New Software And Speed Fixes

[Admin]

Dearest members and visitors of the Fountain Pen Network,

 

We managed to increase the speed of the board quite a bit, with the aid of our excellent server hosting support team. It required a lot of investigating, trials and errors, and the inescapable local backups, just in case. The latter was the most time consuming.

 

From a server performance POV, things look good now, at least, with few users logged in, we still have to see of course how it performs with a normal, full complement of members browsing FPN. We'll monitor performance closely however.

 

The new board software clearly behaves differently to the old one, so we will likely do some more tweaking in the next few weeks, although we don't expect the server to have to go down for these anymore. However, better never say never again, considering the experience of the past few days.

 

The new software behaves differently specifically when saving posts or messages. It may seem to take forever. We therefore suggest that people click on the More Reply Options button rather than the Post button, which will bring the editor into full editor mode first, and do a preview of the post. This way, posting a message is a lot faster we found, and one doesn't get these weird waiting forever screens.

 

Some investigation was done into the redirects which didn't disappear completely for some. To prevent as much of these occurrences as possible, we upgraded the server software too, as the new board software supports this. If you find these redirects are still happening, do clear browser cache and temp files first, and if they still happen thereafter, do let us know at the admin gmail address. We takes this extremely seriously.

 

Finally, we also tightened security even further, with the aid of several of our fellow FPN-ers, who offered their help backchannel. Thanks to you all for being so kind, it was much appreciated. We also appreciated all support in general we received from our members, it did really give a boost to morale, while trying to sort out all of these problems under a lot of stress and with little sleep, to get this board up and running again as quickly as possible.

 

Well we are back again, and keeping our fingers crossed for now .

 

Thank you all for your patience, understanding, and support!

 

Warm regards,

The FPN Admin Team

 

 

[Shaporama]

Hoorah! And thank you! :clap1:

[JLS1]

First of all - FPN IS BACK...YAY!!!

A BIG thanks to all of you who helped with this!

 

Wim, your note about using Post vs. More Reply Methods...it might be a good idea to highlight this on the Main FPN page just so that people see it - I only learned about it through reading this post (and while I read instructions, I know many others may not).

 

Thanks again and hope that the FPN madness (of the technical sort) dies down for a while...

 

Regards,

Justin

(AKA JLS1)

 

 

[RMN]

Great, well done, Wim.

 

(See my other post)

 

 

D.ick

[pen2paper]

At Last!

Still a tad slow considering my fast internet speed, but will gladly take what I can get until all is resolved.

Understand how huge this was, and the efforts by many to bring this episode under control.

Btw, never had any of the negative directs.. this may support your suggestion to clean your cache, as I regularly do?

 

Have questions, when there is time:

Have a few things to upload and share.. best to wait until all is finally resolved?

Would emptying our PM files help the situation? (mine are woefully full, but a few are sentimental as the member has passed - would like to save those).

 

Welcome Back Everybody!!!

Edited April 29, 2013 by pen2paper

[Bugmerc]

Thanks for all the hard work! I sure hope it stays up now, and it's better and safer than ever.

 

Chris

[Lorna Reed]

I never had any negative redirects either.

Here's a little verse I wrote while waiting for FPN to return.

 

Oh no! FPN is down again.

I know it will be back, but when?

My day is dark and grey indeed

my fix of FPN I need.

 

My dear online pen friends I miss -

succulent recipes from Old Griz.

Waterman expertise from Force.

Montblanc wisdom - from Hari, of course.

 

Advice on books, computers and cats

papers, pens and inky facts.

Should I buy this pen on the 'Bay?

Should I pay this much - no way!

 

Can I get this pen restored?

Is this nib OK, or flawed?

What books should my son be reading?

All these answers we are needing.

 

So clear those bugs and glitches fast.

so we can meet again at last.

Then thanks to Wim and all his men*

for fixing our beloved FPN!

(* and women, of course!)

Edited April 29, 2013 by Lorna Reed

[hari317]

I never got a redirect, but the board is very slow now and replies and edit dont seem to be working for me.

[GutSchrift]

Thank you for all the hard work! I think this makes it clear how much we all need to keep supporting the admins!

[Tberry010]

Probaly not proper but we should also remember all this fixin' takes money.So the donate button works:)

[Pengrump]

Still very slow, but at least I can get on. Thank you for all your hard work.

[OldGriz]

Thank you for all your hard work Wim, unfortunately the site is still slower than molasses running uphill in January.....

It took almost 1.5 min for the site to load and then an additional minute to open this folder......

[kalali]

First of all - FPN IS BACK...YAY!!!

A BIG thanks to all of you who helped with this!

 

Wim, your note about using Post vs. More Reply Methods...it might be a good idea to highlight this on the Main FPN page just so that people see it - I only learned about it through reading this post (and while I read instructions, I know many others may not).

 

Thanks again and hope that the FPN madness (of the technical sort) dies down for a while...

 

Regards,

Justin

(AKA JLS1)

 

I read the opposite.

 

 

 

[jkingrph]

It's nice to have it back, but is still extremely slow. It took over 1.5 minutes to load the forum vs about 10 sec for The Fountain Pen Board, and about 45 sec to load this thread.

[PDW]

As my students might say,... respect, people!

[notbob]

Not even close.

 

This thread took several minutes to load. Seems like one or two choices work OK, but the after a couple choice changes, the next one stalls, freezes, whatever. I came back to this one 8 mins later and it had loaded. This after leaving FPN and twice and rebooting browser once. The problems are far from resolved.

[Bookman]

Thanks for all your hard work. This site is indispensible. Period.

[Voormas]

Thank you very much for your efforts - FPN is fast again over here.

[bernardo]

Thank you all, you're great!

[TSherbs]

My posts don't seem to be recorded any more...unless this one gets through.....

 

 

YAY for now!

Edited May 10, 2013 by TSherbs