Here is the deal:

We realise the issues with the forum – topics are missing their posts and profile histories are missing/ corrupted/ out to lunch.

You can use the forum freely for new posts, as it’s working fine for that.

The search is also corrupted. There’s always Google SiteSearch.

Tom1 (not me, other more database based Tom) is working on restoring all the data fully. Yes we do back up on a very regular basis. But a ‘broken’ database table requires work on it, and it’s a HUGE table. Then it will have to be merged with all the posts that have been happening post crash. And probably a whole load of other things that mere mortals, including myself, never consider.

Rest assured we’re doing our best to resume normal service as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

_______________________________________________

Every now and then things break. In this case the database table holding all the forum posts broke. Tom1 is fixing it.

Singletrack is an incredibly popular website, in the past 2 years there have been over 2.2 million posts with nearing 3000 posts per day.

We have just bought a new, more powerful, server which we will add to the setup. Therefore data load will be spread across more servers. This will take some time, but it is currently in progress.

The uptime of singletrackworld is actually very, very good. In fact, in the last two years, we have had less downtime than Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

_______________________________________________

P.S.

Earlier comparisons to Facebook et al was said somewhat ‘Superbe! Magnifique!’ (with his tongue in his cheek). What I was trying to highlight was the fact that whoever you are, your website will experience some downtime at some points in its existence. While STW does not compare to the aforementioned traffic levels, in comparison to the average website it is huge traffic.

Tom – Administrator
We had a database crash earlier which resulted in some inconsistencies in the forum table. Things will sometimes appear a bit weird today, until we straighten out the data. The database will be unavailable again for a short time later, but we’ll try and schedule that for off-peak hours. All the posts (well, perhaps almost all) should be back tomorrow.

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/were-have-my-postings-gone#post-2156429

I’m sure it’ll be fine in the end. Thanks for the hard work fixing it. 🙂

£20 says no-one will realise this post is even here as everyone seems to miss the stickies. 8)

no £20 for Jamie.

Bugger 🙁

Hope you get it sorted out soon 🙂

Why buy new servers? Why not actually pay a decent hosting company to host your site for you. We use Rackspace for all our client accounts and it takes all server problems away, have continual backups, 24/7 technical support etc. Also if someone breaks in, there isn’t a box for them to walk out with.

For a mini-server that currently holds around 60 sites, we pay £500 a month to Rackspace. I am sure it will be much less if you have smaller needs.

Just a thought mind…

When I say “buy” we hire them from a perfectly decent hosting company. The problem isn’t so much the server, but the high read/write to the database. The new server will be running a different Apache configuration that is more suited to this high load, and videos served from the site will be on a dedicated server therefore reducing the load on the main site.

Just stick the vids on youtube? Or can you not do that as a commercial entity?

Tom, when your name was TomDB I thought you were calling yourself ‘database Tom’. Didn’t realise it was your name 🙂

so did I

Just stick the vids on youtube? Or can you not do that as a commercial entity?

Yes you can. Or Vimeo.

Tom doesn’t quite live upto the name, I was expecting to meet the fifth Musketeer, a dandy swordsman, all frilly shirt and feathered hat. What a disappointment, he was wearing the tights tho. 😀

less downtime than Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Hardly good examples.

Maybe you should have had the site ‘redesigned’ for more than £600…

Just stick the vids on youtube? Or can you not do that as a commercial entity?

Some of the videos are premier-only, which you can’t do on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

less downtime than Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.
Hardly good examples.

Maybe you should have had the site ‘redesigned’ for more than £600…

You are so right, you site is a much better example of what can be done………

Do people actually believe that STW is hosted on a wonky computer in ST HQ?

You are so right, you site is a much better example of what can be done………

Maybe I should pay to get it done, seeing as I’m a software engineer and not a designer. On the other hand, maybe I’ll leave it as it is because I don’t care.

but the high read/write to the database.

Stop comparing yourself to Facebook and start looking at some of their tech. If this is a problem, you need memcache.

Do people actually believe that STW is hosted on a wonky computer in ST HQ?

Don’t be silly. Where would they keep all the hamsters?

We have plenty of hamster space..

🙂

Any news on when some of the older posts will be back, I would love to know what the answer was to a question I asked 😆

what’s a server?

thought all this lot was all done by electrickery?

best get back to ploughing my field

Singletrack is an incredibly popular website, in the past 2 years there have been over 2.2 million posts with nearing 3000 posts per day.

3000 posts/day isn’t exactly massively high traffic, that’s what – 10 posts a minute, peak? 20?

I’d be looking into better hamster feed, time to move up to the quality organic stuff maybe…

I’d be looking into better hamster feed, time to move up to the quality organic stuff maybe…

Not sure that would help:

Come on STW!!! I’d like to see my posts from the last two weeks please!!!!!!!

Aha – question answered. well not the question I posted that i want the answer to…but the answer to why I can’t read the answer…oh you know what I mean!

Could we have working lists of replies in profiles? Do STW even know that this is broken?

[And as for restoring the old posts – I’ve got a feeling that STW have just discovered why you always need to test your backup procedures by doing a restore….]

3000 posts/day isn’t exactly massively high traffic, that’s what – 10 posts a minute, peak? 20?
I’d be looking into better hamster feed, time to move up to the quality organic stuff maybe…

No, it’s not, but not all traffic is a forum “write”.

Could we have working lists of replies in profiles? Do STW even know that this is broken?

Yes.

Here is the deal:

We realise the issues with the forum – topics are missing their posts and profile histories are missing/ corrupted/ out to lunch.

You can use the forum freely for new posts, as it’s working fine for that.

The search is also corrupted. There’s always Google SiteSearch.

Tom1 (not me, other more database based Tom) is working on restoring all the data fully. Yes we do back up on a very regular basis. But a ‘broken’ database table requires work on it, and it’s a HUGE table. Then it will have to be merged with all the posts that have been happening post crash. And probably a whole load of other things that mere mortals, including myself, never consider.

Rest assured we’re doing our best to resume normal service as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

P.S.

Earlier comparisons to Facebook et al was said somewhat ‘Superbe! Magnifique!’ (with his tongue in his cheek). What I was trying to highlight was the fact that whoever you are, your website will experience some downtime at some points in its existence. While STW does not compare to the aforementioned traffic levels, in comparison to the average website it is huge traffic.

Chill, not really a problem. You’re doing a great job. 😉

I’m with the Don on this one. STW is online, I can still post. Happy Days.

Maybe it’s just that the content of my old posts isn’t really worth reminiscing over…

Tom, I’m serious about memcache, I developed and ran a set of online services that were leagues ahead in terms of the traffic you are doing. memcache makes a massive difference to read intensive sites by taking load off the database and is well worth investigating, it is pretty straightforward to implement as well.