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hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 01:31
Hi Everyone,

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Karl and I am in charge of the company that runs the hosting side of things here at ProjectAvalon. We decided to register an account here on the forums so that we can update you directly and moderators can stick to their job and aren't overwhelmed. Periodically myself or our senior network engineer, Alex, will be posting using this account regarding website issues.

We have been aware that over the past week or two there have been a lot of issues with site loading times. We have been working very hard to rectify the issue and we truly appreciate your patience. We have everything fixed temporarily for the moment, but we will be re-building everything from scratch and re-doing the entire server to ensure that everything is as it should be. Just to clear up some misunderstandings:


The problems that have been occurring were not due to bandwidth being exceeded.
The problems occurring also did not have anything to do with the server being overloaded
Video streaming/downloads do not affect the forum. While they are located on the same server, they are run by entirely different processes.


The issues occurring were caused by something called Fast-CGI which is what controls PHP and MySQL interaction. PHP is a programming language that controls the entire forum and MySQL is the database that stores all of the actual data such as information and posts for each user. What ended up happening was vBulletin (the forum software) randomly started making too many requests to MySQL and Fast-CGI was not slowing it down. This resulted in vBulletin not getting what it wanted and chocking. We fixed this by installing a utility which limits vBulletin calling MySQL where pointless calls are being made. This entire situation was a coincidence with the traffic increase, and the actual traffic increase had nothing to do with forum slowness.

As for the videos, we are in the process of getting ProjectAvalon setup on our CDN (content delivery network). A CDN is a pool of servers that all mirror each other with the same content. Basically what this does, is for large files such as the interviews, a user browsing the site will be pulling the content from a server which is either located closest to them or has the least load. This way, the interview streaming/downloads will be faster because users will be streaming/downloading over a shorter distance or from a server that has extra capacity and will be able to push the interview to the end user faster.

One last thing....this account is for updating purposes, and we would appreciate if you could stick to the normal methods of contacting PA staff if you need help with anything, as they have multiple people who are already there for that purpose. Our job is simply to make sure that the server is running as it is suppose to. The PA staff runs the forum and all other software related things. Please feel free to respond to this or any post we make with questions or comments, but if you could refrain from private messaging us that would be great. Not that we don't want to hear from you, but we would like to keep everything as efficient as possible and make sure that no one is overwhelmed.

Thank you very much for your time and please rest assured we are working very hard to make sure that everything flows smoothly and the site is online 24 hours a day, 7 days per week :)


--
Karl

Solphilos
6th April 2010, 01:58
I have no idea what any of that means as I am a technical illiterate, but thanks for the heads up; good to know whats going on around here.

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 02:01
I have no idea what any of that means as I am a technical illiterate, but thanks for the heads up; good to know whats going on around here.

I do apologize for that. The entire situation is very complicated which makes it difficult to explain. Thank you for your understanding.

--
Karl

Nebula
6th April 2010, 02:02
Karl, many thanks to you and the rest of the crew for being proactive and providing us all with this feed back and updates. I'm quite sure everyone will be very appreciative :)

Namaste

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 02:03
Karl, Many thanks to you and the rest of the crew for being proactive and providing us all with this feed back and updates. I'm quite sure everyone will be very appreciative :)

Namaste

Thank you for your kind words. They are truly appreciated :)

Solphilos
6th April 2010, 02:04
I do apologize for that. The entire situation is very complicated which makes it difficult to explain. Thank you for your understanding.

--
Karl

Thats no problem at all mate, I was just stating so with humor. Thanks again for taking the time to give us all some feedback.

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 02:05
Thats no problem at all mate, I was just stating so with humor. Thanks again for taking the time to give us all some feedback.

Glad to help :)

Nebula
6th April 2010, 02:11
Thank you for your kind words. They are truly appreciated :)

You are welcome. Do you also host the old Avalon? Av 1.0 as we call it. Its been extremely slow.

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 02:16
You are welcome. Do you also host the old Avalon? Av 1.0 as we call it. Its been extremely slow.

Yes we do host the old Avalon. That forum is confusing us because it seems to be perfect for some people and terrible for others. We're not quite sure about it yet.

By the way, I probably should have mentioned in the original post that we've been hosting everything since June 2009.

--
Karl

Nebula
6th April 2010, 02:22
What a dilema it is! ;) Hope you get to resolve it soon and also that forum is going read-only in a few more days, so its done its time. Thanks again Karl.

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 02:23
What a dilema it is! ;) Hope you get to resolve it soon and also that forum is going read-only in a few more days, so its done its time. Thanks again Karl.

Oh yes, computers are just one big dilemma, hehe.

--
Karl

JesterTerrestrial
6th April 2010, 02:46
Thank you Karl...good to know whats going on sometimes. Like all the time!

The forum has been loading much better the last couple of days.

Keep your eyes on the skies...oh and the weblogs too! :cool:

Peace JT!

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 02:47
Thank you Karl...good to know whats going on sometimes. Like all the time!

The forum has been loading much better the last couple of days.

Keep your eyes on the skies...oh and the weblogs too! :cool:

Peace JT!

Great, I am glad to hear that :)

--
Karl

Ross
6th April 2010, 07:16
Thank you Karl and Alex,

It is worthy to note to all members here, that both Karl and Alex have spent numerous hours these last weeks working on the problems for all of us. These guys are commited to Avalon, Its members, Bill Ryan and the Admin/Mod team.
There have been many posts over the last weeks from members concerned about the problems, some with very interesting theories. As I said in some replies, over on PA1, there is no conspiracy, no hidden agenda's. The timing of the last weeks issues have been purely coincidental.

Thank you guys for this thread, It makes our job so much easier, some of us are not techs and it can be a difficult job explaining problems to concerned members.

Sincere thanks,

Ross

irishspirit
6th April 2010, 09:16
Hi Karl,

may I say that this is ever so good of you to tak the time to come on here and do this. I must say that it seems that Bill has done the right thing in picking you guys to host the forum, not many, if any would bother what people thought. Well done Sir.

Regards


Irishspirit

morguana
6th April 2010, 12:11
thank you guys, we really do appreciate your help and what you do
love m x

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 13:43
Yes, as Ross mentioned this was not an attack either. I forgot to include that in my original post. Thank you for those comments though Ross, they meant a lot.

@IrishSpirit: I am delighted that you are happy with us and thank you greatly for your words of kindness.

@Morguana: That's great. We are very fortunate to have ProjectAvalon as a client and it really lights us up to know that we are able to help so many people.

As always, please feel free to continue to post your comments/questions here :)

--
Karl

THE eXchanger
6th April 2010, 14:44
we all appreciate, the good work, you are doing :)

THE eXchanger
6th April 2010, 14:45
how do we find, the old forums ???

Daft Ada
6th April 2010, 16:48
Excellent, thanks Karl this forum has been a lot better this last couple of days :tea:

BrianEn
6th April 2010, 18:03
Thank youse for your hard work to make this forum easy to post on. Without you guys we'd be lost.

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 18:51
how do we find, the old forums ???

http://projectavalon.net/forum/index.php

--
Alex

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 18:52
we all appreciate, the good work, you are doing :)

Thank you!! :)

--
Alex

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 18:53
Thank youse for your hard work to make this forum easy to post on. Without you guys we'd be lost.

We are glad we can be of assistance to you and everyone else!

--
Alex

Swanny
6th April 2010, 19:00
Hello something I have noticed apart from the intermittent slowness is that some youtube videos don't show up. you have to move the screen up and down to make them appear.
Any ideas why this is??
If USA shuts down the net do the rest of us lose you as well?

hostingtechs
6th April 2010, 19:07
Hello something I have noticed apart from the intermittent slowness is that some youtube videos don't show up. you have to move the screen up and down to make them appear.
Any ideas why this is??


That would be a vBulletin issue and not have anything to do with the server, sorry :(



If USA shuts down the net do the rest of us lose you as well?


If you mean the United States being shut off from the internet, that's not going to happen so no need to worry.

--
Karl

Baron
8th April 2010, 18:54
I have been trying to log in now for the past week! Its the same as it was over at the other place sometimes!

Is there an ongoing problem? It takes several minutes to load just one page! This is very frustrating trying to read anything or even post!

Regards
Baron

hostingtechs
8th April 2010, 21:32
I have been trying to log in now for the past week! Its the same as it was over at the other place sometimes!

Is there an ongoing problem? It takes several minutes to load just one page! This is very frustrating trying to read anything or even post!

Regards
Baron

Baron,

Are you referring to the old forum and the new forum?

--
Karl

irishspirit
8th April 2010, 21:36
Guy's,

I gotta say forum is running so much better for me now. Much quicker and a better experence these past few days.

Once again, thanks.

Irishspirit

hostingtechs
8th April 2010, 22:28
Guy's,

I gotta say forum is running so much better for me now. Much quicker and a better experence these past few days.

Once again, thanks.

Irishspirit

Great, glad to hear this :)

--
Karl

haibane
8th April 2010, 23:35
Karl, thanks for clear and comprehensive explanation. Your work is much appreciated (^__^ )

p.s.

If you mean the United States being shut off from the internet, that's not going to happen so no need to worry.l

Have you got hard evidence for this? You see, PA is so full of unsubstantiated claims, one has to be careful ... :crazy_pilot:

Carol
9th April 2010, 08:56
Hello Alex,

Every time I use this link (http://projectavalon.net/forum/index.php) I either get a blank screen with this message "The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." or this message: "The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."

Most of the time it's just a blank screen.

I haven't been able to pull up anything on PA1 for days now and cannot access any data posted there. Do we know if this problem is going to be cleared up and if so when? Mahalo

hostingtechs
9th April 2010, 11:27
Hello Alex,

Every time I use this link (http://projectavalon.net/forum/index.php) I either get a blank screen with this message "The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." or this message: "The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."

Most of the time it's just a blank screen.

I haven't been able to pull up anything on PA1 for days now and cannot access any data posted there. Do we know if this problem is going to be cleared up and if so when? Mahalo

Hmm, see this is where we are getting confused. Many people are reporting that PA1 is fine, along with it working fine on our end. We have been unable to replicate the issue, which makes it difficult to solve.

Wood
8th May 2010, 12:17
Everytime a butterfly flaps its wings the forum is down for several hours, or days.

morguana
8th May 2010, 12:52
hi folks, well av2 is up and running.....but is snail pace in its slowness......:(

and some members are unable to log in

East Sun
29th May 2010, 03:32
Hi, twic, I would like to know if there is a fool-proof way to regain my post when it gets lost while I'm writing it. This happened about on hour ago and I spent the time since trying to figure out a way to get back to my unfinished post. I was just writing along and maybe I hit a key that eliminated my post. It was long and I spent a long time on it otherwise I would not mind, but I want to know if I can avoid this happening again. Thanks for any help you can give. E.S.

hostingtechs
29th May 2010, 19:01
Hi, twic, I would like to know if there is a fool-proof way to regain my post when it gets lost while I'm writing it. This happened about on hour ago and I spent the time since trying to figure out a way to get back to my unfinished post. I was just writing along and maybe I hit a key that eliminated my post. It was long and I spent a long time on it otherwise I would not mind, but I want to know if I can avoid this happening again. Thanks for any help you can give. E.S.

That would be something that vBulletin would have to add as a feature, kind of like an auto save as draft option that most webmail providers offer. When ever I write something, I tend to write it in a text editor and then copy and paste to avoid this problem if my computer dies or something of the sort while I am writing the response.

Celine
29th May 2010, 19:52
Hmm things seem to be "off" again..

hostingtechs
29th May 2010, 22:26
Hmm things seem to be "off" again..

How so? Everything has been fine for us lately, so please let me know what troubles you are having.

Thanks.

--
Karl

Majorion
29th May 2010, 23:24
Right now something is very off by the look of the forum, there seem to be script errors or something of the sort...

Pages look very different, and with the usual slowdowns of course.

hostingtechs
30th May 2010, 00:13
Right now something is very off by the look of the forum, there seem to be script errors or something of the sort...

Pages look very different, and with the usual slowdowns of course.

Can you do me a favor and take a screen shot? I am wondering if maybe the new template they are using has browser compatibility issues.

Also, how slow is slow?

Majorion
30th May 2010, 01:44
Here you go, a shot of this page:
http://ploader.net/files/57c3034af848c607c32d1d213e9dcbaf.png

Very slow, it is truly rare that everything is operable!

hostingtechs
30th May 2010, 01:49
Here you go, a shot of this page:
http://ploader.net/files/57c3034af848c607c32d1d213e9dcbaf.png

Very slow, it is truly rare that everything is operable!

Hmm, I see that you have changed from the default theme. That might be part of the problem, as the default one is looking fine.

Let me talk to Richard and see if we can figure this out.

May I ask again, how slow is slow? (E.g. 5 seconds average to load new pages). Also, is the regular Avalon site (http://projectavalon.net) just as slow, or is it fine for you?

Majorion
30th May 2010, 01:52
May I ask again, how slow is slow? (E.g. 5 seconds average to load new pages). Also, is the regular Avalon site (http://projectavalon.net) just as slow, or is it fine for you?
The regular Avalon works fine (at least at the moment), the regular site always works well when the "domain" is active, but its been down a few times along with the forum outages yes?

The speeds vary, but on average takes anything from 10 seconds to 60 seconds to any number of minutes.

bosr
30th May 2010, 01:57
I am seeing the same distorted layout and have never changed from the default template.

hostingtechs
30th May 2010, 01:59
The regular Avalon works fine (at least at the moment), the regular site always works well when the "domain" is active, but its been down a few times along with the forum outages yes?

The speeds vary, but on average takes anything from 10 seconds to 60 seconds to any number of minutes.

Hmm ok, we will look into it. One thing we realized was that the audio and video files were on the same server as everything else and not on the CDN (Content Delivery Network) like we have setup for Camelot, and this greatly affects the performance of the forum. We are in the process of moving all of the Avalon media to the CDN, so hopefully that will be fixed shortly. That still doesn't explain why it's working great for some people though....

¤=[Post Update]=¤


I am seeing the same distorted layout and have never changed from the default template.

Can you try signing out and back in and tell me if that changes anything please? (Please also look to see if it is different when you are signed out).

bosr
30th May 2010, 02:02
Logged out/in. Still the same.

hostingtechs
30th May 2010, 02:07
Logged out/in. Still the same.

That's really strange. I will talk to Richard about this.

Majorion
30th May 2010, 02:08
Can't help but think this is more to do with VBulletin, the slowdowns glitches and other issues always seem centered on VB. This is new software and the newer stuff tends to be experimental. I doubt there would be many problems using PHPBB for example.

bosr
30th May 2010, 02:41
Windoze installed some updates that were still pending so I rebooted, logged out/in again.
No change.
I then toggled the templates.
No change.

Not sure if this helps but I did notice that on the home page the list of online users extended down covering the template selection drop box, etc.

Vista Home Prem, IE 8

hostingtechs
30th May 2010, 02:46
Can't help but think this is more to do with VBulletin, the slowdowns glitches and other issues always seem centered on VB. This is new software and the newer stuff tends to be experimental. I doubt there would be many problems using PHPBB for example.

Well I'm pretty sure that is causing at least a part of the problems here. There are a few other misc things we need to check on our end though.

¤=[Post Update]=¤


Windoze installed some updates that were still pending so I rebooted, logged out/in again.
No change.
I then toggled the templates.
No change.

Not sure if this helps but I did notice that on the home page the list of online users extended down covering the template selection drop box, etc.

Vista Home Prem, IE 8

Can you try Firefox?

bosr
30th May 2010, 02:52
Can you try Firefox?

Not on this box.

hostingtechs
30th May 2010, 02:55
Not on this box.

Hmm ok. I'm away for the weekend and only have my laptop with Debian on it, but let me see if I can get an IE emulator running.

onawah
30th May 2010, 03:05
Hi. I hope you can help with this. When playing the new David Icke video "Human Race, Get Off Your Knees", both on the youtube site and the Project Camelot site, I can hear Bill Ryan's voice fine, but David's voice is very tinny and very far away sounding, even with the volume turned way up. I have not had this problem with any other videos. The speakers on my computer aren't very powerful, but I don't think that's the problem.
Can you help?
Thanks.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Never mind! I just realized something was unplugged on my speaker. Thanks anyway!

hostingtechs
30th May 2010, 03:09
Never mind! I just realized something was unplugged on my speaker. Thanks anyway!

That will always do it :-)

3(C)+me
30th May 2010, 05:36
On my screen anything above advancd search i can barely see, it is very faint and my name is not visible as in
"Welcome...." can't see my name. Also the screen is cut off at top so I can not get to notifications at all. All type is almost same color as background screen. Played David Icke video from front page no problems but is slow....

DoctorWho
30th May 2010, 05:56
Can I put in a request to have a duplicate Mark As Read button in the top right of the board and also on the New Posts page? Many thanks.
Bill "the Doctor"

Gita
30th May 2010, 08:43
Why are all the items and links on the forum all over the place - again!! For gad sakes, is this ever going to get sorted? :rolleyes:

onawah
30th May 2010, 15:51
It's me again. I THOUGHT it was just the speaker, but actually I really CAN'T hear David Icke, and also in parts, I can't hear Bill Ryan either. I played some other vids and they were fine all the way through, so it's just the "Off Your Knees" I'm having trouble with, after all.