2.3 suggestions

[marcus]

Hello,

I'd like to see better support for memcached, i.e. store more info.

A setting to change how often time wise to update the views, the current one isn't really simple unless you manually edit code.

Better support for multi-server setups (rebuilding the cache on both servers etc) as well as support for slave databases

Support for innodb with seprate search, this would make the board a lot more stable and scalable.

Other than that everything else is just improving just fine :)

[bfarber]

I'd like to see better support for memcached, i.e. store more info.

What other information would you like to see stored exactly? Topics and profiles are the most used pages in IPB, and we couldn't store every member or topic in memcache - any suggestions?

A setting to change how often time wise to update the views, the current one isn't really simple unless you manually edit code.

You can edit the task in the ACP already. :) Tools & Settings -> Task Manager

Better support for multi-server setups (rebuilding the cache on both servers etc) as well as support for slave databases

There's little on the script end needed for this (other than perhaps some upload system enhancements) - we have some sites running multiple servers, including multiple database servers.

Support for innodb with seprate search, this would make the board a lot more stable and scalable.

Care to go into some more detail? Are you referring to something like sphinx?

[marcus]

What other information would you like to see stored exactly? Topics and profiles are the most used pages in IPB, and we couldn't store every member or topic in memcache - any suggestions?

Front page topics, rss, recent topics, the idea of memcached is to see if you can hit memcached first then drop back to the database afaik. To be honest some research would have to be done on it to make it applicable to your entire customer base otherwise it would just be for my specfic usages which makes it a bit commercially pointless. It would also help if their was some documentation on what was cached now? I assume it's things like image paths and the likes? Maybee go have a look at the livejournal code, they do say you can implement their setup on a single server :)

Doh! Maybee alter the help instructions where you configure that to be live to point to that? Minor I know but you wouldn't go looking when it has a time specfied on the help text... Unless thats a left over from my board upgrades haha!

There's little on the script end needed for this (other than perhaps some upload system enhancements) - we have some sites running multiple servers, including multiple database servers.

Care to go into some more detail? Are you referring to something like sphinx?

Yeah I know sphinx would be a pain due to having to maintain a search engine as well, maybee i'll just have to wait on a new mysql engine.

Implement the cache/nocache sql statements for mysql based on cachability, will help mysql perfomance depending on how many are trying to hit the cache now and can't be done.

As far as multi-server setups go:-

Auto-rebuild file (skin) cache's on all the servers after a config update would be nice (such as image location)

Look at supporting something like http://danga.com/mogilefs/ for the multi-servers file systems for uploads/cache's etc

Support for mysql slaves without having to hack the code.. if not done already and i'm just blind

Support (if not already) for multi-master for the more no fear people.

Releasing the index's you did in 2.3 so people with earlier versions can apply them while they are waiting, I'm sure index's would help regardless of the version?

Just some thoughts :)

[marcus]

Brandon? :)

[bfarber]

Front page topics, rss, recent topics, the idea of memcached is to see if you can hit memcached first then drop back to the database afaik. To be honest some research would have to be done on it to make it applicable to your entire customer base otherwise it would just be for my specfic usages which makes it a bit commercially pointless. It would also help if their was some documentation on what was cached now? I assume it's things like image paths and the likes? Maybee go have a look at the livejournal code, they do say you can implement their setup on a single server :)

Currently, the data in ibf_skin_sets and ibf_cache_store (which contains all the forum, group, and settings data for example) is stored in alt caches.

It's difficult to try to cache the front page - as soon as someone replies to a topic, or posts a new topic, or a mod edits a topic title, etc. and so on the cache would have to be updated. If we are updating the cache too consistently, you start to lose the benefit of using it. Remembering of course that we support more than just memcache, and some of the others have more drastic locking issues.

Yeah I know sphinx would be a pain due to having to maintain a search engine as well, maybee i'll just have to wait on a new mysql engine.

There is a mod available that allows sphinx support - I just don't think it is viable to support by default.

Implement the cache/nocache sql statements for mysql based on cachability, will help mysql perfomance depending on how many are trying to hit the cache now and can't be done.

I don't think there's too much mysql downtime trying to hit a cache, seeing it doesn't exist, and then pulling the current data. It is something that can be profiled (I have the tools for it) but in my testing it was extremely negligble - there are other areas that deserve more attention.

As far as multi-server setups go:-

Auto-rebuild file (skin) cache's on all the servers after a config update would be nice (such as image location)

Look at supporting something like

http://danga.com/mogilefs/

for the multi-servers file systems for uploads/cache's etc

Support for mysql slaves without having to hack the code.. if not done already and i'm just blind

Support (if not already) for multi-master for the more no fear people.

Releasing the index's you did in 2.3 so people with earlier versions can apply them while they are waiting, I'm sure index's would help regardless of the version?

Just some thoughts :)

Some of this stuff is really better on the server end - like the mysql master/slave setups. We have some set up like that, and it's always done in mysql, not in IPB.

[marcus]

Hi,

Thank you for your reponses, howerver when you can see other firms have already implemented these suggestions it's a bit strange that you'd push back against cutting edge stuff that can really improve your code base for what will be a growing number of clients.

//    ****** SLAVE DATABASE CONFIGURATION ****** 
    //    If you have multiple database backends, this is the information for your slave 
    //    server. If you are not 100% sure you need to fill in this information, 
    //    do not change any of the values here.

 _Datastore_Memcached - for using a Memcache server

Even simple stuff like running search's against slaves so they can switch to innodb (no need for sphinx, and yes you can run two mysql instances on the same machine to stop locking, with a mysql slave only on the needed tables in my... never mind...). You

[bfarber]

I understand your site is growing, and as such your needs are changing. However as a business, we make forum software. Our responsibilities do end at a point.

Now, don't misread that. We are NOT against making changes that will benefit larger sites. Hence why we started the integration options with alternate cache stores in the first place. It's just that a lot of what you are talking about is done on the server end. There may be tweaks and minor changes possible within IPB, but by and large the database slaving and such are usually done via mysql replication, and handled at the mysql (not software) level.

None of this is ignored, and you should not be taking my responses as "burying my head in the sand" or "ignoring your requests" because it's neither. It's also just not a matter of "oh sure we'll do that, expect it in the next release".

[marcus]

I understand your site is growing, and as such your needs are changing. However as a business, we make forum software. Our responsibilities do end at a point.

Now, don't misread that. We are NOT against making changes that will benefit larger sites. Hence why we started the integration options with alternate cache stores in the first place. It's just that a lot of what you are talking about is done on the server end. There may be tweaks and minor changes possible within IPB, but by and large the database slaving and such are usually done via mysql replication, and handled at the mysql (not software) level.

None of this is ignored, and you should not be taking my responses as "burying my head in the sand" or "ignoring your requests" because it's neither. It's also just not a matter of "oh sure we'll do that, expect it in the next release".

Hi,

Thats a fair statement, however changing the search to a slave sql server is a software issue not a server issue. I'm not asking you to setup the slaves or do the server side fixing, i'm saying some elements could be done with giving the option of splitting them up. Site specific hacks fair enough nothing you can do about those. However being able to set all search reads for example to a slave server is something i'd imagine someone like you could put into the code in no time. Thats just one example, i understand that some of my other requests are more "involved".

As another option set up a sub-company for larger customers with money to spend to maintain site specfic hacks and help with growing. I've seen people mention "doing xyz for larger customer", however it seems no matter how much I offer I can't get this type of service. When your pusing 2 million hits a day+ life becomes complex :)

thanks
Mark

p.s. this new skin or board changes seems a lot more reponsive :)

[bfarber]

There are people, myself included, who do custom services in their spare time. I know of a few that could handle helping you with something like that. IPS itself is just not taking on the work right now because we're focusing our efforts on our software products themselves.

I tested Sphinx on one of our larger sites yesterday (a site we host having resource issues) and I'd say if we're looking or huge resource improvements some sort of Sphinx support would be great. Problem is, when we get into some of the better resource saving options like this, it adds a lot more confusion for customers who don't really know how to setup and configure these things, and anything we add to the software of course we have to support. That's where some issues arise from as well.

[.John.]

Excuse me for being a deer in the headlights here, but what is Sphinx? I have a VERY large site with 200,000 users, 115,000 posts, and 750+ online at all time...and may be interested in looking for better resource improvements. The site is blazing fast since I upgraded to Dual Xeon w/ 4GB of RAM but would be interested in learning more.

[Keith J. Kacin]

More info:
http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

[bfarber]

http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

http://mods.invisionize.com/db/index.php/f/7203

[.John.]

That shows you how to use Sphinx for searching, anyway I can use Sphinx for things like the Member List and a Custom Component involving the Member List? I don't have much lag right now with searching, only 115,000 posts - but the Member List and the Component involving the Member List does lag quite a bit...

[bfarber]

If you knew what you were doing you could use it for anything really

[.John.]

If you knew what you were doing you could use it for anything really

Well do you know what you are doing? :P

[bfarber]

With the modification I linked it replaces the search. Yes I know what it's doing. :P

I was just pointing out that at this point for you to do something like that it would be a custom modification, thus up to you, thus requiring you to know how to do it. If you know what you are doing, you can use it for any queries really.

[.John.]

I know it requires a custom modification, that's why I was asking if you knew how to do it - because I want it more than just search :P

You are away right now, but maybe I'll IM you sometime later...

[marcus]

Would it be true to say most customers are mysq >4 now?

If so could you replace count(*) with SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS, saves running the count and the sql as well as fixing it for anyone whose gone onto innodb. I know myiasm stores the values so it's quite quick but it'll be kinda future proofing :P Shoot me if i talking nonesense.

[bfarber]

It's quite probably everyone using mysql are using > 4, however that doesn't take into account MSSQL and/or Oracle.

We may abstract the function in a future version so that we can take this into usage, but it's not a simple change just yet.

[W13]

I've replaced the default search with Google search, and it has reduced load considerably on my (higher traffic) forums.

The reason I didn't consider Sphinx is because I'm not sure if it'll be able to do the "Find Members Posts" and "Find Members Topics" and "Find all topics I posted in" etc. Is it like a Google search or does it just 'make the search better' by retaining all the features?

[bfarber]

It retains all the features, it only replaces the actual post/topic title searching method, not the functionality.

[Keigirock]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your excellent job! I do really think that your forum is the best one in the market. And I hope you'll continue to improve it.

May I give some suggestions for future 2.3? :

1) In memberlist: delete white frame of personal photos. Why do not use this white frame to enlarge photos. Because, currently you can not distinguish any photo in Memberlist :blink:

2) In posting: I would like to apply to all my community members the option with Rich-texte editing. I could do it for full editing (+quickedit), but not for fast reply. Mostly, it's for people who are not friendly with PCs :rolleyes:

3) In calendar: possibility to upload the file within the calendar event. It will improve (IMHO) professional side of your forum. When somebody make an event, he would like to share presentation of this event.

4) In posting: to be able to copy-paste an image without any uploading.

5) In posting: to be able make very simple table

6) In topic's option (email, print, download): to have notification option. I would like to notify some members about this topic, or may be just my friends.

7) In ACP: to be able to disable some member's profiles lines like yahoo, iam, statistic. Too much non-important (for me :ph34r: ) information on profile

8) In memberlist: to be able to specify how many members to view by default on memberlist page. Because when you have more than 200 members you'd like to see them by 60 or even more.

I have some suggestions for IP Blog, but I will put them in IPBlog section.

Thank you again
Ilias

[Keigirock]

I forgot point 9 and 10

9) in members profile: to have one photo and not both avatar and personal photo. May be it's quite largely used by others, but in our forum it's additional non-used function (probably do not delete this funciton, but make it optional).

10) In search function: If do not respect BIG LETTERS and little letters in the word, IPB will not be able to find it. It's very pitty, because we're not always sure if it's "voyage" or "Voyage"

[marcus]

Some of those suggestions are outside the scope of whats currently possible, such as copy and pasting an image, you'd need java or similar which would be a big issue for ipb since their core is php.mysql

6: yeah you could have a web 2.0 style dig this/e-mail to friend but again this is a simple mod
7: you can do yourself
8: simple code change
10: having case sensitive search is beyond the scope of their forum software, maybee sphix will support case sensitive search's if you ask them

I don't use the rest so can't really comment.