wilkes

As promised, I'm posting a little information about the improvements in the forum program for you techies.
 
As you might imagine, there's a bit of difference in moderating a site that has 20 visitors a day, versus one with as many as 400 accesses per second! LOL  I'm starting to become a pro at optimizing databases, but in spite of everything, we've still been having speed issues at night, when the traffic is the heaviest.
 
I've upgraded the primary server to Dual Xeon 3.8GHz CPUs and 4GB of RAM. This server is now dedicated to running GoWilkes.
 
The databases, though, are on a completely separate server. It, too, has Dual Xeon processors, but they are only 2.8GHz with 2GB of RAM (I can always upgrade later, if necessary).
 
The major change is in the code, though. Instead of using a single database, the program is now utilizing 3 different database languages: MySQL, Intersystems Cache, and an open source Linux format that I would rather not mention by name. Each time you make a post, it is saved in all 3 databases. When you view a post, the program does a quick scan to see which one has the least usage, and retrieves data from there.
 
This does slow down the post process just a hair, but it speeds up the viewing process significantly. And since this is where the server was taking the biggest hit, I'm willing to add an extra 0.5 second to the post benchmark.
 
If this works out well, I will be converting the other programs of the site to work the same way.
 
I expect a few bugs and glitches along the way, so if you see ANYTHING that needs to be fixed, please PM me, or reply to the "Bugs" thread in the Community Voice.