the code.