Overall, the new CelticsBlog VPS is performing much better than our former BlueHost server account but still, it is clearly inadequate for our needs. Because of that, I've already started the process of moving us to a dedicated server. That process will be painless. Unfortunately, it is going to take three more days for that setup to be completed so we won't have it until around July 1st. We'll survive this day, but it isn't going to be easy.
The one thing that can help us today is if all of you visiting CelticsBlog today will slow down your activity around here. Take your time reading, posting and browsing around the website. I realize all of our adrenaline systems are working overtime today, but it is the frantic pace of activity around here that is forcing me to shutdown the site temporarily at times. So, slow down.
We asked people to slow down their clicking around the site on Lottery day this last May. It really helped us stay online more and also have more visitors here. So, slow down, take a deep breath and cut down the rapidity of your browsing around here in half. It is not going to kill you and it will help this site stay online more today. If CelticsBlog does go offline, wait one minute before trying to access the site. Slow down!
A short while ago, I suspended CB and noticed that our cpu usage remained at over 26% even though people could not access the site. That is because many of you maniacs were hammering our site link and/or doing page refreshes several times a second. This type of activity only hurts us. Slow down! Take your time. You can do more to help CelticsBlog stay online today than anything we can do.
Many of you already know to slow down on busy days like this although some of you may have forgotten. We've also had 400 or more new registrants on CelticsBlog since Lottery day that may not realize how adversely heavy activity during these busy times affects CelticsBlog. That's more new members than we've seen since this past January. So Newbies and Veterans...slow down!
Here's a little note about how many people are online over here. You see those numbers in the left column that tell you how many people are visiting CelticsBlog and the ones in the forums that tell you how many are in there? Forget about them. I have performance enhancing caching schemes running on this site that skews those numbers dramatically. More than likely, if you see 500 to 600 people online...or however many, there is probably at least twice that number here if not more way more. So, slow down.
With that many folks, here's what happens. Every time one of you visits the homepage or clicks to any other page or page function on CB, anywhere from 20 to 25 mySQL database queries are generated. That is actually quite good for a completely dynamic website like CelticsBlog that runs so many services and has so much interactivity possible. The problem is though, that when many people are on average clicking new links every second, or few seconds, you generate hundreds of thousands of sql queries per second and millions per minute. Our VPS service simply can't handle that level of activity without threatening to crash the server. So, slow down.
I've already had to shut this place down ten times in the last three hours. I'll do it all day if I have too. I have no choice. When people are sending millions of sql queries to the server in a minute's time, it threatens to crash the whole machine and take down the other websites on the VPS server as well. I can't allow that to happen. Clearly, many of you are just frantic today. I don't blame you for that, but unless you slow down, we are going to be offline quite a bit today. So, slow down.
We may be offline a lot anyway. No doubt this day is going to produce record numbers for visitation at CB. I'm doing everything I can to optimize the site for performance based on what I'm seeing. I've already implemented one tuning adjustment and will be adding some mySQL query caching as soon as I can make time to determine the proper parameters for it. I'll do my best to keep CB online as much as possible and minimize downtime, but I need additional help and the only place that can come from is you. So, slow down.
Like I said, we'll survive this day and in a few days, we'll be on a new dedicated server where we can rock like never before. At that point, the greatest blog in the sports universe, is just going to get better and I can hardly wait. Meanwhile, if we all pull together as a community and do what we can to help CB stay online today, we'll make this particularly stressful day somewhat more tolerable. All we need to do is...slow down.
I'm not going anywhere. I stocked up on food, coffee, tea, kool-aid and beer yesterday. I'm pretty much glued to the server and the website until the wee hours of tomorrow morning. The only time I'm leaving is during these 2 to 4 minute shutdowns. During those times this morning, I've managed to fix two cups of espresso, clean up, brushed my teeth, get dressed and use the bathroom twice. During the next inevitable shutdown I am going to take out the trash. During the ones after that, I'm going to be trying to catch up on CelticsBlog email I've gotten. Otherwise, I'm right here with you as will the rest of the CB staff. Of course, we'll all be slowing down our activity around here.
So CelticsBloggers...let's rock! Let's just rock more slowly than usual though. By doing so, we'll all be able to make our experience around here more enjoyable today. All we need to do is, you guessed it...slow down. Here's a toast to a good Draft Day for us all. Go C's!
Did I mention my request for everyone to please slow down?
Love,
Bob