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Ability to auto-save/save drafts

Started by wynnyelle, September 25, 2013, 11:25:58 PM

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wynnyelle

Members on my site want to be able to have their posts auto-save to a draft in the middle like an email or blog post does. They also want the option to safe drafts. How would I do this?

Arantor

There are two mods for this already on the mod site, under the name of drafts. Neither is recommended for your site based on the additional load of the server receiving an update every 30 seconds or so from anyone currently making a post.

wynnyelle

There must be a way to do it. Sites MUCH larger than mine have it as a matter of course.

I just need to bring the site into the 21st century really..everyone and their dog can do this, pretty much, except my site.

Arantor

Sites MUCH larger than yours don't run on the server infrastructure you do (instead run on multiple servers, spending far, far more per month on hosting than you do, and often have dedicated staff to manage those servers)

Seriously, I'm not being funny but I actually wrote one of the two drafts mods in question and my technical recommendation is to NOT do it. Why can't your members do what plenty of other people do and write it in Word or similar first? They can even spell check it there before posting it...

You forget, you are in totally unknown territory with SMF. There is no other site even nearly close to yours running on SMF. That makes those of us that are competent extremely wary of dealing with it. There is a reason, for example, why I won't go near your site in terms of helping with anything, because I am worried about breaking something. And given how extensive my knowledge of both SMF and PHP is, that should be a huge warning sign to anyone right there.

wynnyelle

We did just move to a new server infrastructure. I can't help but think there's got to be a way to do it. Even if we have to shave it down for now. Maybe instead of auto-saving a member could hit a button "save draft" and that would do the job?

Arantor

-sigh- I already pointed out there are two existing mods that can do this already... I even told you what they were both called since they both have the same name. I'm sorry but I don't have the time or the patience to deal with this.

wynnyelle

You told me neither one would be suitable for my site, so that's why I asked if there was a way to design one that is.  I don't mean to be harsh, but that was rude.

Arantor

I'm sorry that I don't conform to your ideas of customer service, however I grow extremely tired of repeating myself. The mods in question can be configured not to auto save which is where the problem lies (as already explained)

I was trying to impress upon you the severity of not using auto saving, but I just know you're going to turn it on anyway and it's going to cause trouble. Best of luck to you.

wynnyelle

Quote
Why can't your members do what plenty of other people do and write it in Word or similar first?

Because people don't do that. They have come to expect a higher level of technology and ease from most other websites and my job is to bring my site up in accordance with that at the very least. If members don't find, as a bare minimum, the things they expect a website to be able to do at the least, they won't be impressed and they won't stay on the site. All I want to do is improve my site; I guess I can't understand the apparent lack of understanding when it comes to that. It's one of my biggest sources of frustration when I come here for help.

I'm willing to put work into it. I just don't know what to write or where to start.

live627

Quote from: wynnyelle on September 25, 2013, 11:25:58 PM
Members on my site want to be able to have their posts auto-save to a draft in the middle like an email or blog post does. They also want the option to safe drafts. How would I do this?
I've already installed Arantor's drafts mod onto your site a long time ago, is it still there? Maybe some permissions need enabled.

wynnyelle

It's not there. And he's insisting this will seriously impact performance, which I know I should take seriously. The problem is that our site is badly outdated--what was cutting edge 10 years ago doesn't really cut it now--and what I'm trying to get it to do is basically be on par with most other forum/social sites used especially by that demographic {teens and young adults, who make up like 99.999% of my site}. I know it's a tall order, but I've got to start somewhere so I brought these 4 feature ideas here to get started working on and see if anyone could give me some direction.

Thank you for responding, though. I'm just beside myself whenever I get into this here and I don't want to upset people. But I really know of nowhere else to go. I'd love to get that more powerful server configuration and paid staff--but to do that, I need more revenue, and to do THAT, I need more members, and to do THAT, I need to update my site and get it the features it will need to attract those members. Or I can just sit back and let my website slowly sink into obsolescence. I've decided that isn't acceptable.

Arantor

Given the activity on your site, yes it will seriously impact performance for every user to be making requests every thirty seconds to the server on top of everything else.

Oh your site is not 'badly outdated'. If it was badly outdated like you claim you wouldn't have 52 million posts on it. If your site really was the issue you believe it to be, you wouldn't be as popular as you are.

If I had some reliability of your users being on modern browsers, and not jumping between different computers, there is one way to do it but it means that drafts they save won't be available between different devices (e.g. writing on a laptop and switching to a phone), and that's to use a thing called localStorage. There is a reason I didn't use that when I wrote the drafts mod, and when I rewrote it for Wedge - and that's that exact reason. Too many people want to be able to switch devices and just expect their drafts to be there.

Oh, and the drafts mod on this site is also buggy.

wynnyelle

#12
My site is strong because of its community but it doesn't have the people coming into it that it used to, its activity is actually flagging, and I can tell that the community stays in spite of the lack of many basic features, not because of it, plus the fact that we have managed, with a lot of struggling, to get a few cool things installed over the past year or so. {By far the most popular of those things are the ones that give members the ability to apply custom CSS to their posts and profiles.}

Most of my members access the site via mobile devices {and constantly bemoan the fact that we don't even have a mobile app--something I've chosen not to even get into on this site--I'm sorry, but a site with no mobile app in 2013 is borderline obsolete regardless} and a mixture of browsers--Chrome, IE, Opera, Safari and Firefox being ones commonly mentioned.

Quote
Too many people want to be able to switch devices and just expect their drafts to be there.

I would expect it, too. That's what I get on every other site I use where I write posts, articles or emails. One cannot just dismiss peoples' expectations; it doesn't change them. I could dismiss it and say they're being unreasonable and too bad, I'm not updating my site to meet them because they're spoilt and silly and guess what, at the end of the day they'll just go somewhere else, to a site that does meet their expectations. More lost members.

I have always aimed to and will continue to aim to give my members everything they expect on my site, and as much as possible of what they want on top of it. Giving them what they expect is a bare minimum. Those who do not understand why this is necessary and think I'm being unreasonable or silly, you do not need to respond to this and should avoid wasting time responding, because you don't get it.

I don't mean to be rude or harsh. But over and over I get into it with people here over this subject, and so maybe it's best that I lay it out on the table.

butch2k

Given your site's size Arantor is right, it will be an issue when it comes down to server performance. A way to prevent this is to use client side caching using localstorage provided by latest generation browsers.

wynnyelle

Yeah, I trust Arantor on this one. I really do.

But I need to bring my site up to par. So what I'm now looking to do is see how much of the code needs to change to be able to optimise for this.

Arantor

Firstly, please do not presume to judge what I think about users or their expectations. The fact that I was the first person to write and release an auto saving draft mod for SMF should tell you something about what I think are reasonable expectations.

Secondly, localStorage was never an answer because desite having zero server load whatsoever, it runs totally on the client... One device only. Drafts are therefore not portable between devices which means we have to save it on the server regularly.

Do you think I would have written it and not tried to improve upon it? There is one method by which some server load can be saved but in your site's case it is unlikely it will be much at all, meaning that you still have the full weight of requests every 30 seconds automatically. You then asked about non autosaving.... Both draft mods can do this, you just have to configure them.

butch2k

I did not check your mod arantor but maybe one way to prevent the 30s autosave is to sha1 the data to be saved and compares it with the last saved data sha1 and only make the ajax call when the two are different.

wynnyelle

My apologies if I came across as presuming anything about you or any other member here. That was not my intention.

My ability to think of ways to improve it is limited by my having almost no php skills at all, but I will try.

You did say that both mods have the ability to be configured to not auto-save, but you mentioned this would still not be viable on my site. I am wondering why not? After all, posts and other things get saved in the same way. Or so I think.

Thanks to you two and anyone else who comes to my threads to help me.

Arantor

Quote from: butch2k on September 26, 2013, 01:45:36 AM
I did not check your mod arantor but maybe one way to prevent the 30s autosave is to sha1 the data to be saved and compares it with the last saved data sha1 and only make the ajax call when the two are different.

JavaScript doesn't have an SHA1 function built in, it would have to be loaded to do so.

The better solution is that you set a flag every time the textbox changes, and on the 30 second timer only send it off to the server if something's actually changed (thus if the user doesn't type something, no extra requests occur). The reason I don't believe it's relevant here is because given the nature of the site in question, I find it hard to believe users would pause for complete blocks of 30 seconds without typing something. Either they're going to be typing short messages a lot (remember, 52m posts by... 80 thousand users?) or they're going to be typing furiously, meaning the whole deal with skipping saves doesn't really help you much.

QuoteYou did say that both mods have the ability to be configured to not auto-save, but you mentioned this would still not be viable on my site. I am wondering why not? After all, posts and other things get saved in the same way. Or so I think.

That wasn't what I actually said.

Auto saving is, I believe, not viable on your site for the reasons given, at least if you want auto save to be able to move between devices as users would typically expect, because of the hammering on the server every 30 seconds while there is something to save.

My concern is that I know how you change things. I know you add things because one or two people ask for it and suddenly it's an emergency. That's a great testament to your desire to make it ideal for everyone, but catering to a minority rarely works out well.

So while we could get you fixed up with non auto saving drafts, I'm concerned that in a month's time or whatever, someone's going to ask if drafts can be saved more regularly and you'll go off and do it without remembering the performance concerns.

Non auto saving is fine, it is no extra load compared to saving a post anyway; one roundtrip to the server, comparable number of queries, it's all good there. It's the auto saving aspect that's the problem.


As for your decline, consider your demographic and what's going on in their world; for most teenagers, the last few weeks have been 'back to school' times. It seems likely that there would be a drop-off of users because of that - and no amount of tweaking the site is going to fix that, I'm afraid. Seasonal fluctuations are a force that can't be controlled, unfortunately.

dubob4432

At what size does forum activity become an issue with auto save (don't worry, nothing close to 50M posts or 80,000 active members) Also, no disrespect meant, but what other forums have this as part of the default package?

Thanks in advance,
dubob4432

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