marklcfc Posted January 11, 2023 Author Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) See the large spike in activity compared to normal, any ideas how I can cope with that now guest page cache has been removed? It's adding more pressure onto the server as expected during this sort of moment to the point where it crashes and maxes out (this is a powerful server too) Edited January 11, 2023 by marklcfc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Calvert Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) Instead of going the cloudflare route, you could look at using a local caching solution such as nginx. However you’re going to have to write you caching rules yourself. That would give you precise control over settings but it’s more work. Personally I would just enable base page caching in CF and lock guests to a default theme. Otherwise you’re just making more work for yourself. Edited January 11, 2023 by Randy Calvert teraßyte 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted January 11, 2023 Author Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) Is base page caching what I had previously on this post? It was no good as the site wasn't updating for guests Edited January 11, 2023 by marklcfc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dll Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 It does update, it just caches for 5-15 minutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted January 11, 2023 Author Share Posted January 11, 2023 8 minutes ago, Dll said: It does update, it just caches for 5-15 minutes. Too long for me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dll Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) You can change it in clouudflare if you must. But, unless you have a specific reason to not have it set to that, other than thinking it's too long, perhaps just try it and see how it goes. In our experience it's been fine and no user has complained. Edited January 11, 2023 by Dll Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opentype Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 It sounds like you asking for the impossible. You want a cache to save you under high load, but you also don’t want to set the cache to cache times, where it could actually significantly reduce the load. If you can’t compromise on the cache, you probably have to rethink your server setup and move to a setup with load balancing options. A one-server setup, powerful or not, will have its limits. Dll 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted January 11, 2023 Author Share Posted January 11, 2023 7 minutes ago, Dll said: You can change it in clouudflare if you must. But, unless you have a specific reason to not have it set to that, other than thinking it's too long, perhaps just try it and see how it goes. In our experience it's been fine and no user has complained. I tried it but my site was always 10-15 minutes behind for guests, during a busy time I have a live topic that is constantly updating - if the guests are 10-15 minutes behind its a big problem and makes the site almost pointless to visit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dll Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) Then as has been mentioned above, perhaps it's time for you to upgrade to load balanced servers. Personally though, I'd recommend testing it with the caching switched on for a period of time and see how your users find it. Ultimately, it's a forum not a chat room and so people tend to read more than just the very latest posts. Edited January 11, 2023 by Dll Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted January 11, 2023 Author Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) 6 minutes ago, Dll said: Then as has been mentioned above, perhaps it's time for you to upgrade to load balanced servers. Personally though, I'd recommend testing it with the caching switched on for a period of time and see how your users find it. Ultimately, it's a forum not a chat room and so people tend to read more than just the very latest posts. I tried it and it was no good, during that busy time of 30 minutes to an hour, 99.9% of visitors will be viewing the one topic where the latest posts need to be available. It worked with guest page caching set as 30 seconds even those it was advised against, it helped the server cope compared to now without it. Whats a load balanced server? Edited January 11, 2023 by marklcfc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Calvert Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) 12 minutes ago, marklcfc said: Whats a load balanced server? It’s having multiple servers with a “traffic cop” that sits in front and directs traffic between the two instances. Edited January 11, 2023 by Randy Calvert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted January 11, 2023 Author Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) 17 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said: It’s having multiple servers with a “traffic cop” that sits in front and directs traffic between the two instances. Sounds like it'd be expensive, not something I need to solve spikes that happen 5/6 times a year at most Edited January 11, 2023 by marklcfc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teraßyte Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 Since you mentioned a live topic, can't you simply add a rule to exclude that specific topic/url and still cache everything else for guests? Randy Calvert 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted January 11, 2023 Author Share Posted January 11, 2023 18 minutes ago, teraßyte said: Since you mentioned a live topic, can't you simply add a rule to exclude that specific topic/url and still cache everything else for guests? It could be an option but don't fancy doing that each time, plus in general I wouldn't want my site to be 10-15 minutes behind for guests even during normal periods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dll Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 (edited) 51 minutes ago, marklcfc said: It could be an option but don't fancy doing that each time, plus in general I wouldn't want my site to be 10-15 minutes behind for guests even during normal periods. Think you're going to need to compromise somewhere. Either by spending more with either more server power/load balancing or with cloudflare so you can change the cache time to something more acceptable for you. Or, you're going to have to accept the default cache time or the fact your site is going to crash when it's busy. Alternatively I suppose you could wait for Leicester to get relegated at the end of the season, then I imagine those busy times may get less frequent 😅 Edited January 11, 2023 by Dll opentype 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted January 26, 2023 Author Share Posted January 26, 2023 @The Old Man any idea if this suggestion would work? https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/469586-feature-deprecations/page/12/#comment-2923940 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Old Man Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 Sorry @marklcfc I missed your post. I had to disable the guest cache on my main sites because I have more than 1 theme available, but am using it on others. I had to refresh my memory but yes I agree, the cache value is a constant, meaning it shouldn't change by design and overides any existing previous value. As they mentioned, IPS sets it (in the .init file) as 900 secs/15 mins, so having this line in the constants.php file acts as an overide. The issue we had, was that that this overide line was there but we didn't know about it and it was set to 0, so nothing was being cached by Cloudflare even though we had set up the suggested Rules (we also had them set to respect the origin's TTL setting and not overide it but remember it was 0 for some reason). After removing it completely it would have the effect of letting IPS' init 900 seconds prevail. So you can indeed set the constant to cache for just 30 seconds if you prefer and Cloudflare allow it that low, personally I think there's no harm in at least a couple of minutes, it would take up to a further 3x-4x the max page load off your server and people sort of know a forum isn't a live instant chat per se. If guests sign in they get to see the latest posts instantly and you get new members. Its win/win. I know though 15 mins might be too long for a live footie match discussion site, but as the others said, you have to accept a compromise, switch to Chatbox or similar, or get it working with revalidation/stale content headers. I noticed that CF have added a section to the Caching Rules where you can optionally overide TTL based on status codes received from the origin server, which could be useful. Chris027 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Old Man Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 I just noticed this part of the CF Rule was causing me problems: If you are logged in as an Admin and then log out, and are not logged in as a Member, you won't get the cached page becasue the IPSSessionAdmin cookie is still in the browser. I deleted the cookie via browser tools and immediately the page cache was working for me. Chris027 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted February 3, 2023 Author Share Posted February 3, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, The Old Man said: I just noticed this part of the CF Rule was causing me problems: If you are logged in as an Admin and then log out, and are not logged in as a Member, you won't get the cached page becasue the IPSSessionAdmin cookie is still in the browser. I deleted the cookie via browser tools and immediately the page cache was working for me. Does it work fine without that line then? Why was it added in any case as surely ips4_member_id does the same thing? I think I'll just use it in extreme circumstances to take the load off the server if I need to. So I'll just keep it as it is (without that admin session id) with 30 seconds set in the constants file Edited February 3, 2023 by marklcfc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Calvert Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 Hint: The only one who is going to have an IPSSessionAdmin cookie are users accessing ACP. (It was not even set until I logged into ACP.) That should hopefully only be about 1% or less. of people accessing your site. That rule will impact people who were logged into ACP, but then logged out of the site afterwards. Also... you can be logged out of the front end of the site without being logged out of the ACP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marklcfc Posted February 3, 2023 Author Share Posted February 3, 2023 I don't tend to log out so I suppose I could just leave that rule in there, if I understand right 🤔 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Old Man Posted February 3, 2023 Share Posted February 3, 2023 There are two logins, so I believe that’s why there are 2 session cookies. You can be logged into just the AdminCP without being logged into the front end as a Member, or be logged into both. From what I’ve read in the past, session cookies where originally supposed to last just the duration of a session, but a few years back the Google devs decided to retain them after the session ends so that you could reopen existing tabs/sessions (a new feature). I’ve seen bug reports for Chrome and Firefox covering this and hence they were marked as intentional. I think there is a browser setting at least in Firefox, on whether to enable or disable this feature I’ll have another look tomorrow. I think this is something just to bear in mind if you are testing a page caching setup, it only effects Admins, but it explains why after I re-enabled the guest page caching that I was seeing dynamic despite the cache control header also being present. 2 hours ago, marklcfc said: So I'll just keep it as it is (without that admin session id) with 30 seconds set in the constants file Yeah, probably easier than using a Transform Rule but that works too. I use one for the non-IPS parts of a site with 1000’s of pages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim M Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 Anytime you test as a guest, I would recommend opening up an incognito/private browser session or using a browser on your computer specifically for that. There will always be related data in your browser, whether that is cache, cookies, local storage, etc... that you will want to have cleared to get a real sense of what a guest is seeing. Just my 2 cents 🙂 . The Old Man, MeMaBlue and Clover13 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Old Man Posted February 5, 2023 Share Posted February 5, 2023 Good point! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeMaBlue Posted February 23, 2023 Share Posted February 23, 2023 hello, I ran my forum at gtmetrics (saw some do that here) and it brings this result. how can I find out if it is related to cloudflare which i am using? In general, besides above question, I am seeking for support because my serveradmin does not have the time to look after that, and I need to give him directions on how to change if there is a change needed... How do I assess the situation and if I need to make improvements , and who can do these for me ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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