The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I finally got around to the Forum update.

I took my time in enacting the update. I thought about the speed problem and how best to resolve it. I think I have hit upon a solution that will endure our growth.

Right now, the Forum is running over 1000% faster. Some of the message threads may still take a while to load. It will depend upon the length of the thread.

There are a few things members should be aware of. In the past, every time you loaded the main Forum page, every message was loaded, and then sorted based on most recent post. This no longer happens.

I have a script running that will sort the forum messages every minute. When a user loads the Forum page, data is pulled from that script.

This accomplishes a few things. First of course, is the massive speed increase. It's also a lot easier on the VR server, as much less data is being crunched.

The downside, is the main Forum page no longer features real-time data. So if you post a new message, it will take between 1 and 60 seconds to appear (the new script processes every 60 seconds).

This doesn't apply to thread replies. You'll still see those right away if you're looking at a Forum message page. This applies to new Threads appearing on the main Forum page, and replies to threads that bump old messages to the top.

I plan to enact this same concept in both the Profiles and Journals section. These sections are suffering from the same speed problems that the Forum was.

NyQuill will fix that ya know...

Hey Great thanks for this usefull update..
Mr Cancer u rock!!

good job Cancer darling. this website only gets better and better ^_^

always trying to out do urself cancer....its ashame ur going to overwork urself and for what purpose? for us? awww thats so sweet where would we be without u cancer? well we sure as hell wouldnt be here at VR thats for damn sure thanks so much u do all to much for us

27th demon

You are the master here Cancer.

...sweet! merci, monsuer caner! 8)

Yayness, ~dances~ Go You!!

As a suggestion in the forum would it be an idea to perhaps have all the old posts "boxed" into monthly order. That way it would make it a lot easier to read old threads and it wouldnt take as long to access them?

I’ve had several different suggestions for Forum message sorting. I think chronological descending by most recent post is by far the most useful.

I’m not sure why you’d want to skip over say 100 messages to go into old threads you’ve already read. If you haven’t read them, then there they sit ready, sorted by most recent post.

For our veterans, there is the search feature. It’s pretty easy to find an old thread with one or two distinctive keywords.

But let’s say you do want to jump back 100 messages. It’s possible right now (although not obvious to most). When you load the Forum you come to this page:

https://www.vampirerave.com/forum.php

If you click ‘Next 15 Messages’ in the General Discussion category, you land on this page:

https://www.vampirerave.com/forum.php?start1=16&start2=1&start3=1&start4=1

Those variables after the ? tell forum.php where to start loading messages. start1 is category 1 (General Discussion). Messages will start at #16 (as messages 1-15 were loaded on the previous page).

If you were to click on Next 15 Messages again, you’d load:

https://www.vampirerave.com/forum.php?start1=31&start2=1&start3=1&start4=1

So let’s say you wanted to start at the 100th message in General Discussion. You could accomplish this by simply changing the value in your address bar to:

https://www.vampirerave.com/forum.php?start1=100&start2=1&start3=1&start4=1

or just:

https://www.vampirerave.com/forum.php?start1=100

Thankyou Cancer. Sometimes I like to go back into the forum to read the old posts and reminisce the old stuff. I particularly like reading the old posts that Wraith made a contribution too. It would be so handy just to type his nick into a box and up come all the posts heh - but I think thats real voodoo stuff maybe, even for the magic that you create.

Well, I am not done with the search code throughout the site. But it has lesser priority than other pending updates.

I have always planned a search by author function.

hmm well done cancer... ::bows to the prince:: i wonder whats next on the agenda of VR