Stilly

The fun part, I was able to isolate the issue in the code, and fix it on mobile.

Not so fun part, it stretches everything out on desktop.

I don't drink / get paid enough for this job

Desktop looks like it should:

Mobile...not so much:

I'll see if there's anything I can do as far as the margins go there, but it's still a bit wonky...

Gonna upload this one just to see how it looks.

(Happy Graduation!)

Personally, I recommend something that would fit in a smallish square that would be recognizable when scaled down.

I know there's a push for a new logo, but the old one was perfect in that regard.

I was going to make a longer post but the internet crapped out.

The current image is an odd aspect ratio, and its trying to fit it all in a small space (giggity). The old image was a square, so it scaled properly.

Totally hacked the transparency, and another background would totally expose how much of a hackjob it really was.

I would have to clean the hell out of it for it to work properly. It's all smoke and mirrors right now.

Took ASC's image and tore it apart. Split it into elements (Background and Logo). Background stretches forever, logo sits on top. Not the greatest for mobile, buuuuuuuut it looks pretty good.

Background stretches FOREVER:

Well, that was a fun ride. Glad I got Bojack before the company destroyed itself.

Honestly though, why would they think going public would be that great of an idea? They've cornered the market of little collectible things...and...where do you really go from there? How much more growth could there possibly be?

From what I've heard, it's completely bombing on Steam. It's sitting at Mixed with 1/3 of the reviews being severely negative

Throwing my vote in with Ax on this one. +1 to Sensible Chuckle

You should be able to now, Ax. Right now it's just set to DD's and Admins. Once I work out a sane size for cover photo uploads, I'll open it up to everyone else.

Cover Photo? I can change mine.

I can...change yours too...hm. I need a second account so I can see stuff from non-admin side

THAT BEING SAID, I say no to neg. weighted things and just keep them at +1 or +0

I...didn't realize that there's a limit. Maybe it's because I have admin privileges for tech reasons, but I've been passing them out all willy nilly...

I'm sorry :(

EDIT: Got it, fuck, gotta redo a lotta shit. It's cool, it's cool

Would you look at that...already up to almost $20 / month after fees. It's working!

And in today's tech support news:

I'm editing a lot of posts.

Ok, to clarify, whenever I come across a post that has a malformed youtube embed (or whatever else), I'm fixing it. All I'm doing is copying the offending code and pasting it where it should go. If this angers anyone, I'll stop, and I understand completely. Obviously, I can't sift through 400k+ posts, so I'm just doing them as I see them, and usually only on the most recent page of a thread.

In the event that I fix a post, I will give a reason for editing at the bottom (I think everyone can see that) that'll usually say something like "Fixed video".

Got this one today, loving it so far!

Currently Spinning: Beck - Colors pic.twitter.com/5inoHjtvdm

— STILL. BORED. (@whotookthisname) October 25, 2017

Currently Spinning: King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King (An Observation By King Crimson) pic.twitter.com/KWxBQR94kE

— STILL. BORED. (@whotookthisname) October 24, 2017

Ok, so here's my write up on everything that's going on.

The Problem

We're too big for our britches here, ultimately. The current host requires that the database stays below 750mb. This is for one main reason (and several sub reasons):

• We are on a shared server.
  • Hondo's is hosted on a machine with (likely) several other sites. Whatever operations we're running must take a "fair" amount of resources.
    • I could get into deep theory here, but basically, to do things concurrently, the server has to split each task into "chunks" and process them one after the other. If we have too many "chunks", or too many that are a higher priority, things get tough for the other people on the server.
    • If we're running too many high priority tasks, we dominate the server, and the hosting company starts shutting stuff down.
  • Large databases cause problems (in general):
    • Everything you do on here is a query to the database (sometimes more than one at a time). If you post something, it queries the database to figure out where to put the post (topic, forum, etc.), and all the other information associated with it (author, time, etc).
    • Just because something was done recently (for example, this post, when I'm done, will be the most recent post on the forum), doesn't mean it's able to found immediately by the query (it would likely return all the other posts in this topic first).
    • So, all posts and users are essentially related to each other in some form or fashion. The larger the database gets, the longer it takes to get from Point A to Point B
  • Traversing the database takes system resources:
    • I think you can see where I'm going here. The longer it takes to get from Point A to Point B, the more processing power it uses. Of course, because everything works this way for us, that's a fairly high priority task and...causes everything else to slow down for everyone else.

Now, the fun part. Remember how I said the limit is 750mb? Currently we're sitting at 2,622.18mb. That's...that's a pretty big problem. To be fair, part of that is as a result of the upgrade. The forum software makes a copy of several of the tables within the database to act as backups in the event that something goes wrong. For whatever reason (probably because it's hard for the software to tell if something went wrong), it retains those backups after the upgrade is complete.

Even if we deleted those backups (which is not a problem), it really only saves us about 700mb or so, which isn't anywhere close to what we need to be. Ideally, we could save another ~400mb by deleting the search cache table, but that would all but disable the fancy new search function, which would be stupid because that STILL wouldn't bring us below the limit.

I only recently gained access to the cPanel, so I don't know how long this has been a problem, but I would venture to guess that it has been for a while now. I have no idea why they are just now bitching about it, the database just doesn't go over the limit by that much overnight.

The Solution?

Honestly, I'm not sure outside of what Nick has suggested. This is one of those that you can throw money at and fix, but I'm not sure how feasible that is in the long run. Another option is making an offline archive of old posts, but without starting fresh, it really wouldn't come close to fully fixing the problem, which kind of defeats the purpose.

The solution to this one is less technical than I'm used to.

Other Notes

• Upgrades to the software are, generally, a good thing. Keep out the baddies and get new features here and there.
• A 5gb file limit might seem small, but there was easily 600mb of crap just sitting around the server that I was already able to clean out (including a database backup from 2014).
• I have started a poll suggesting that a Hondo's Patreon be started to handle monthly donations directly to Nick. I would gladly help throw in some if I could just set it up and forget about it.

Ok, so I'm throwing my suggestion in the hat here. This is an idea I had had to help keep the lights on and keep Nick from going hungry trying to keep this place alive.

I think a lot of the issues with funding and such could be solved, or at the very least made easier to handle, by starting a Patreon for Hondo's. I'm not trying to directly counter Nick's current adopt-a-month idea, I just want to see what people think.

Alls I'm saying is that I'm not the most active member, and I would gladly throw at least $5 or so in a month just to help do my part. I don't believe I'm alone in this, and I think it's ultimately better/easier/whathaveyou than quarterly or monthly donation drives.

Full disclosure: I have absolutely nothing to gain from this outside of this place staying open. I know this place is important to a lot of people and has been for years. Maybe this idea won't work, and that's okay. I just want to be able to easily toss money at the problems on a monthly basis where I can just set it and forget it.

I might be wrong, and people might be against it, and that's cool. I know Nick is, and that's cool, too. Hopefully, if I'm right, a certain someone might be able to take a little of the stress of himself. Thanks everyone!

It should be noted that when all the backups (old stuff leftover from the last version of the board) are removed, the database is still over the limit, but not any larger than it appears it was before the upgrade. The upgrade actually compressed a bunch of stuff, it's still just a huge amount of data. Almost 500k posts takes up a little bit of room. I'll do a full write up of the technical side of things in a bit.