No surprise, that's what he wrote.
The future
- Thread starter tfischer
- Start date
ErnieHorning
Supporting Member
If a massive amount of data were uploaded to MediaWiki, would it slow down the site for a long time?
Yes, uploading a massive amount of data to MediaWiki can slow down the site significantly. The delay depends on server hardware, database indexing, and background job queues processing the new pages and file uploads.
Why the Slowdown Happens
- Database Indexing: MediaWiki updates search tables and link tracking for every new page.
- Job Queue Backlog: Heavy tasks like image scaling or template updates go into a queue and use server power over time.
- PHP and Database Load: High request volume during a bulk import maxes out CPU and memory.
So, how long will the site be this slow?
If you do not change anything, the site could remain slow or completely offline for several hours to days, depending on your server's hardware.
The website will not fix itself until MediaWiki finishes processing the backlog for all 1,583 graphic files. Because the site is currently throwing 503 errors, the automatic system is likely stuck in a loop—crashing the server, restarting, trying to process a file, and crashing again.
ErnieHorning
Supporting Member
I have a couple texts that have never been answered.
Macrosill
Administrator
I am here but not regularly. I have messaged back Mud in regards to contacting me directly.
Ernie, I do not recall having any texts from you. I am assuming you mean PMs here on the forum. I try to respond to all in time but since I am no longer here regularly it takes some time. If I never replied back to you I apologize.
The reason I am not accepting donations is this has become a recurring issue. I do not like begging for money and I have pumped a lot of personal funds into the site since 2007. I would not feel right asking for more donations to receive some funds from only the usual few to then have to shut things down in a couple months. A 50 or 100 dollar donation may be a lot for someone to donate and to only receive a month or two of return doesn't sit right with me.
Interest in the site has dwindled over the years with all the social media groups and forum site spin offs. Supporting Memberships no longer cover the expenses as they have dwindled as well. I have run the train as long as I can and it has become a thorn in my side the past few years. With the lack of Supporting Memberships, lack of donations and constant DOS and other type attacks and hacks the fun is gone.
I am willing to hand the site off but it would require some lengthy discussions about the direction the site would go. I do not want it turned into a barrage of ads as so many forum sites have done in the past.
I may have a stick somewhere but it is not where you think. LOL
This is not a decision I have taken lightly, I have struggled with this for the past 2 years at least. Steve as well as others can confirm I have been thinking about this for a long time. This month the hosting fees have gone up again and it seems to be unsustainable.
As for hosting, the site could probably be hosting on a shared server for 7 or 8 months out of the year. Come October and through Feb or so there is so much traffic that a dedicated server is required. I have had this discussion many times with the hosting company. The site uses so many resources during the decorating season that it would take down any shared server it was on. The current host will not even entertain moving to a shared server at this time. Dedicated servers are not cheap.
I can get info on the current system and storage size of the current site but it may take a couple days.
Off the top of my head the last time I looked at the size of the daily site backup it was zipped at about 20 gb. It may be over that now or still close to it, IDK. We do daily backups, weekly and monthly to AWS.
The forum software is Xenforo. MediaWiki is the wiki software.
Domain name accounts, Xenforo accounts, Paypal accounts, Google Ad accounts as well as some others would all need to be transferred or resolved in other ways.
It would not be a 5 minute process or easy undertaking. It can be done if someone is willing to put in the time and expense.
Ernie, I do not recall having any texts from you. I am assuming you mean PMs here on the forum. I try to respond to all in time but since I am no longer here regularly it takes some time. If I never replied back to you I apologize.
The reason I am not accepting donations is this has become a recurring issue. I do not like begging for money and I have pumped a lot of personal funds into the site since 2007. I would not feel right asking for more donations to receive some funds from only the usual few to then have to shut things down in a couple months. A 50 or 100 dollar donation may be a lot for someone to donate and to only receive a month or two of return doesn't sit right with me.
Interest in the site has dwindled over the years with all the social media groups and forum site spin offs. Supporting Memberships no longer cover the expenses as they have dwindled as well. I have run the train as long as I can and it has become a thorn in my side the past few years. With the lack of Supporting Memberships, lack of donations and constant DOS and other type attacks and hacks the fun is gone.
I am willing to hand the site off but it would require some lengthy discussions about the direction the site would go. I do not want it turned into a barrage of ads as so many forum sites have done in the past.
I may have a stick somewhere but it is not where you think. LOL
This is not a decision I have taken lightly, I have struggled with this for the past 2 years at least. Steve as well as others can confirm I have been thinking about this for a long time. This month the hosting fees have gone up again and it seems to be unsustainable.
As for hosting, the site could probably be hosting on a shared server for 7 or 8 months out of the year. Come October and through Feb or so there is so much traffic that a dedicated server is required. I have had this discussion many times with the hosting company. The site uses so many resources during the decorating season that it would take down any shared server it was on. The current host will not even entertain moving to a shared server at this time. Dedicated servers are not cheap.
I can get info on the current system and storage size of the current site but it may take a couple days.
Off the top of my head the last time I looked at the size of the daily site backup it was zipped at about 20 gb. It may be over that now or still close to it, IDK. We do daily backups, weekly and monthly to AWS.
The forum software is Xenforo. MediaWiki is the wiki software.
Domain name accounts, Xenforo accounts, Paypal accounts, Google Ad accounts as well as some others would all need to be transferred or resolved in other ways.
It would not be a 5 minute process or easy undertaking. It can be done if someone is willing to put in the time and expense.
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I ran this problem by Claude and got the following advice back:
The "needs a dedicated server" issue is likely fixable without an expensive host. XenForo forums get hit hardest during spikes by guest traffic (people browsing without logging in), and that's very cacheable — a common setup is putting Cloudflare in front of the site to fully cache guest pages while bypassing the cache for logged-in members, which takes most of the load off the actual server during a traffic surge. Combined with Redis for session/object caching on the member side, a lot of similarly-sized forums run fine on a $12–24/month VPS (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode) year-round, spike included — nowhere near "several hundred a month." If we want to avoid setting up caching ourselves, autoscaling hosts like Cloudways or 20i also let us pay a small baseline most of the year and only pay more during the actual Christmas surge. Before we let the site die, it'd be worth getting real numbers from our current host/plan and at least trying Cloudflare guest caching — it might solve the problem outright.
The "needs a dedicated server" issue is likely fixable without an expensive host. XenForo forums get hit hardest during spikes by guest traffic (people browsing without logging in), and that's very cacheable — a common setup is putting Cloudflare in front of the site to fully cache guest pages while bypassing the cache for logged-in members, which takes most of the load off the actual server during a traffic surge. Combined with Redis for session/object caching on the member side, a lot of similarly-sized forums run fine on a $12–24/month VPS (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode) year-round, spike included — nowhere near "several hundred a month." If we want to avoid setting up caching ourselves, autoscaling hosts like Cloudways or 20i also let us pay a small baseline most of the year and only pay more during the actual Christmas surge. Before we let the site die, it'd be worth getting real numbers from our current host/plan and at least trying Cloudflare guest caching — it might solve the problem outright.
Brian-
First of all, thanks for running this site for nearly 20 years. That's an impressive feat.
I haven't been an *active* member most of that time, but my profile says I joined in 2009 so I've been around a bit lol. This site has just "always been there" and I really would hate to see it go, especially since there really are few good options for discussing decorating stuff anymore, especially beyond the usual "how can I find this xLights sequence to download" and "where did you buy that coro prop?" type questions.
I'm definitely not an expert on web hosting, but if this site is paying $100 or more a month for the level of traffic we experience, it sure seems like there has to be a better way. Earlier in this thread (I believe) I told the story of a woodworking forum I was on that experienced a similar decline, and almost closed due to expenses and someone found a web hosting solution that was a couple magnitudes cheaper since it no longer had the volume it once did. Now that forum didn't have a seasonal burst like a Christmas site does, so maybe it's not a perfect comparison. But as I posted above via Claude, there might be some ways.
I wonder if there's also a way to spread out the admin duties more so things can be addressed quickly. There were a lot of ideas in this thread about how we could improve things and try to attract new members, but nobody here possessed the keys to make those changes.
At least the site has been pretty stable the past few months, unlike all the downtime back in the spring.
I hope we can find a way to keep things moving forward. I'm willing to contribute financially toward that goal once we have a realistic plan in place.
First of all, thanks for running this site for nearly 20 years. That's an impressive feat.
I haven't been an *active* member most of that time, but my profile says I joined in 2009 so I've been around a bit lol. This site has just "always been there" and I really would hate to see it go, especially since there really are few good options for discussing decorating stuff anymore, especially beyond the usual "how can I find this xLights sequence to download" and "where did you buy that coro prop?" type questions.
I'm definitely not an expert on web hosting, but if this site is paying $100 or more a month for the level of traffic we experience, it sure seems like there has to be a better way. Earlier in this thread (I believe) I told the story of a woodworking forum I was on that experienced a similar decline, and almost closed due to expenses and someone found a web hosting solution that was a couple magnitudes cheaper since it no longer had the volume it once did. Now that forum didn't have a seasonal burst like a Christmas site does, so maybe it's not a perfect comparison. But as I posted above via Claude, there might be some ways.
I wonder if there's also a way to spread out the admin duties more so things can be addressed quickly. There were a lot of ideas in this thread about how we could improve things and try to attract new members, but nobody here possessed the keys to make those changes.
At least the site has been pretty stable the past few months, unlike all the downtime back in the spring.
I hope we can find a way to keep things moving forward. I'm willing to contribute financially toward that goal once we have a realistic plan in place.
dirknerkle
Supporting Member
Yes, Macrosill (Brian) is not looking for more donations.
Mudsculpter
Supporting Member
I just want to briefly post a few things about what is going on in the background...
Macrosill and I are in communication and exchanging info about the handoff of this site. He wants anyone that takes over to go in with eyes wide open as to the challenges this site faces over a year's time. He and I have the same desires to keep this site as self sustaining as possible but not festooned with a barrage of advertising to click through.
There are a lot of things to consider and I have a guy looking into some inexpensive options without sacrificing features and content. When he examines the data we've gotten, I will post here. It may be that this is the natural conclusion of this site but I will look into all options. Please be patient, this is a long row to hoe.
Macrosill and I are in communication and exchanging info about the handoff of this site. He wants anyone that takes over to go in with eyes wide open as to the challenges this site faces over a year's time. He and I have the same desires to keep this site as self sustaining as possible but not festooned with a barrage of advertising to click through.
There are a lot of things to consider and I have a guy looking into some inexpensive options without sacrificing features and content. When he examines the data we've gotten, I will post here. It may be that this is the natural conclusion of this site but I will look into all options. Please be patient, this is a long row to hoe.
dirknerkle
Supporting Member
One has to ask himself (herself), "How often have I gone back to threads that are 5 or 6 years old to look for information I need now? That is the value of the "old information."
The Wiki (now transferred to the green site, thanks to Ernie) contains enough information in a rather concentrated form so that older gear can be repaired and in cases where a Gerber file is available, completely rebuilt as "new" again. But the odds of that happening are quite low as we've all seen. Now it's all about pixels and even the big box stores are either no longer carrying the old incandescent lights or have cut back their stock and orders.
I hate to see these things go as much as anyone as I'm still more of a legacy decorator than a whiz-bang pixellator. And even when I use pixels, I usually set them up to simulate simple LED strings. But a few years ago, I decided that my age had crept up on me and I was having trouble even remembering some of the database tricks I used to use on the green site's forum to keep it running. I understand Brian's concerns here, about the cost and especially about the demands of the maintenance of a forum. So I started looking for someone to take it over. It took a couple years.
The conditions I had for taking the green site were few. I would simply "give" the site away if after understanding the possible maintenance issues, he decided he would do it. There was no requirement that it be maintained as a free service, although I suggested that was a worthy goal. I also said that he would own it completely and could choose the direction he wanted the site to go as well as what historical information he wanted to retain, and there were no strings attached. I found such a person and now he owns it. I still have some access to it and try to help out periodically if assistance is needed, but those instances have been rare indeed. And I always check with him before doing anything more than post as a regular user.
The Wiki (now transferred to the green site, thanks to Ernie) contains enough information in a rather concentrated form so that older gear can be repaired and in cases where a Gerber file is available, completely rebuilt as "new" again. But the odds of that happening are quite low as we've all seen. Now it's all about pixels and even the big box stores are either no longer carrying the old incandescent lights or have cut back their stock and orders.
I hate to see these things go as much as anyone as I'm still more of a legacy decorator than a whiz-bang pixellator. And even when I use pixels, I usually set them up to simulate simple LED strings. But a few years ago, I decided that my age had crept up on me and I was having trouble even remembering some of the database tricks I used to use on the green site's forum to keep it running. I understand Brian's concerns here, about the cost and especially about the demands of the maintenance of a forum. So I started looking for someone to take it over. It took a couple years.
The conditions I had for taking the green site were few. I would simply "give" the site away if after understanding the possible maintenance issues, he decided he would do it. There was no requirement that it be maintained as a free service, although I suggested that was a worthy goal. I also said that he would own it completely and could choose the direction he wanted the site to go as well as what historical information he wanted to retain, and there were no strings attached. I found such a person and now he owns it. I still have some access to it and try to help out periodically if assistance is needed, but those instances have been rare indeed. And I always check with him before doing anything more than post as a regular user.
Chuck Smith of PlanetChristmas made the decision that "all these old threads really have no value" and threw out the database. I honestly think that is what killed the PC forums and now they don't even exist anymore.
There have been many times I've wanted to go back and look for old information that simply doesn't exist anymore thanks to PC throwing it away. And many of the people who were around at that time are no longer with us anymore, and the rest of us have ever more foggy memories.
Perhaps I'm unusual (OK I know I am), I've been doing animated displays since 2003 and decorating for as long as I can remember. I think history is important and love going back and looking at things and reminiscing.
Is it worth anything to a newbie who started 3 years ago with all pixels? Who knows.
There have been many times I've wanted to go back and look for old information that simply doesn't exist anymore thanks to PC throwing it away. And many of the people who were around at that time are no longer with us anymore, and the rest of us have ever more foggy memories.
Perhaps I'm unusual (OK I know I am), I've been doing animated displays since 2003 and decorating for as long as I can remember. I think history is important and love going back and looking at things and reminiscing.
Is it worth anything to a newbie who started 3 years ago with all pixels? Who knows.
RobG
Supporting Member
Why not take old posts and create read only site?
I did something similar for a site I managed for many years. Once the interest went down and maintaining security issues became too much, I have created simple dynamic pages that displayed content without any extra features.
I did something similar for a site I managed for many years. Once the interest went down and maintaining security issues became too much, I have created simple dynamic pages that displayed content without any extra features.
rayhjr
Supporting Member
Most if the people that want to keep this, and other forums going, always mention all the good information available here. And I understand that and agree with that. The problem as I see it is. "Why would I spent countless hours reading the Wiki, chasing countless threads for information when all I have to do is ask a question on Face Book, and get an instant answer." It's like the search tab doesn't exist.
I don't know, maybe people like being ridiculed for being the 100th person to ask the same question, and others like ridiculing them for it.
I cant tell you how many times I got caught reading on my phone at work trying to learn Blinky Flashy, when I first started. LOL! It's like nobody reads anymore.
You’re absolutely correct. People like the plug and play answers, just like they enjoy plug and play tech. With all the available information why should I search for it when I can ask social media or AI, this almost echo’s Neal Degrasse Tyson asking is America “Losing our greatest minds?” Schools seldom teach how to do research papers and the standard are now so low that you don’t have to know how to read or write cursive. Time to get off the soap box!
MartinMueller2003
Supporting Member
I for one am happy cursive is dying. It makes my hand ache to use cursive.
Sounds like a personal problem.
MartinMueller2003
Supporting Member
I am not quite that old. Close though.He should be able to read the Declaration of Independence, since he was a youngster when it was written. (In cursive)
We're getting more than a little off-topic but that's ok. I'll continue lol:
I think people get too hung up on skills that don't have much of a need anymore. Cursive is one of them: It was used to help people write quickly in the days before everything was electronic. Today people tend to type quickly, and you can even dictate right into your computer or phone. Students dont' turn in papers in longhand an what little writing they need to do, they can use printing (my son can handwrite print really quickly).
When I was a kid, teachers used to quip "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket..." even back then i had a calculator on my watch lol. And now everyone has one in their pocket. I personally think learning long division is a good skill to still have as it reinforces other mathematical skills, but it's probably not a required skill in these days of ubiquitous calculators.
I think people get too hung up on skills that don't have much of a need anymore. Cursive is one of them: It was used to help people write quickly in the days before everything was electronic. Today people tend to type quickly, and you can even dictate right into your computer or phone. Students dont' turn in papers in longhand an what little writing they need to do, they can use printing (my son can handwrite print really quickly).
When I was a kid, teachers used to quip "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket..." even back then i had a calculator on my watch lol. And now everyone has one in their pocket. I personally think learning long division is a good skill to still have as it reinforces other mathematical skills, but it's probably not a required skill in these days of ubiquitous calculators.
dirknerkle
Supporting Member
I agree, Tim. I used to write in cursive but a math teacher I had in 12th grade cured me of it. He would pose a problem for the day by sketching it on the blackboard, and he was so fast writing it that it sounded like a fast typist on an old Royal manual.... I've been practicing that ever since. But now that I can print faster, my brain can't come up with the words... so maybe I'll go back to cursive...