You may have noticed that the home page is currently the standard recent-activity view of the forum, not the more social network-like “threaded” view that has been around for a few years. The short story is after the last DDoS attack I changed it to reduce server load and get the site back running. This current home page view is much more efficient and helps the site run faster and respond better. Doesn’t mean things might not slow down on game days, but hopefully it prevents something worse from happening like failure when traffic spikes. I like both views and both view have their advantages. The threaded view allows the user to read topics and replies without having to click on the topic. They can like topics/replies, and so forth too. That’s part of the reason that view can be a performance killer is because all of the topics, replies, likes and other data has to be loaded. The more replies there are per topic, the worse the performance can get. If you all REALLY want the threaded view back, I’m happy to do it. Still would probably change it over on game day for performance reasons. Let me know on that.
“Why don’t you use AWS or cloud services that are scalable for times when there is more traffic?”
The answer is that I have a dedicated server which is somewhat reasonably priced, and a fixed and predictable price (about $1500/year). If I go to AWS or a scalable cloud solution, costs could skyrocket during high traffic. I don’t have the resources available to do that unless the site brought in a LOT more revenue that the annual fundraisers bring in.
Related to that, I’ve been tinkering with a new design to replace the threaded view. It is kind of a hybrid between the two views. It will have the ability to show the home view in recent topics or recent activity, along with user and category filtering. I may be able to put that up for testing in the next few weeks. It is slick and sharp looking, but still won’t show the replies unless the user clicks the topic.
New Big 12 Category?
With the pending Big 12 move, I thought I’d ask if you all would like me to add a new category for Big 12 discussion. We currently have a Pac 12 category, which would stay. I could also simply rename the existing Pac 12 category instead, and call it something more generic like “Conference Discussion.” It could include Pac 12, Big 12 and beyond. Let me know your thoughts on that too!
Anything new you’d like to see with the site? Bugs? Any app improvements or features you think would benefit the community?
I still have a nasty problem with emails from Ute Hub being blocked by service providers like MSN, Yahoo, and just sometimes gmail. If anyone is or knows a server administrator with experience in email server configuration and debugging, I could sure use some help. Newly registered users about 50% of the time never get their email confirmations because their service providers are blocking them. This hurts the speed at which the site grows because those people just give up…
Still looking for a sponsor for the weekly college football Pick ‘Em game. If you have a product, or cash (about $25/week) to contribute, reach out to me.
Looking forward to the season. It’s going to be an interesting one to say the least.
Tony/Admin
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