As some of you may have noticed, the website and forums were down for 4 days last weekend.
This was due to the account being suspended by our web hosting provider because the CPU load of running the forums had become too high and was overloading the server.
As an interim measure, I have disabled half of the forums as you will no doubt have noticed, and have also removed the oldest 25% of the posts in the other forums. Hopefully this should alleviate the situation for the time being.
However, I am looking at long-term solutions in order to restore the forums in their full capacity.
Sorry to hear. :'(
Thanks for letting us know Chris. It's a good idea for the mean time, but it is a shame we lost the critics; do you have a backup of any old posts? Some of the tutorials/tips in the critics lounge were real gems.
They're not lost, the forums are just disabled for the time being.
Edit: Oh, you meant the 25% oldest posts there. Vanished most likely. Last time CJ did post deleting he was trigger happy too. Even stickes were lost. He has them on a CD but you know CJ. Effort and all.
Glad to see AGS (kinda) back. Was wondering if i should take up cross stitch or some other such nonsence.
Good luck in finding a way of getting it all back together. Let us know if we can do anything to help. :)
Yay! The AGS Forums is back online :D ... I was going through "withdrawal symptoms" without it. Anyways, thanks for bringing the forums back and letting us know the situation.
Is there anything we can do to help you CJ? Did you consider perhaps setting up a way that perhaps you can recieve some donations to help towards bandwitdh costs and such? You've put in so much time and hard work with creating AGS for us to enjoy and offer it, along with the forums, free to us, so I was thinking it would be nice if some of us were able to give something back to you.
Was there was already some "donate" area set up that I was unaware of?
Well, it's an idea to consider. What do you AGSers think about it? If there were options to send in a dontion to support CJ and AGS, I would try to contribute.
Best wishes,
--- Don, "The Barbarian".
I'd be happy to PayPal a few dollars to keep the forums alive.
I acutally have been working on a fund-raiser for AGS. I've got some T-Shirts nearly done. I'll post them real soon.
Good to see the forums back. Even if it isnt in the best state.
Glad to see you all again, I cant wait to see it back at full potential. If I find a few bucks I will try to dontate.
I'd make a donation, too, however, I'm not interested in merchandise. Is there a "Make a donation" link somewhere that I missed (like Paypal or something)?
Aha, and I was seriously suspecting that cronies of Bush disabled the AGS forums for its famous leftist political views -- to prevent us from influencing American friends.
The idea of donations is good - you shouldn't feel obliged in any way, people are just paying for their own good time.
Also, <looking above this post> feel free to ban animated avatars...
Boohoohohoo... No more games in production forum... however shall I while away the hours now...
Quote from: Goldmund on Wed 03/11/2004 03:39:37
Also, <looking above this post> feel free to ban animated avatars...
Actually Goldmund, my "animated avatar" is hosted and loaded from one of my own sites, and does not take away from the AGS bandwidth.
I found mine on an avater site. Its hosted somewhere remotly aswell.
Yeah, but still, it's 200+ kb, though it has nothing to do with CJ's bandwidth, it can still be troubles for viewers with slow connections. (Barbarian's avatar, on the other hand, occupies only 17 kb)
What if the forums are hosted somewhere else like um..... the adventure developers site or something? It's a pretty wild idea... then again, what would be the purpose of www.agsforums.com? forget what I said.
Ah, feels good to be back... and feels bad to hear all this :( Seems the AGS community is growing out of it's current bounds... which would be a good thing..?
yay, official AGS stuff :D
It's good to know whats happening. It's not good when the forums go down, and you don't know why. I would probably be willing to donate some money, as I just got a job, and now am not poor.
I hope the 25% oldest technical forum posts haven't been deleted -there's some useful resources in there that haven't been added to the archive. Couldn't the 30% oldest topics in all the other (more topical) forums be sacrificed instead?
I'm glad the forum's back. But geee, no games in production-forum!? And no critics lounge!!! What am I to do!? Those forums're really what I visit the most! I hope this works out!
Forums back! Yayness and such. Pitty to lose those forums. Critics lounge and competitions in particular :'( Hope they're back soon though!
Hoorah it's back!
Hooroo, the problem is still there.
I don't know how PayPal works, but if there was a simple and safe way of donating to the forums I wouldn't mind parting with a few pennies.
Instead of getting rid of 25% of the threads, we could get rid of 25% of the dumbest n00bs.
I dunno, just an idea
So the forum has become the victim of it's own succes.
Just wondering: would it help if we delete old messages?
I practically bursted into tears when the forums were down for more than 2 days. I also had withdrawal symptons. Like a smoker being left without cigarettes for a week. or me like with my computer broken. I'm glad to see it's back, although only in a partial form.
Ahh, good to see the forums are back - even though I didn't notice they'd gone :P
Phew its back... :P
Quote from: Haddas on Wed 03/11/2004 12:55:04
I practically bursted into tears when the forums were down for more than 2 days. I also had withdrawal symptons. Like a smoker being left without cigarettes for a week. or me like with my computer broken. I'm glad to see it's back, although only in a partial form.
I'm really glad the forums are back. I'm totally broke now and have to go a week without cigarettes. It's nice to have at least one of my addictions covered.
Best of luck to CJ with finding a solution to the problem.
Yeah, same here. Mostly I visited the competitions, offtopic and critics lounge boards. The rest was just...too complicated:P
I say we have someone scour through all the old posts and save the real good stuff... Technical information, Popular Threads, Informational Threads... Then just start over.. Delete 90% of all the threads.
We also have way too many 1-5 post users. We should have a tougher registration method. Maybe we should have a group of administrators to analyze registration submissions. Right now I think alot of people join so they can either troll, ask one question and leave, or announce a game and then not show up for 21039 more days.
Maybe some bandwidth-eating features should be disabled... Is there some sort of mode you can use with SMF boards to show a slimmer text mode to save bandwidth? (an option people can choose, maybe?)
I dunno. It's obvious some changes are needed. We'll let CJ figure it out. And I'd also be willing to donate via paypal.
Finally the ags forums are back.
Too bad, the hints/walkthroughs forum is missing.
Where can I post if I am stuck in an ags game?
Withdrawa symptoms... yes. Severe.
I don't see why we need a comitee to analye new member submissions. We need a bloody big warning on the registeration page that says "If you have posted less then ten posts in x weeks/months/whatever your account will be automatically deleted because of bandwith issues." or something...
And about the donations, don't simple bank account transfers work too? Like, if I wanted to donate a bit to CJ, I'd just need to know his account number and transfer the money from my account? ..or?
Quote from: Volcan on Wed 03/11/2004 14:16:04Where can I post if I am stuck in an ags game?
Nowhere.
:P
Quote from: Ishmael on Wed 03/11/2004 14:53:31
We need a bloody big warning on the registeration page that says "If you have posted less then ten posts in x weeks/months/whatever your account will be automatically deleted because of bandwith issues." or something...
Maybe long-dormant accounts should be deleted, but I'm not sure sure that compelling members to post frequently would solve the over-popularily problem or the too-many-stupid-or-thoughtless-posts problem.
We need a policy that ALL stupid posts will be locked or deleted (deleted could be like the moved thing... "DELETED: My uber l33t thraed!!!!1!1!" and the single message would just have a message from the mod that deleted it...), and if a user does that kind of stuff repeadetly, despite of being warned, their account will be deleted, and/or they will be banned for a matter of time....
Glad to have you back forums, even though not in the best of shape right now.
But CJ, i'd also be willing to donate, if possible to keep the AGS Forums up and running.
I wouldn't have a problem with it at all. (I do have PayPal)
:)
Shawn
It seems to me that inactive users (e.g. 1-5 post people, or people absent for a lengthy amount of time) do not take up any bandwidth. That would be strictly the amount of data drawn from the agsforums site by whomever. So the obvious solution would be to delete threads that are both pointless and active (e.g. most of the non-topic forum, I'm afraid).
But didn't CJ say that computing power was in fact the problem? In that case the bottleneck would be an overloaded server, and a viable solution would be to delete a lot of old material to reduce database size. Old threads that are useful for reference could instead by stored as plain text rather than forum msgs, as that would take less CPU time to send.
Anyway I'm in favor of the paypal donation system to help CJ.
What about someone sell some bluecups at www.cafepress.com and donate earnings to the forums or simething?
Just a mindless suggestion, don't mind me, carry on.
PS - WELCOME BACK, FORUMS! Boy, I missed you!
Im gald to see that the forums back. As long as I know that they arn't lost completely i'll be fine. Good luck CJ in finding a solution.
I'd be happy to donate, but I don't have the means to use PayPal. But hey, if you'd accept cash, I'd be happy to help.
A while ago a forum has this thing where you could only join if an existing member invited you. Maybe that would help. And it would also discourage immature or obnoxious noobs. Perhaps.
Or maybe if locked threads were deleted.
The invite thing wouldnt be good because so much quality people come casually, and we would want to discourage them.
My proposition for giving him money (besides donating which is ofcourse acceptable ;)), is for Chris to make CDs out of ALL the POSTS ON EVERY FORUM (as someone mentioned that CJ does), and then sells it,
because he said he wouldnt want to sell AGS (LIES I TELL YOU, time will tell), so why doesnt he sell Nostalgy and unnecesarry, illegal information?
C.
Great to see the forums back online.
BUT - The fact that the forums go down and come back without the competitions forum just when - for the first time - I had planned to enter the tune contest and actually made a midi makes me believe in murphy's law again.Ã, :)
But there is an antidote to that!
Louise L. Hay!
(maybe this is TOO useless as a post?)
Ok, I've received quite a few e-mail suggesting possible web hosting.
Whilst I do appreciate the thought guys, perhaps I should explain the problem better.
This is not a bandwidth issue, and it is not a disk space issue.
It is a server CPU load issue. This is something that you'll hardly ever see a web host talk about, because it's not really a measurable quantity. You don't get a hosting account with a 20% CPU allowance -- it's all just what the provider deems reasonable.
Kicking out members with no posts won't really make any difference.
CPU load is caused mainly by SQL queries, which happen whenever you read a page on the forum, make a post, read your PM's, etc.
One option which would definitely solve the problem would be to move AGS to a dedicated server. This is a lot more expensive than our current hosting, but would mean that there are no other users on there to need to share the CPU with.
Fuzzpilz has kindly offered to host the forums on a temporary basis, but we're having some technical issues getting it set up. Hopefully we can sort that out before long though.
can we still kick some users...
I have a list!
It may not help CPU load but it will help loads!
Certainly! I think a posts-to-content ratio would be most appropriate here.
In fact, I'll start right away.
I hope you enjoyed your last post here, eric.
How is the current webhosting financed? Maybe some kind of membership, possibly giving some kind of privilege (maybe as small as a forum title), with a monthly/yearly fee could finance a dedicated server?
Oh yeah, good to see the forums back. IRC proved itself more fun than I thought it to be, but I can't wait to see the Critics Lounge ant the competitions forums back online...
Phew.
Nightmare averted.
Great to see the forums back online.
Hope you get your problems sorted out.
Hmmmm, I'd say drop the non-AGS specific boards (like critics lounge) and move them over to Adventure Developers.com, which will balance the active users a bit ;D
Sorry, I coudn't help myself. ;)
This is quite a problem, because you can't consolidate the CPU load with another server, because of sychronosation issues. An expensive dedicated server seems the only solution indeed.
--Erwin
Quote from: Erwin_Br on Wed 03/11/2004 23:30:28
Hmmmm, I'd say drop the non-AGS specific boards (like critics lounge) and move them over to Adventure Developers.com, which will balance the active users a bitÃ, ;D
--Erwin
I think it's better to keep everything in one place. Critics' Lounge is an integral part of AGS, getting rid of it would be a bad idea.
CJ: how much would be a dedicated server per year? Let's see the numbers (if you have any) and see if donations would cover that. After that we can still go back to decide whether to shut down part of the forums.
(I'm a new user on the forums but I'm following it for more than a year. Techinal forums, game announcements and the Critics' Lounge were the main reason I registered.)
Hmmm.... less nothing doing memebers = less SQL queries.
No, wait...
I misread the concept there, everyone else was talking about bandwith... but CJ did say CPU load. Hmm...
heh good luck with the forum problem CJ :)
too bad you've disabled the forum parts I only visit :P
oh well, shouldn't spoil my fun
Yeah... The forum parts that have been disabled seem to be the ones the people misses most... but that's logical, considering that it's been the popularity of those forums which caused the crash! :)
So... not much to say... Good luck CJ! We are looking forward to seeing all the forums back again, in all its ways, but don't feel preassured (I am working more than ever in games is this lately days! ;D)
Hmmm, I realise that if I'm going to announce my imminent daughter's birth, then I'll have to make a game about it in order to have somewhere to post! ;)
for those that are interested, release date is guaranteed to be no later than next Wednesday, becuase that's our induction appointment...
Sorry to hear about problem. I thought about one solution - could someone pay for one more bandwidth to put some parts of the forum there? It would be just like you click on e.g. Critics Lounge and get redirected to the second forum. That could split the CPU between two servers.
One more question. What to do if you're looking for something on ags home page and it's disabled? Especially the games. Am I wrong thinking there's no other place on the net that keeps the AGS games? Well it's understandable there isn't but what happens if I'd like to go through the games some time to pick one I consider enjoyable and can't find them? Could something be done? Like one more games/FAQ directory?
I know it could be hard in some parts. Don't yell at me, please, I'm just asking.
Dammit, can't we just get critics lounge back and make the beginner technical questions a direct link to the manual? :P
Quote from: lelev on Thu 04/11/2004 11:44:51
Sorry to hear about problem. I thought about one solution - could someone pay for one more bandwidth to put some parts of the forum there? It would be just like you click on e.g. Critics Lounge and get redirected to the second forum. That could split the CPU between two servers.
How strange, or not so strange, but we had teh same idea.
I think that could work well, tho' there would be some glitches with the Moderators and moving threads, but as i recall, the Crit. lounge was never causing too much trouble, so simple locking would be fine.
But then again, would we be forced to use doulbe login and registration?
But then again again, i think we are all willing to sacrifice our post number in order to have the CL, and save CJ some bucks, even untill he gets enough from donations.
How much does the ded. server cost anyway, Chris?
C.
SSH: Seems so :P Well, you have a professional art director there :)
lelev: If the AGS page is down, doesn't mean you can't downlaod the games. It only means you cannot access the database, and AFAIK there is no other place where you can find info on all of them. You can find all MAGS games from http://www.mags-competition.tk though...
HillBilly: Sounds like a good idea :D But that would leave Scummy, Rich and Gilbot unemployed and flood CJ's PM and Email inboxes...
Quote from: Ishmael on Thu 04/11/2004 17:50:19
lelev: If the AGS page is down, doesn't mean you can't downlaod the games. It only means you cannot access the database, and AFAIK there is no other place where you can find info on all of them. You can find all MAGS games from http://www.mags-competition.tk though...
That's my point - there's no such place, and it's not only about games but some technical archives and downloading AGS, but there's probably nothing that could be done about it.
The games database could maybe be hosted on another server, as a backup, if a volunteering host could be found. Like, when the main paged is down, users could use this backup database to look through the games posted on the site... or something...
Completed games could be a little more restricted.
If you are stuck: Hints
If you want to praise the game: On the download page or PM
If you have bugs to report: PM
The thread should be used by the author to list known bugs and new versions.
Also in Competitions and CL there are too many useless posts.
Or we could just move the forums to a dedicated server and keep doing that thing we do. ;)
Quote from: YOke on Thu 04/11/2004 18:41:11
Completed games could be a little more restricted.
If you are stuck: Hints
If you want to praise the game: On the download page or PM
If you have bugs to report: PM
The thread should be used by the author to list known bugs and new versions.
Also in Competitions and CL there are too many useless posts.
Or we could just move the forums to a dedicated server and keep doing that thing we do. ;)
i agree on this. i'd work very well for everyone - except PMs are still taking up bandwidth ;)
i was thinking more on the lines of AGS fan Forums which people can make/host - and there can be a big list of all the different forums. But then the community would be split up...
What about some kind of voluntary subscription? Like if we wanted to fully support AGS and the forums, then we would agree to pay a certain amount every month. I know I'd be willing to pay up to $15 a month for the forums, gladly. Multiply that by a hundred or so out of the 2-3,000 members, then you can afford to move the forums to a better, dedicated server, CJ, right? :) I'm sure less than 1/2% of the members would pay SOMEthing, if only $5 a month.
Just want to say I'm happy the forum is back.Ã, Appreciate you letting us know what happened.Ã, Missed everyone so it shows how much we depend on one another.Ã, Hope we are safe for a long time.
Are we going to get back the 'hints and tips' ???
QuantumRich, you've uncovered Chris's devious plan. Take down the forums for a while, and build up the anticipation of their return, plus cause everyone to realize how much they neeeeeed them. Then put up a small nominal donation area. He's feeding off it. Teh sicko.
Quote from: SteveMcCrea on Wed 03/11/2004 03:07:32
I'd be happy to PayPal a few dollars to keep the forums alive.
I would contribute to this great site also
Here are my thoughts on the future of the forums.
Any contribution towards the cost of hosting should be voluntary. Otherwise the forums will die.
I was worried that there might be an initial surge of donations, allowing the forums to grow larger, followed by a slow drop off in donations, causing a downtime. Boom and bust.
I was also worried that making paying more for the forums now could lead to problems later if the popularity of AGS dropped off a bit, but since it's a usage overload, that means less board visits makes the boards cheaper.
Someone other than CJ volunteering to host the forums for free is dangerous, as it leaves the safety of the forums in their hands. It may come from great intentions but who knows what might happen in that person's personal life.
So I guess what I'm saying is that as a contingency several people should be able to collect donations, pay for the webhosting, and maintain the site.
I've been waiting so long......I actually had to everything on my own now. Sorry to hear, I don't really have the money to donate...I don't know if there are any other better hosts though.
Interesting, I've been offline for a bit so I guess I missed all this.
I say kick everyone off except kickme
Quote from: SteveMcCrea on Fri 05/11/2004 07:06:19I was worried that there might be an initial surge of donations, allowing the forums to grow larger, followed by a slow drop off in donations, causing a downtime. Boom and bust.
Hence my suggestion of a
voluntary subscription. No extra benefits (because not everybody
can pay, or is old enough to do so), just the knowledge that you're helping out the forums and CJ. And it wouldn't just be a one-time deal. A little bit in intervals might help out more than a lot only one time.
Ban everyone who features in a top-10 list would reduce the number of queries a great deal ;) I notice that now General Discussion is gone, I no longer feature in the "most threads created" top 10...
Rich's idea is good, I think that donators could still get a forum title, tho... like "Generous" or something
And CJ, I know you don't like taking money for AGS becuase of implied obligations, etc. but this would be donating purely for the forums...
QuantumRich, I don't think a voluntary subscription with no benefits at all will do to much. You may get a few people that pay for a short time but not many people won't pay if they can get the same thing for free. Yes I know they won't have any forums if they don't pay but most people won't look at it like that as long as the forums are up. I myself wouldn't mind seeing a couple banner adds on the forum pages. With all the people in here all the time it seems that would bring in a bit of money towards it at least.
Also maybe have $5 a month and you can have Avatars and sig file. No subscription and no sig files. You could also lock some parts of the forums unless you pay. The places that are open now minus maybe the tech forum could be free but you would get full access if you pay?
Excuse me, but if CPU cycles are the main bottleneck here, wouldn't a serious pruning help in greatly reducing the database seek time?
Maybe some old threads could be archived as plain html, that also has less seek time. And of course maybe some old threads are no longer relevant.
I noticed a few days before I left that the forums were down and I was beginning to panic!!
Then I got on a plane (I am in Las Vegas) and was unable to get online since monday.Ã, When I finally found a computer here I was relieved to see they were back up.
I would be more than happy to contribute money to help move the forums to a dedicated server.Ã, And as has been mentioned already it would NOT be in expectation of something, it would more be for feeding my adiction to this place ;)
My blood pressure has now gone back to normal ...
How about removing/disabling some of the features of the board. Some of the the things of dubious use are:
- The upcoming birthdays in the main page
- Those IM/and the other icons below poster's avatars
- Maybe removing avatars entirely?
- Fewer smileys?
That's all I can see for now...
Oh BTW it looks like the search function doesn't work when you ask "Topic Subjects only"
QuotePlease try again. If you come back to this error screen, report the error to an administrator
Since every n00b asks the same questions on Beg Tech, I'm sure that forum can be greatly pruned. Also, I wonder how many queries are from guests vs members. Maybe guests could be restricted?
If threads were deleted instead of locked by mods, too. Or delete all locked threads over 2 weeks old.
Oh, and ban poop, who obviously hasn't read this thread
I would like to second that notion...
I think maybe the General Forum and Competitions Forum should be a perk to paying. That surely would keep many people away who are only interested in one topic, ask about it, then leave.
There definitely needs to be some excessive pruning:
Beginner's Tech:
TerranRich has written an excellent FAQ for the Beginners Forum... Maybe it should be made to encompass the answers to all of the most commonly asked questions... And we DO have a Knowledge Base, don't we? If there's a big FAW,Ã, users then could be encouraged to ask their question in the regular Tech forum only after reading the manual, FAQ, and Knowledge Base carefully, or they could even go to #ags.
Game Announcements:
Games of MIA members, or games that haven't been updated in 6 months or so could be removed. I dunno CJ's policy on this.
Critic's Longue
I dunno how this would work.. But maybe old or finished works that need no further critique could be locked and/or deleted in the future.. And the last 5-10 pages could probably be deleted without fuss.
Hints and Tips
This would take more work than it's probably worth, but many tips could be consolidated into one post. Old posts again could be deleted.. Solved cases could be locked or summit like that.
General Discussion
This forum definitely needs a cutoff of the last 10 pages at the least. Its mostly outdated, useless information anyways. Someone COULD go through and gather all the interesting stuff and make an HTML out of it. I don't know...
I'm sure CJ has a plan already in the works, though, and whatever it is, it will be efficiently amazing.
(Perhaps stupid silly threads could be deleted instead of locked, to avoid an influx of people looking at it to see why it was locked in the first place.... Just a thought)
(Edit: And as it was pointed out below, these changes won't really help CPU load.. So let's just delete the member base and re-register! Muahaha! *ahem*
All kidding aside, we DO need a tougher registration method. If people like poop get in, we're obviously not doing something right here.
Most of the things people are suggesting aren't related, or are insignificantly related at best, to anything to do with CPU usage.
Pages and pages of old threads and posts do not impact the CPU usage at all. If they are sitting there, in the thousands, and nobody accesses them then all they are doing is taking up disk space. They are not using the CPU, and they are not taking up any bandwidth.
Images, icons, birthdays, things like that are having no effect or not substantial effect on CPU usage.
You can change all that, but if you still have the same amount of people accessing the same amount of threads at any one time on the forums then CPU usage is still going to be as high, and thus it's still going to be a problem.
And I honestly don't see how people offering up a bit of money now will be able to cover the costs of a decent dedicated server. Our intentions may be honourable, but a decent dedicated server can cost $100 per month (at a minimum) AND somebody has to manage the server as well. That will become quite expensive.
I think you should just find another server because if you put so many restrictions on posting people will get bored and be turned away. People like to say what they think and some people if you won't let them, will just get bored and leave.
Maybe you can split the forum to TWO forum groups on two servers. One will be the games forum with: annoucements, in production, hints and tips & techinal.
The second will be general forum with: Adventure games talk & chat, general chit-chat, competitions& critics launge.
That way one forum groiup can stay in this server the other one will be in another server, the CPU usage is down 50% and no one has to pay.
I like that idea, but would it work. It would indeed be very good thing.
Regards,
Alec
Note: AGS just got farked (http://www.fark.com)... the end may be near again...
/dammit.
To avoid confusing matters, I'm going to lock this thread since the original problem has been solved.