Tech: Another New Feature -From Max 03-Oct-1997

Subject: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Max
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 01:45 PM

Dick called me yestarday with an idea that I have been working on for about 3 months now. I told him such and that it is real tricky and I have not been able to pull it off yet. Upon stewing over this all evening I figured it out over a steak salad at dinner.

We now have a page that shows you all Forum messages that have been posted since your last visit. Part of the trickyness I solved by actions on your part and by faking LastVisit. There is an automatic LastVisit function in our system but it resets automatically when it reads itself. So you would get one chance to see new stuff, leave to look at one of them, and then you would be reset to now when you return to the newstuff page, and see nothing. (Does that make sense?)

So I created a step for you to reset your own LastVisit.

There is now a link at the top of the Main Forum Page, as well as other locations, that gets you to the New Messages page which is at http://www.mudcat.org/newmessages.cfm. There are buttons to reset your Last Visit to Now.

If you get an error, go to your profile and resubmit it. You need not change anything on your profile, it automatically resets your LastVisit to Now. Remember that too. So this is more like a "New Messages since you last Reset you Last Visit". Resets (as far as I can remember) happen only during membership or remembership, editing your profile, and reseting with the buttons that I set up on the New Messages page.

Also, to get this to work, I had to set all members' LastVisit to noon today (Oct 3). It will (I hope) keep track accurately from now on.

Let me know if you find any bugs in the system, for it is a new (prototype) feature. Let me know too if you find something else that resets your last visit. Also, let me know if I can improve it in anyway.

Have Fun.

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 03:29 PM

Is there anyone else who wonders what a steak salad is? Sounds delicious....I think.
Well, at least it seems to inspire moments of technical genius. the "New Messages" feature looks great, Max. Now, about that steak salad....
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Max
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 03:39 PM

It was interesting. A nice romain and leaf lettuce salad with cucumbers, red onions and raddicula. On top of that you put a good handful of your favorite french fries, thinly sliced steak and top it all off with some Ceaser Dressing. Fantastic. And maybe it does inspire one... give it a try and let me know.

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Max
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 03:46 PM

Oh, I forgot to tell you that it refreshes every ninety seconds. I'm now working on a way where you can choose the refresh rate or if your would not like it to refresh.

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 03:48 PM

Yum, yum.
But back to technical matters, it does seem that the "Forum Home" page loads very slow. I wonder if the new feature contributes to the sluggishness, or if maybe I just have a slow conncetion today. Everything else but the "Forum Home" page seems to operate at normal speed.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 03:54 PM

The steak salad refreshes every 90 seconds? Now, that's what I call
Fresh!
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Dale Rose
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 04:25 PM

I have been having problems with loading as well, but I figured it was just me, or rather my computer. I even resorted to a one day default, and still have to reload two or three times to get it all to download. It just quits partway through.

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Max
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 06:17 PM

I checked how the new features are effecting the speed of the forum and found that they add only 20 milliseconds to the load time. The database is well over 14MB now (it being over a year old with an average of about 75 to 100 messages a day). I am doing some experimenting with other techniques to speed it up but I am being conservative so not to jeopardize the forum's existence.

A letter is floating around the net that Microsoft's new browser (IE4.0) is slowing down the net in general. Big conspiracy thing. Just the way it downloads components is clogging the net.

We are also busier than ever. We are getting well over a million hits a month now. I'm checking on everything.

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Max
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 06:32 PM

Let me know if you notice any change. At 6:30pm October 3rd, I converted the database to a (hopefully) better format.

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Max
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 07:05 PM

Also for speed I am cleaning out duplicate and blank postings. Should thin it out a little.

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: pete savage
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 07:27 PM

Max: I notice that threads seem to have a useful life... after some variable period of time, there is little interest in the thread. Have you ever considered deleting threads that haven't been accessed in over a year say? Or perhaps moving them to a base that would be accessed like the DT but only if people want to look deep into the past?

Just a suggestion to imporve performance...

Best regards,

Pete

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Max
Date: 03 Oct 97 - 07:33 PM

I am not sure how much performance will be gained by a database say half the size. Also I realy don't beleive in deleting anything. It would be more confusing with 2 discussion forums. I think I did wonders tonight, so keep an eye on it and let me know if you notice any improvement. I am showing a 30% improvement on cycle time on my side. If it is a bandwidth issue rather than CPU cycles then the slowness is because of high volume traffic. We have been busy lately. We are doing everything we can to increase speed. Keep filling me in.

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Oct 97 - 12:24 AM

Max...I am convinced I can tell the difference in loading time from yesterday to today...it just 'feels' faster....

also...this new feature has SO many virtues!! I can often tell when I see who has posted recently which threads I want to read!Being able to quickly scan down that list of 'messages since my last visit' tells me a LOT of things! And I can control how often it changes...(or, rather I MUST control how often it changes,)

uh...one other thing...what ever happened to 'sort ascending' & sort 'sort descending'? Did that just die as a concept? I was actually using that for awhile...I'm ok with this, but on some of the long threads, it was a handy feature....

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Oct 97 - 04:00 AM

Well, Max, I tried it at about 3 PM Friday your time, and it was really slow. Now it's 4 AM your time Saturday morning, and it's much, much faster. If you'll forgive my saying so, it's like night and day. (groan)
Well, anyhow, it seems to be working wonderfully, Max.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: RS
Date: 04 Oct 97 - 08:08 AM

To Max,

A million hits a month??? Twelve million hits a year????? That's incredible!!!

Also I definitely agree with keeping old postings around. Sometimes it's fun to wander through messages from a year ago & remind myself of what I did read, open some threads that I didn't read, & see what I can learn, or add.

Plus there are a few song requests that I never did get a reply for, that I bring forward every so often, to see if anyone new can help out. (That's one of the uses for my handy Tracer page!)

To Joe,

(about your message several entries back)

Sometimes when I am sitting here pretending to "work" I start laughing uncontrollably, & my whole family knows that I am reading the DT Forum.

I had just been thinking (before I read your comment) that refreshing every ninety seconds would get very annoying, since my screen often freezes temporarily while it waits for the new information to arrive. Imagine that happening at dinner, with your fork poised over the steak, while you wait for the current steak to disappear & a new one to replace it!

And you would _never_ finish dinner, unless you ate *really fast*, because your half eaten meal would keep being replaced by a new complete one!

(Two stories on this theme - Last week my kids brought home a Book Order form from a school book sale ... the ad said "The Original Virtual Reality!" And one day, walking by the lake, I pointed out to my kids how amazing it was that the sound was so realistic, it sounded almost as authentic as the wind & waves on their Carmen Sandiego computer game at home!)

Thanks for the thought! (Hmmm, I wonder what will happen when I go to have breakfast ...) :-)

Subject: RE: Another New Feature -From Max
From: Peter T.
Date: 04 Oct 97 - 09:21 AM

I guess this means that the one millionth visitor doesn't get a Max Vobiscum T-shirt. yours, Peter