Laura, What's wrong with Cruise Critic?? Problems!

[hermang]

[quote name='canderson']The architecture [u]appears[/u] to be one server front-ending for the PHP server. If the PHP server is unable to respond in some preset period of time, the front-end server assumes that the request will not be fulfilled, and "times out". Previously, that produced the "something wrong with the database" screen, which subsequently has simply been replaced with a blank screen. That may be because if the result was really those email messages to the techs that the "something wrong with the database" screen claimed were being sent, they were being flooded with these -- and dropped that information and function from the front-end server.

I don't know what's causing what -- none of us can from out here -- but I can certainly gauge the consequences of the current application vs. other possible approaches to delivering content. I'm still skeptical that it's really a resource issue since problems would occur even during what we used to know (we used to be able to see the total on-line user count) were very light periods of use -- but for the moment I'll defer and take CC at its word that they're having problems with demand.

Being a bulletin board junkie from back in the early 80's as they were becoming popular, I can only look with amazement at the concept of using a PHP server to handle this sort of work. I think what many fail to realize is that the PHP actually has to build a page on the fly that is customized for the specific user and current context for that user. Navigation into the thread lists and into the threads themselves is causing large amounts of custom HTML data to be generated for the user. Even with the incredible increases in horsepower that we've had over the years, it seems to me to be a less efficient means for accomplishing this than we had employed in the "old days" - primarily due to the overhead of HTML in creating the data to be displayed. While it is possible to create all manner of wild and wonderful graphics and ad displays and a cute user interface, it comes at a price in terms of required horsepower (be it in terms of memory, raw CPU power, disk access, etc.). For example - as a user, I'd be happier having snappier access without the availability of 21 different fonts with bold, italic and underscore, indents (heck, it kills the formatting of anything fancy like columnar data anyway), etc. We don't need Unicode since we're all operating with a standard English alphabet as far as I can tell. In short, an application that dealt in a simple one-byte-per-character ASCII format would save a ton of resource, would convey the information, and would unquestionably improve performance.

The trade-off with this software is cute/performance, and if CC wishes to continue with cute into the indefinite future, it's going to be necessary to sort out how to keep the system performance moving up the curve along with the demand for resource. Should that prove to be cost prohibitive, an application that didn't tax the available resource so heavily would be a better alternative than continuing in this mode. Guess I'm still one who believes that the timely access to information trumps the sexiness of the display of the information (something I'd like to say to a few web designers, too!)[/QUOTE]
As I said several posts ago - I am a server guy not a web guy but you make a great deal of sense as far as what is definitely causing issues with performance. Smiley faces, Avatars, fancy fonts etc are not going to help.
I am not sure what of the esoteric page builders are better but going forward something has to give and iif it is sexy graphics vs performance - then go for performance

[canderson]

Until about 9 pm MDT, performance has been pretty awful through the afternoon and evening. It's just starting to "clear up".

[Gimpster]

[font=Comic Sans MS][size=3]This thing is really broken now. :mad: [/size][/font]

[BEAV]

With relatively few accessibility problems over the Holiday weekend, I knew it would be a mess come Tuesday when everyone is back to work and on the Internet......

[Kitycaty]

A mess it is! It took me over an hour and a half to post one post this morning on the Baltic 5-6th Celebrity board!!

Just a few minutes ago, I received from them 3 Notification E-mails of the [U]same[/U] message posted by Blazerboy, on the Celebrity 4-28th Transatlantic East board!

Has anyone else been receiving duplicates of the requested E-mails for postings on specific boards? I've been getting dups for quite awhile now.

Pretty sad... :rolleyes:

Barb

[ijkh]

what has happened to the Grand Princess in the Med. Apparently broken engine or something. We fly out soon and without internet.

I AM SO SICK OF PEOPLE CLOGGING THESE BOARDS UP WITH NON CRUISE INFO AND SMALL TALK I COULD SCREAM. oh excuse me I am.

fondly,

Ilene from the Princess boards where I can not even get in to see what is what.

[canderson]

Service was non-existent (blank pages returned) through the entire morning here again.

[mii]

[b]FOUR hours I could not even get on. Unbelievable. I just wish someone can tell us something, anything.[/b]

[b]Marilyn[/b]

[Desertbelle]

[quote name='ijkh']what has happened to the Grand Princess in the Med. Apparently broken engine or something. We fly out soon and without internet.

I AM SO SICK OF PEOPLE CLOGGING THESE BOARDS UP WITH NON CRUISE INFO AND SMALL TALK I COULD SCREAM. oh excuse me I am.

fondly,

Ilene from the Princess boards where I can not even get in to see what is what.[/QUOTE]

If I was 1 hour from leaving for Europe I wouldn't be on the CC boards and I certainly wouldn't be yelling at people or insulting people. How is that going to help anything?

And certainly if I thought my ship was having a problem I wouldn't be here, I would be on the phone with Princess. Would this poster actually not go to the airport based on information found on Cruise Critic??

If she had been paying attention she would know that people chatting, sharing and getting to know one another ISN'T the problem and it's not clogging up the boards!

It takes all kinds.

[Kitycaty]

Besides, this board is a board for the discussion of Cruise Critic problems, duh?!

[greygypsy]

We are part of the almost impossible to log on crowd. My guess is the server has outgrown the boards again. Let's hope CC can take action faster than George Bush. Jeff

[Reese1717]

It's easy to take cheap jabs at someone when they aren't here to defend themselves.

[turtlemichael]

[quote name='Reese1717']It's easy to take cheap jabs at someone when they aren't here to defend themselves.[/QUOTE]

What makes you think he is not here?? :D

[DREUX]

[quote name='Reese1717']It's easy to take cheap jabs at someone when they aren't here to defend themselves.[/QUOTE]

By all means, if you think he is worth defending take a stab at it yourself! Also, Turtlemichael, for him to be here, he would need to know how to read, wouldn't he?

[Reese1717]

That's all right, I've had enough of the politics. No matter what my views are it was something I was taught by my parents long ago. Kind of like not talking about people behind their back or if you have a point state it instead of snide back handed remarks.

No biggie, free country.

[LauraS]

Hi Folks:



I've just returned from vacation, so I don't have all the scoop as of yet, but I do know that we have taken a totally different approach at this time with regard to access and fixing the problem. It does seem we have enough server capacity, so we are going to look into the issue of optimizing what we do have, so that it works better during busier times of the day.

When I find out what has been happening while I've been away, I'll come back and post.

Laura

[Arubalisa]

[quote name='canderson']Service was non-existent (blank pages returned) through the entire morning here again.[/QUOTE]All morning and all afternoon into the evening for me...there are major issues here...but alas, we ARE a captive audience so keep coming back nonetheless!

[Reese1717]

Thank you Laura...

I'm battling 2 problems, slow boards and SLOW dialup. :) Every bit helps.

[canderson]

[quote name='LauraS']... so that it works better during busier times of the day.

When I find out what has been happening while I've been away, I'll come back and post.

Laura[/QUOTE]Hope you had a good vacation. I'm ready for the next one. Going to try it on a river for the first time.

When you find out what has been happening during the "not busier" times in the wee hours of the night (same sort of results often occur), let us know about that, too!

[DeltaOne]

[quote name='LauraS']When I find out what has been happening while I've been away, I'll come back and post.[/QUOTE]
The worst part about getting the blank screen or database error message is that it resets your "last visited" date and time.

Please consider changing the last visited date/time so it's not reset when you haven't read anything.

[canderson]

Sorry to be repetitious, but figure if I hit both threads, I'll catch you in one place or the other ---


Apart from the infamous "white pages", some of us have been noting and griping about the total freeze ups of IE6 when we hit the "Submit Reply" button ( [url="http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=4570676&postcount=9"]http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=4570676&postcount=9[/url] ). Often, the entire reply is lost, and many times, it is necessary to completely kill the IExplorer task with the Task Manager and start IExplorer up again. Seems this isn't news.

Not to put [u]too[/u] fine a point on it, but if you'd bring the following to your webmaster's attention, it would be appreciated since we will finally get rid of this particularly irksome bug. Note: you are currently running version 3.0.[u][b]8[/b][/u] of vBulletin. From the Jelsoft (vBulletin) board of September 9:

[b]Version 3.0.9 remedies various problems identified in 3.0.8, [color=red]in particular a problem with Internet Explorer freezing while posting a message[/color], and an issue relating to the mailqueue failing to send digest email notifications.[/b]

[Offtune Angel]

[quote name='canderson']...Note: you are currently running version 3.0.[u][b]8[/b][/u] of vBulletin. From the Jelsoft (vBulletin) board of September 9:
[b]Version 3.0.9 remedies various problems identified in 3.0.8, [color=red]in particular a problem with Internet Explorer freezing while posting a message[/color], and an issue relating to the mailqueue failing to send digest email notifications.[/b][/QUOTE] I experience all the aforementioned problems but with Mozilla Firefox. Does Version 3.0.9 have a fix for us, too?

If the system failures are at all related to volume (re:clearing obsolete threads) - a great improvement would be to eliminate all the duplicated, triplicated, quadruplicated posts that occur when we get a blank screen after hitting submit -- and log back in to find our posts appearing two, three or four times.

Good luck on the fastest, most permanent fix.

[kryos]

[quote name='teedee'][b][font=Comic Sans MS]I have AOL and I'm having a lot of problems too. Garry's right, it's worse in he morning, but I'm having problems at all times of the day. I'm totally addicted to this web site, I need my daily fix!:D [/font][/b]
[b][font=Comic Sans MS][/font][/b]
[b][font=Comic Sans MS]Terri[/font][/b][/QUOTE]
LOL ... we must be on different time schedules then. :) I can just forget it after lunchtime. Mornings I can get in and then very, very late in the evenings.

Actually it works out okay in my case because on work days (Thursday nights through Monday nights) I do most of my cruise critic readings during the overnight shift at work anyway. Gotta love those T3 lines. :)

It's only on my days off ... Tuesday night and Wednesday nights ... that I am "restricted" by the boards' sluggish response times.

Blue skies ...

--rita

[canderson]

[quote name='Offtune Angel']I experience all the aforementioned problems but with Mozilla Firefox. Does Version 3.0.9 have a fix for us, too?

[/QUOTE]My understanding of FireFox is that it uses certain of the existing facilities of Windows that are used by IE6, and that's probably why they have this problem in common, so the "freeze on submit" would likely be resolved for both. 3.0.9 probably won't help our white screens, but at least they could squash the one bug for us.

[BEAV]

If I were an advertiser on these boards, I'd have to seriously consider any further financial commitment until accessibility improves significantly. Either that, or hopefully CC is "working" with their advertisers through this rough period.