Meta: Do we need to start a collection for a new server or something?

Submitted by julesh on

While annoying, I can understand a server not standing up to a sudden influx of visitors after a big win or loss, or when a recruit announces or whatever. But is there really any reason for all the 502, 503 and 504 messages in the middle of June with no announcements? 

How can we finally get this site the servers it requires to run at a minimally functional level?

Brian

June 15th, 2015 at 2:38 PM ^

We are working on moving the blog to a new version of Drupal, and once that's done I'll get a performance expert in here. For now I think I fixed some of the issues. 

wolverine1987

June 15th, 2015 at 3:00 PM ^

I know nothing about the tech underlying websites, but nonetheless I am in charge of putting a new website together at work (Design and marketing, we are hiring out the tech). Anyway, three different firms with very good reviews and qualifications all told us to stay away from Drupal, and that if they had their own way, they would only use WordPress. So that probably means nothing, but I'm going to blame the ongoing site problems on Drupal from now on anyway--and the "bad gateway' message I got posting this

wile_e8

June 15th, 2015 at 3:15 PM ^

I think Drupal has less to do with the server issues and more to do with the site design though. And it seems like it's the servers that are the issue here. IIRC Brian is self-hosting this site (along with his brother's site) on personally owned servers. Anyone have a clue how much it would cost to upgrade to an actual hosting service? I think that would do way more to improve reliability than switching to WordPress.

bluebyyou

June 15th, 2015 at 4:00 PM ^

I don't know squat about selecting or upgrading a website, but I do know that many of the sites on which I participate, so many functions that require work on here are automatic on others, i.e., pasting a Youtube video is recognized and no formatting is required.  Ditto for highlighting, etc.  No separate text editor is required.

Love this site and its leaders, and I'd be happy to make a reasonable contribution if that helps.

bluebyyou

June 15th, 2015 at 4:06 PM ^

I don't know squat about selecting or upgrading a website, but I do know that many of the sites on which I participate, so many functions that require work on here are automatic on others, i.e., pasting a Youtube video is recognized and no formatting is required.  Ditto for highlighting, etc.  No separate text editor is required.

Love this site and its leaders, and I'd be happy to make a reasonable contribution if that helps.

bronxblue

June 15th, 2015 at 5:01 PM ^

I think Drupal gets a bad reputation; this feels like a hardware/network issue more than Drupal.  Wordpress is more popular because it is a better user experience, but if you know Drupal and have gotten over the learning curve, it's a powerful CRM that should work here.

If it is true that Brian is hosting this site on his private server, that's probably not a good long-term idea.  Even just a couple of AWS medium servers and a load balancer should be able to handle a decent amount of the traffic.  Trying to host everything in your own place is just asking for a scene like the end of this season's Silicon Valley.

mGrowOld

June 15th, 2015 at 2:38 PM ^

I just chalked it up to the collective excitement the board must've experienced once they saw the picture of me and Phil Hubbard and the video of us saying "go blue".

No?

MichiganTeacher

June 15th, 2015 at 2:43 PM ^

Yes.

I've been saying since I got here that the servers are terrible and, even worse, this forum software is just... horrendous. Embarrassingly bad. I mean, it's like it's from a parody site or something. You can get better forum software for free. Lots of it. You have to try to have forum software this bad.

Kermits Blue Key

June 15th, 2015 at 3:12 PM ^

I'm assuming the three guys who were rumored to be committing last night held off due to the server issues this site is having - didn't want to cause a total meltdown.

gord

June 15th, 2015 at 3:17 PM ^

Manny Pacquiao tweeted out a link so the traffic is a little heavy.  Someone call Gilfoyle.  Dinesh probably wrote some bad code again.

lilpenny1316

June 15th, 2015 at 3:59 PM ^

Once I saw the 502/503 errors, I thought the Flanagan Trio committed.  Sam Webb can thank me for all the page hits to his Twitter account between 8-11:00AM.

nerv

June 15th, 2015 at 4:44 PM ^

I legitimately thought all of these errors and the overall slowness meant we had landed multiple commits today. I was eagerly anticipating being greeted with 2-3 Hello posts when the site finally loaded.

God damnit.

rob f

June 15th, 2015 at 5:28 PM ^

Brian had a brother with a blog---has this been kept under wraps in an effort to keep WD away? /s Seriously, though---I'm all in favor of a Kickstarter or whatever else can be done to upgrade the reliability of the website. I'm beginning to think that the #'s 502 and 503 are the true marks of the devil as this is only the 2nd time in the last 8 hours I've been able to sign in.

rob f

June 15th, 2015 at 5:28 PM ^

Brian had a brother with a blog---has this been kept under wraps in an effort to keep WD away? /s Seriously, though---I'm all in favor of a Kickstarter or whatever else can be done to upgrade the reliability of the website. I'm beginning to think that the #'s 502 and 503 are the true marks of the devil as this is only the 2nd time in the last 8 hours I've been able to sign in.

rob f

June 15th, 2015 at 5:28 PM ^

Brian had a brother with a blog---has this been kept under wraps in an effort to keep WD away? /s Seriously, though---I'm all in favor of a Kickstarter or whatever else can be done to upgrade the reliability of the website. I'm beginning to think that the #'s 502 and 503 are the true marks of the devil as this is only the 2nd time in the last 8 hours I've been able to sign in.