Just a quick note to let you know we’re looking into the current slowness…
Apologies, but we’ll need to temporarily disable Private Messages; it’s the culprit in our performance problems right now.
Private Messaging is now restored, and we hope our changes will prevent it from slowing down the forum page loads. Please note that one of our changes was, for user notifications, to set it to check for new PMs every 5 minutes, which is less frequent than the previous setting. This doesn’t impact how quickly you’ll receive a new PM, but means there may be a delay up to 5 minutes (max) before the notification appears, even though the new PM is already available.
Chris, thanks for all your effort. Does the forum check for new PMs when you first go on-line, then each subsequent 5 mins? Or does it take 5 mins on-line, after you log on, before it will first check for PMs?
Thanks
It does an immediate check when you open your session (login) and that triggers your subsequent 5-minute interval checks.
I think we’ll probably be able to make it more frequent again, as we start to see the performance load. Perhaps the bigger problem was that it was doing frequent PM checks even for anonymous visitors who weren’t logged in. So, as the number of viewers on the forum increased, the load of PM checks was running rampant. So we’ve both a) stopped it from checking for users who aren’t logged in, and b) reduced the frequency.
After a few days, if it looks like smooth sailing, we’ll bump the frequency back up.
Why was it checking PMs for users who aren’t logged in, and probably therefore have never had a PM? Who knows?!.. Technology is fun but batty sometimes.
I usually stay logged in because I check the Forum very often. I just opened the forum webpage and almost immediately I got a PM notification. That’s seem faster than it had been in the past. Thanks
:-)
And I do the same as Marc, always remaining logged in. I have no problem with PM notifications either. Besides, I also get them by mail.For data geeks, here’s the current chart of our server performance, including the period on Thursday afternoon when things were bad.
So far, looking good, after the changes to Private Messages.
Hahah, that seems like an improvement 
.
Chris: This morning I was writing a fairly long post when I noticed that I had a PM flag. I went off to answer the PM, but the little box you reply in misbehaved. At one point it would let me type characters in, but as soon as I lifted my finger from the key, I was thrown back to the previous line. Weird. I cut the message short and hit send. This took me back to my post, which had disappeared and needed to be re-typed. Aargh!
Can the PM reply box be bigger than it is? It’s a pain to have to scroll line by line just to read what you’ve typed.
+1
Sorry for that issue, thanks for letting me know. I’ll see if we can increase the PM text box size. For the deal with it jumping up to the previous line, I’ll see if I can figure it out, but that one may be tough to pinpoint.
The text box for PMs is now bigger, both on the ‘inbox’ layout, and on the notification popup layout. Meaning, if you see a notification and click it, it opens a popup, and we’ve made that text box a bit bigger. If instead, you just navigate to your PMs, you’ll see a larger text box there also.
Please let me know if you see any odd behavior, like kicking your cursor back to the previous line, etc. Also, we can make them bigger, if needed.
Strategically… If you want the most space to type in, click the notification and then close the popup, then type your reply in the ‘inbox’ instead of the popup.
Hi Chris, thanks a lot. That makes PM-ing a lot easier.
I also pm-ed you this, but as it was as a test, I repeat it here.
One thing I still do wrong (as you have noticed) is to press Enter to go to the next line. This sends the message.
What I also wonder is whether we can now, for example, include blank lines (see above) or bullet lists (see below) or whether the software "flattens"everything.
- bullet 1
- bullet 2
- bullet 3
After looking at the post I sent you, I think I can now give my own answers: no, we cannot use blank lines or bullet lists, the software "flattens"everything.
Thanks for fixing this issue Chris! In the past I have resorted to exchanging emails with other forum members because the PM system has been frustrating to use.