To those concerned about server problems

[afroakuma]

Here is the temporary solution, which you may subscribe to as you choose:

An external blog has been established at http://gitpstatus.blogspot.com/, whose authors will monitor and report on the current status and functionality of the boards. The topmost post will reflect the latest correct information, and the blog's authors will be reporting from time zones around the globe to keep it current.

This minority of active forumgoers checking the server status intermittently will hopefully reduce bandwidth demands from users loading and reloading the code and images needed to check on the forums during downtime. This will also improve server functionality for readers of the two currently hosted webcomics, Order of the Stick and Erfworld.

The blog itself does not accept post comments, does not infringe on the copyright of Rich Burlew and does not support advertisements, discuss external topics or otherwise take advantage of your participation.

It is hoped that this solution will be of mutual benefit to us all.

If you wish to contribute, please send me a private message with your email address and time zone.

Thank you all,

afroakuma

[afroakuma]

A small bump here:

So far I have a few volunteers posting updates, but more from Europe and Asia/Australia would be quite a help in terms of coverage.

[Llama231]

How exactly does this work?

[afroakuma]

Well, quite simply, anyone who reads this and remembers to look to the blog instead of continuing to pelt the site with requests when the forums are down will be lowering the number of calls to the server by at least 1.

From what I understand from moderator posts, the site's issue is not bandwidth, it's the number of requests the server has to handle for new comic views, forum browsing, even loading the screen where they tell you to go away because they took the forum down.

Now, at this moment slightly over 100 people have viewed the main post. If one out of every ten of them checks the blog instead of the site when they know the forum is down, then that's 10 less calls to the server. Granted, one of the blog reporters has probably checked three times, so let's call that 7.

Suppose those ten users would have checked back in an hour. The blog reporters themselves are probably going to space out the times they check, so over the course of those two hours, it'll probably be three checks issued from the blog against twenty from those ten users. 17.

Now, the forums rarely go down for two hours... it's usually closer to 10. Nobody sticks around for 10 hours, but maybe they had five hours to try. 5 attempts over 10 users, and let's say six checks from the blog. 44.

It's not much, but it's something, and it does no harm. If enough people give it a go, then new comics will be more accessible and (hopefully) the forums will bounce back sooner.

[Llama231]

So, basically, if the forums are down, go to the blog?

[afroakuma]

Rather than keep checking back, yes.

[Llama231]

Ironically the boards went down for a little or something as I was trying to post the previous message:smallbiggrin:...

[RS14]

This seems worthwhile. I'll try to remember.

You might want to post something about this in FB. I know I don't typically check board and site issues unless I've got an issue to report, or as now, I'm avoiding work.

[afroakuma]

Well, we've just cleared the first forum outage, and I think it went very well as the first proof-of-concept test.

We issued six server checks, the last of which was the notice of forum recovery. We also picked up a couple of followers.

I don't know what sort of impact it had here in terms of numbers, though I'm guessing it was terribly minor. I'll ask a mod about posting this in FB; I don't know how they'd regard what would essentially be a duplicate thread in a separate board...

For those of you who did look at the status blog instead of coming back here time and again today, a big thank you! :smallbiggrin:

[Thane of Fife]

I found it quite helpful, personally - kudos to whomever came up with it.

[afroakuma]

Well, that's good to hear. I hope word spreads... we have a lot more room for followers and contributors both!

[Maelstrom]

Very cool idea -- question is, how do I contribute? I'm in GMT+1 these days...

[afroakuma]

Send me a PM with your email address and I can add you to the reporting list.

[Dallas-Dakota]

But....Your location says CA...

Also, it might be a good idea to limit the contributors.
As we do want a signifcant larger ratio of blog checkers then contributers.
Otherwise all contributors will check and it would be quite ....useless.


Also a list of who is who and what timezone might be handy.
Gamer Hippie o' Death = DD the Cookiemonster = GMT +1
Afroakuma = Afroakuma = ???
Eldariel = ??? = ???
Stoopidtallkid=???=??
Pink=???=???

[afroakuma]

There's a lovely little footer on the blog that shows which time zones are being reported from (and which ones will never be reported from, in all likelihood).

I don't know what Pink's time zone is; Stoopidtallkid reports from UTC-5 (Eastern Time), I report from UTC-4 (Atlantic Time), Eldariel reports from UTC+2 (Eastern European Time).

I'd love to get some people from other time zones on board, just to give us more coverage. I know we have a substantial Australian user base.

[Supagoof]

Why not take it one step further? Simply tell everyone check the blog first to see if the forums are up before coming here to see if they are down then checking when they return.

That forces the majority of inquiry to hit the blog first, then it would only be contributers to the blog putting a majority of calls to the server when the forums are down. A simple change, but may get a few more % of calls off the forum outages.

Love the idea. Brilliant really. Adding the blog to my favorites now.

[afroakuma]

Why not take it one step further? Simply tell everyone check the blog first to see if the forums are up before coming here to see if they are down then checking when they return.

That forces the majority of inquiry to hit the blog first, then it would only be contributers to the blog putting a majority of calls to the server when the forums are down. A simple change, but may get a few more % of calls off the forum outages.

Love the idea. Brilliant really. Adding the blog to my favorites now.

While I'd love if people did that, I absolutely don't want to push. And obviously, there will always be a segment of the population that forgets (which is fine) and a segment that doesn't care and will ignore it and laugh at those who participate (not so great).

Right now, we have this friendly post here in Board Issues; it's been suggested I bring it up in Friendly Banter, and I'm considering doing so. It's also there in my sig.

Voluntary participation, following (we have nine currently) and word-of-mouth will hopefully build a base of people that do exactly that - check for the latest update before coming to the boards.

[afroakuma]

Well, we had our second forum outage recently, and once again it was reported on in a timely manner. Thanks to all involved.

We still have capacity for more input, if anyone else would like to chip in, and more people checking the server blog will be beneficial to us all.