Splitting the Forum

[dougiefresh]

Can't answer the first question.....

Regarding second question: If you're asking my opinion, it would make more sense to do the changes now since I assume you're still in the planning stages of your site(s), than to TRY to do them later....  Doing it later can result in unwanted/unexpected/unplanned-for downtime during the "upgrade" process....

[DenDen60]

I prefer to go the second route as well.

Arantor, I you interested?

[Arantor]

Firstly... it might help if you get my name right occasionally. It's a small and petty thing, I know, but programming is all about the little details - and it's very important to get them right.

Secondly... this is where it gets complicated. This is something that doesn't come up all that often, meaning I need to do it once and charge a lot for it (hundreds of dollars, possibly even verging towards 4 figures), or I do it as a generic mod that I charge per sale... but even than because of the low use of it, and the high maintenance factor, it's still going to be in the hundreds of dollars category somewhere along the line. Honestly, even $100 per copy (one copy per network of linked sites) seems a shade too low to me given the time investment and making it work properly with everything else.

It's not that I'm not interested... it's that I *have* to make it worth my time to do. Because honestly I doubt I would even be looking *any* at the code you already have anyway.

[DenDen60]

Sorry about this Arantor. Looking at my preview posts, I seem to do it right 60% of the time. But after corrections, I am now up to 100%. 

What does Arantor mean by the way?

I understand that there is a major difference between SMF 1.1 and SMF 2, so I understand that you might not be able to code I shared with you?  This being said the logic and some of the processes are still valid.

Now I understand that it has to be worth your time. Hope we can reach an agreement of some kind. You can inbox me if you want to pursue this off line.

[Arantor]

Does it have to mean anything? I've just used it for the last 12 years.

As for differences... the table columns in the database changed between the two, as did every single database query had to be altered; SMF 1 uses a thing called db_query while SMF 2 uses a thing called $smcFunc, and while a simple find/replace can sometimes work, it probably won't for something like this.

There's also maintenance issues with respect to updates that need to be handled differently for 2.0 - especially since such a thing should ideally be built with 2.0/2.1 in mind, not just 2.0 (and it's very possible to make that be a thing by way of the integration hooks, in fact, it just needs to be built looking forwards not backwards, which is also where the intention of a rewrite from scratch would come in)

I would also note that the 'logic and some of the processes' being valid is an interesting assessment. How does one assess whether the logic is the same when some of the most fundamental parts of both of those have changed?

[DenDen60]

No of course. I was just curious.

As for the logic, I meant the ideas behind the coding. This being said, maybe they are not pertinent anymore. 

[DenDen60]

So Arantor, if you are interested just inbox me so that we can pursue this off-line

[DenDen60]

Wow I have just realized that I had not updated my profile since 2006

I guest it was time for me to update it. 

[DenDen60]

I am going to ask this question again because it is important for me.

At one point, adding sub forums, starts to affects the overall functioning of SMF and impedes users' experience? (Meaning it become slow)

[Arantor]

You need to define what 'slow' means.

Adding boards slows things done. Period. More boards = slower. Can't be avoided.

It only starts to become a *real* problem on most hardware when you start going into hundreds and hundreds of boards. I also suspect this mod hasn't been tweaked for such configurations (since even SMF itself needs consideration at those levels) and that's pretty much per-install anyway.

[DenDen60]

Thanks for your response Arantor.

My pilot project aims to start around 25 sub forum, each representing a community of practice for citizens,  with let say 7 categories and a few boards and several sub-board each.

At the beginning, I don't expect to have more then 10 000 members ( I already have them)  out of which maybe a few hundred will come occasionally and and 50 committed members participating.

[Arantor]

Members aren't a huge problem; this site has 350k ish visitors.

Boards are where the pain point bites most.

[DenDen60]

I really don't understand how boards can be problematic? I am not saying you are wrong of course, but in my head, a board is a static cell which is associated with a list of discussions.

I see this as a hard drive storing information. 

[Arantor]

The problem is how board access is established.

Board access scales inefficiently, the more boards and the more groups, the slower it gets when querying for that data, and it scales in O(n log 2) time in the worst cases. Meaning that for 10 boards vs 1 board the internal processing time can scale by up to a factor of 100. Or worse.

[DenDen60]

But doesn't today's server with high processing power and SSDs compensate for that inefficiency?

[Arantor]

Not really, no. Because the way higher processing power goes is horizontal - you scale by breaking the workload down and parallelising it. Except this is something you cannot parallelise meaning that the work unit is still running in single thread order, just as it was ten years ago, and computing power is not quite so scaled up when you're talking single core order.

[DenDen60]

Thanks again for your  answers.

When ever you are ready, inbox me so that we can discuss how we can work together.

[DenDen60]

What is the differences between having 25 separates instances of SMF, versus one instance with 25 sub-forums? Do both affect the performance of the server in the same way?

[Kindred]

they will both affect the server... but in different ways.


note -- I have split this discussion out of the split forum mod thread, since it has gone into the real of "build another solution" and was cluttering up the mod thread with the discussion.

[DenDen60]

Thanks Kindred,

Which one will effect the server less or have less an impact on the end user?