Posts by Dani

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After doing some more research, I want to point out some differences with how MyISAM and InnoDB tables are backed up.

If you use MyISAM tables exclusively, you can back up with mysqlhotcopy. It creates files that can easily be dumped back into the database directory to restore the db. However, mysqlhotcopy only stores structure, and not data, of InnoDB tables. Purefusion, I believe this is what happened with you?

mysqldump, however, works for both InnoDB as well as MyISAM tables. It creates an .sql dump that can then be reimported by using the source command.

With both mysqlhotcopy and mysqldump, tables are locked from updates during the actual backup process, so as to ensure that the entire backup is in sync. They can still be read from though. However, this can cause problems with dynamic sites (such as forums) where nearly every page load requires a table of some sort to be updated, even if it's just to update a views counter. Effectively the database is unreachable during the entire backup process. It's therefore recommended, if feasable, to have a second database server on which to backup from.

If you use InnoDB tables exclusively, you can use mysqldump with the --single-transaction flag. Because InnoDB tables support transactions, you can achieve a flawlessly in sync backup of a very large database without having to close the database off to new writes during the upgrade process. Everything is simply in sync to the moment the backup first …

Can you please try cleaning out your PM inbox by clicking on the 'empty folder' link?

So that I won't be accused of failling to mention it, a UI change made today was to surround the list of sticky threads with a thin box to separate them from the regular threads a bit more.

However, in doing so, I came to a realization as to something I want to say in this post: A lot of the small UI changes I make, such as this one, revolve around A/B testing different things and then tracking statistics to see if usability has increased or decreased as a result. In these cases, beta sites just wouldn't work, as I need sample sizes of 1,000,000+ people in order to get an accurate overall representation.

This is very similar to what companies like Google do when they change their logo to be Goooooooooogle instead to see if it gets more/fewer clicks, and change color elements on their site.

However, for all of the bigger things, a summary of what's changed over the course of the month is always mentioned in the monthly newsletters.

There's another thread that was started with someone else experiencing the exact same problem. I will look into it.

Or it's $160 for a one time payment.

XHIBIT, I agree with most of what you've said except for denying access to non-registered members. What incentive is there to sign up if you don't know what types of discussions there are? The curiosity factor might get you more members registering than otherwise would, but I don't think you'll end up getting more posts by forcing registrations.

3 way linking was devised by the link spammers to try to fool the search engines.

Hi CarolLee! Welcome to DaniWeb :)

Copyrights with code can be tricky. How many lines of code constitute something original enough to be copyrighted? Is the actual code copyrighted or the algorithm? If you write a small function that inputs X and outputs Y and you use it in a wide range of very different applications, can someone else own the rights to one entire program that includes just a small function of yours? What if that function is as simple as squaring a number? How could YOU claim rights to that?

Two more periods of downtime today, each about 20 minutes long. So incredibly sorry!

I'm sorry for the database having gone down numerous times today. I keep trying to tweak the settings to ... well, apparently not correct values.

The dropdown menu has not changed for over a year. However, the options above the dotted line change depending upon where in DaniWeb you are. If you're on the homepage, for example, you won't see the option 'search in this forum' because you're not in any particular forum.

Umm ... it's always been there? I didn't change anything.

I think I know what's happening. The ads run in IFRAMEs so that they don't slow down the pages as much. It's very possible the IFRAME windows have your browser's focus instead of the actual webpage.

Try clicking on a blank area of the website to give it focus before scrolling.

That's definitely by all means standard for software. However, when was the last time you saw google.com or digg.com or cnet.com or any other large website for that matter publically release such a document? The answer: they wouldn't.

Every change made is mentioned in either this forum or within Area 51. Changes which affect the majority of our audience I discuss here. When I want to have more elaborate behind-the-scenes discussions, or changes that typically affect only the regular members, are discussed in Area 51.

Sometimes I won't go into a ridiculous amount of detail with each and every thing. But I will definitely post something such as, "I've just redone the look of the blogs page. Tell me what you think!" I might also get into detail such as, "I've just redone the look of the thread pages today by moving the 'Mark as Solved' link towards the bottom of the page near the quickreply instead of the top, because it's more intuitive there, since someone is only going to mark a thread as solved after they've finished reading the thread and saw their question was answered."

We've just upgraded our servers and tweaked MySQL, and this problem should no longer be occurring. Please post in here if you're still experiencing this.

Check your control panel settings.

You're seeing a stripped down WYSIWYG editor because you have JavaScript features disabled. Because the bumble-bee tooltips are gone, you can now safely return to reenabling JavaScript features. The ability to disable all of the JS features is really reserved for people with very slow computers or dial-up connections, so they can still have an enjoyable DaniWeb experience even though it may be lacking in some of the more elaborate (and less necessary) bells and whistles.

As mentioned in a previous post, the vBulletin editor has rather messy code, and I was unable to find an easy way to add additional buttons to the Quickreply box. The next version of vBulletin is going to be migrating to the Yahoo! JavaScript API which means the QuickReply box will be rewritten for the most part. So I'll take a look at it when that happens. In the meantime, I'm not going to waste hours of time trying to figure out h ow to add a button to code that is so messy that the developers have already acknowledged it's being rewritten in the next version.

Just to add ... we've now moved our most-updated tables, such as the post table, to MySQL type InnoDB as opposed to MyISAM. InnoDB uses row-level locking as opposed to table-level locking and therefore won't succumb to the locking problem we were experiencing with new posts. The reason it was just implemented is because it does use up more system resources, and therefore I was waiting for the move to a more powerful server.

As mentioned, for now, just go to the specific forum you need to search and then in the dropdown menu in the search area of the sidebar, select 'search only in this forum'.

> But to get rid of the bumbles, ...

Midi, the "bumble-bee" behaviour of the tooltips following the mouse cursor around no longer happens. The tooltips now work the same way that they used to pre-a couple of months ago when their so-called "bumble" behaviour was introduced.

Salem,

Thank you for your comments. I'm going to quickly respond to some of the points which you brought up.

(1)

If I didn't work to continually improve upon DaniWeb, we would still be the small technical support forum for just Windows and Mac that we started as. If it wasn't for all of the evolutions and new innovations of the site, the C and C++ forums, where you spend most of your time, and the entire software development category, for that matter, wouldn't even exist. To highlight some of the most recent changes, the reputation system would still be in its default buggy behaviour and there would be no way to browse through threads in a forum without having to hit the back button continuously.

In fact, all of the changes that have been made within the past months have certainly not been done just to "test my web programming skills" but instead come as either a direct request or need from the community, based in large part from feedback here in this forum. The changes made this month, for example, which include the similar threads feature, the behaviour of tooltips, the reputation system, the redesign of the blogs pages to more prominently feature member usernames and the blogs the entries belong to, the addition of syndication buttons, have ALL come as a result of feedback passed to me by members.

It's important to note that there are 200,000 members. Even if you only …

Nope, it's been around for a year. LOL.

I was just joking.

I don't like it. The interface is slow and clunky and the results are very literal.

There's another thread here discussing this very issue:

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread85538.html

A lot of spammers will register and never post just for the free link to their website in their member profiles. You can curb this type of registration spam by only allowing registered members to view member profiles. Spammers will see that it does them no good to have a link to their site in a profile because it won't be able to be spidered by the search engines (so it won't have the SEO effect), and the registered members won't see their profiles b/c, with no posts, they'd have no way of finding them. So doing that will curb registration spam.

In the meantime, delete the website links in their profile if it's an adult site.

Make sure you have enabled the setting to not let more than one member register with the same email address. Then, do not delete the member accounts of spammers because that frees up their email address for them to just re-register it. Instead, permanently ban them.

They're talking more of an ecommerce-style site where someone can interact with a live salesperson (like in a chat window type thing) before making the purchase.

[search]activex[/search]

Even though you may think their site is designed poorly, they might have really spent a very long time on it with their limited computer skills and be very proud of it. (After all, it's most likely their first webpage.) They may see you as being presumptuous for thinking their site stinks and that you can do a better job ... for a price.

Well they don't bumble anymore :)

Can you please try again? It should work now.

Danke?

Working on it.

In the meantime, you can visit the Geek's Lounge, and then in the dropdown menu select "search in this forum" to achieve the same result.

Can you resend please? Seem to have missed them.

Something like that. :icon_mrgreen:

Everything was set up last night except for a few things which we forgot that will be set up today.

[tex] bbcode doesn't work
file attachments don't work
the Flash IRC client doesn't work

Those three things will be set up within the next few hours.

Just last night we migrated to all brand new servers. We're currently having some issues which affect uploading and storing files in the filesystem (such as attachments, custom avatars, etc), since we now have two web servers on a load balancer, and need to figure out a way to make sure they are both always in sync.

Floating popup windows??

I can understand those who have been complaining about the way the hovers have been following the mouse cursor around as of a couple of months ago. But now it's back to the way it's been for the last 2+ years with no complaints?

About an hour ago I made a change where the hover tooltips no longer follow the mouse cursor. They also now wait for you to pause over the link before they go into effect. This is the behaviour they have been at for the past 2 years complaint-free. The complaints around them started coming in a few months ago when I changed the behaviour to follow the mouse, hence being like "bumbling bees" following you around.

Actually that's not true. We were having a problem with some of the JavaScript features on the page causing problems like people's browsers hanging and freezing up, and taking a ridicoulously long amount of time to load. Since I knew it was a JavaScript problem, but didn't know exactly WHICH JavaScript was the cause, I provided the option to disable each of the JS features I thought was the culprit one at a time, so the problem could be debugged systematically (excluding one at a time for a large group of members, since everyone seemed to be experiencing different problems depending on their system). It turned out that the problem was related to the rounding corners script for everyone, and so that has now been removed.

Chatzilla is its OWN IRC application. Once it's installed, use the Tools dropdown menu in FireFox and click on Chatzilla.

That's what I use.

I believe this is the problem that people were experiencing in the past. I'm not sure, as I don't use Firefox or a spell checker.

It just suddenly stopped working one day?

I'm sorry, but I'm still incredibly confused how the SpellChecker is related to anything. I don't have any suggestions for you at this time.

My system has eight gigs of ram and I'm using Vista 64bit and am seeing like 50% ram usage with just Firefox open.