Forum Optimizations

TK-421

TK-421

Senior Member
Supergrobi said:
:) Do you have a link? (Search refuses "tom", so searching for "angle" spits out a pile of unrelated stuff)
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You're the technical supervisor. Can you get rid of that stupid requirement that search terms have to be at least four letters long? As it currently stands, you can't search for tom, rim, key, lug, hi hat (because both "hi" and "hat" are too short), and I'm sure plenty of other drum-related terms.

While you're at it, is there anything you can do about the size restrictions when uploading images? Drumforum.org uses the same platform, yet they don't have the same issues uploading larger files.

Sorry, this probably requires a different thread.
 
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Supergrobi

Supergrobi

Technical Supervisor
Staff member
TK-421 said:
Can you get rid of that stupid requirement that search terms have to be at least four letters long?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not by just making two clicks. Well, I could raise the minimum characters required for a search term (which is 4) in the admin panel but that wouldn't help since this minimum is also present in the databases software configuration. And it's there for a reason: it would put quite a load onto the processor because of how full text search on binary data works internally. There's constant searches going on so the forums might become quite laggy.

I'll get in contact with the server support crew to discuss this but please don't have any expectations.

TK-421 said:
is there anything you can do about the size restrictions when uploading images?
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's really annoying, we're on the same page here, too. I just looked up the numbers:
  • The home partition (which is where Linux keeps all the user data) is around 270GB
  • The websites pictures and videos eat up > 100GB - growing, since @Bernhard is still very active adding new content to the site
  • Attachments in the forums are around 20GB currently, also growing
  • Together with software installed and all the other stuff we're at around 170GB of user data right now, leaving less than 100GB free atm
  • There's around 20MB of attachments data incoming per day which means ~7.5GB per year at the current rate
So if I would just double the upload limits to 2MB the hard drive would be saturated in maybe two to three years. Problem is: it wouldn't help in people having to reduce image resolution since average smartphone camera images are around 4-8MB these days, also growing. And the server costs are sky high already (my heads exploded as @Bernhard told me the numbers).

So I'll give Bernhard a call (we already appointed for the weekend) and I'll talk to him about the situation. But I have to counsel him in all honesty on this.
 
Swissward Flamtacles

Swissward Flamtacles

Member
Would it be possible to implement another search engine lick duckduckgo or google (shudder) to reduce search processes on the server? Frankly, I've stopped using DW's search function because it rarely gives me the results I'm looking for (very cluttered, not sorted by relevance, 10 links to the same thread, search also looks for signatures of members...). So I always use a different search engine and include "drummerworld".

I'd like to bring everyone's attention to this thread again: https://drummerworld.com/forums/index.php?threads/how-about-best-threads-stickies-as-faqs.168158/
I still believe that more stickies would make it a lot easier to find the most important threads and reduce the number of redundant threads (and searches). :)
 
Al Strange

Al Strange

Platinum Member
Swissward Flamtacles said:
Would it be possible to implement another search engine lick duckduckgo or google (shudder) to reduce search processes on the server? Frankly, I've stopped using DW's search function because it rarely gives me the results I'm looking for (very cluttered, not sorted by relevance, 10 links to the same thread, search also looks for signatures of members...). So I always use a different search engine and include "drummerworld".

I'd like to bring everyone's attention to this thread again: https://drummerworld.com/forums/index.php?threads/how-about-best-threads-stickies-as-faqs.168158/
I still believe that more stickies would make it a lot easier to find the most important threads and reduce the number of redundant threads (and searches). :)
Click to expand...
Was it my courageously practical pipe arms that triggered your angry response? :unsure: 😂
 
Supergrobi

Supergrobi

Technical Supervisor
Staff member
We set the minimum amount of characters to 3 now, let's see if it affects the performance.

Swissward Flamtacles said:
Would it be possible to implement another search engine lick duckduckgo or google (shudder) to reduce search processes on the server?
Click to expand...
There's one adding site:drummerworld.com on the homepage which works quite well.

Swissward Flamtacles said:
very cluttered, not sorted by relevance, 10 links to the same thread, search also looks for signatures of members...)
Click to expand...
Clicking on "filters" offers searching for threads and other ways to limit your search queries.

Swissward Flamtacles said:
I still believe that more stickies would make it a lot easier to find the most important threads and reduce the number of redundant threads
Click to expand...
Please ask one of the moderators about this one, I'm not interfering with their policies, just technical stuff I'm taking care of.
 
larryace

larryace

"Uncle Larry" - Administrator
Staff member
FWIW, I'd like to be able to see the thread title always when I'm reading or responding in forums
 
TK-421

TK-421

Senior Member
Supergrobi said:
Unfortunately not by just making two clicks. Well, I could raise the minimum characters required for a search term (which is 4) in the admin panel but that wouldn't help since this minimum is also present in the databases software configuration. And it's there for a reason: it would put quite a load onto the processor because of how full text search on binary data works internally. There's constant searches going on so the forums might become quite laggy.

I'll get in contact with the server support crew to discuss this but please don't have any expectations.



Yeah, that's really annoying, we're on the same page here, too. I just looked up the numbers:
  • The home partition (which is where Linux keeps all the user data) is around 270GB
  • The websites pictures and videos eat up > 100GB - growing, since @Bernhard is still very active adding new content to the site
  • Attachments in the forums are around 20GB currently, also growing
  • Together with software installed and all the other stuff we're at around 170GB of user data right now, leaving less than 100GB free atm
  • There's around 20MB of attachments data incoming per day which means ~7.5GB per year at the current rate
So if I would just double the upload limits to 2MB the hard drive would be saturated in maybe two to three years. Problem is: it wouldn't help in people having to reduce image resolution since average smartphone camera images are around 4-8MB these days, also growing. And the server costs are sky high already (my heads exploded as @Bernhard told me the numbers).

So I'll give Bernhard a call (we already appointed for the weekend) and I'll talk to him about the situation. But I have to counsel him in all honesty on this.
Click to expand...
Thank you for looking into this. And for moving my request to its own thread.

EDIT: I just saw that you changed the minimum character requirement to 3. That’s awesome!

If you can also add Boolean searches (using quotes to search for a phrase or +/- to include or exclude certain search terms) that would be amazing! But if not, I’ll understand.

As for the image size requirements, as I mentioned previously, I'm also a member at DFO Drumforum (though I rarely post there), and they use the same XenForo platform. But when posting images there, it will automatically downsize larger images. I just tried this with a photo I shot on my iPhone, which started out as 4032x3024 @72dpi. After uploading it to DFO, the resulting image size was 600x450 @96dpi.

I think this is a smart way to handle large image files, so it's easy to upload yet doesn't overwhelm the disk space. Since they use the same platform, I imagine this should be a simple thing to implement here.
 
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