Looks like VNC has gone tits

[Fender151]

Wasn't me gov, I didn't touch nout, it just broke off in my hand, honest!!!

[Dr Bob]

Yes, still not working here. Do you need PPE to fix it?

[howardang]

Not working for me either.

 

Howard

[cuthound]

I'll bet Mike Askyns used it to strap his boat to a halt with... ??

[jake_crew]

Guess thats why they need a new techy person  ?

[howardang]

12 minutes ago, jake_crew said:

Guess thats why they need a new techy person  ?

Of course, but it did also happen when we had one!. I am not knocking previous efforts in any way - I certainly couldn't do the job - but is this the time when site admin should look again at another type of software? 

 

Howard

[Chris Lowe]

53 minutes ago, Dr Bob said:

Yes, still not working here. Do you need PPE to fix it?

Make sure you have you're hard hat on to fix it because of all the comments falling all over the place ?

[MtB]

Surely what we really need is software platform that doesn't keep falling over like this. 

 

At least I can say that now without it being misconstrued as a personal criticism of Rich, now he isn't doing the job of constantly standing it up again when it falls over.

 

 

[RichM]

18 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Surely what we really need is software platform that doesn't keep falling over like this. 

 

At least I can say that now without it being misconstrued as a personal criticism of Rich, now he isn't doing the job of constantly standing it up again when it falls over.

 

 

Just to be clear, the site search (which VNC forms part of) is NOT powered by Invision. There is an ElasticSearch engine running on the same server. While it's very fast and good at giving relevant search results, it falls over on the odd occasion and I don't know why.  I guess it could do with being on its own server or outsourced to a company who provides, supports and manages ElasticSearch instances. Of course both options would be at an additional cost to the forum. 

The forum previously used Invision's built in search capability which was dependant on running SQL queries, while reliable in terms of uptime it was incredibly slow and did not always give relevant search result, it's not intended for databases as big as Canal World's.. - That said, I'm quite happy to put it back on that but I'm pretty sure it will be met with more complaints as to be frank, it's rubbish.

 

Anywho, the search and VNC should now be working again. now.

Edited April 15, 2020 by RichM

[Athy]

I'm guessing that Rich has come out of his (brief) retirement to solve the problem, so thank you Rich.

[Guest]

?

 

[Alan de Enfield]

Working = Thanks.

[Keeping Up]

Thank you

[tree monkey]

Yup working, thank you

[howardang]

Working again - Many thanks

 

Howard

[haggis]

Thank you

 

[Nightwatch]

May I, at this point, ask why Rich is leaving that very important position?

[Tom and Bex]

Working again, thank you. 

 

I think those that criticise the forum software and think other software would be more reliable obviously don't use other similar sized forums much! All the other forums I use have occasional problems, I think on the whole CWDF has a very good uptime compared to some others I use. 

[bizzard]

Certain moaning members that seem to live on here that kept questioning his expertese.  I don't blame Rich one bit for wanting to jack it in. I certainly would.

[Dr Bob]

Yes, well done Rich!

[Alan de Enfield]

26 minutes ago, Tom and Bex said:

Working again, thank you. 

 

I think those that criticise the forum software and think other software would be more reliable obviously don't use other similar sized forums much! All the other forums I use have occasional problems, I think on the whole CWDF has a very good uptime compared to some others I use. 

I use a couple of forums which are much larger (in number of members, number of posts etc) and having 'discussed' it with Rich he agrees that it is a much more reliable platform and his choice would be to use it rather than Invision.

 

Have you used a forum that is using VBulletin - in 10 years as a 'heavy user' I cannot recall any 'outages' and maybe the software  has had one update every couple of years. (they could be happening overnight, but as it is a worldwide forum it will be daytime for someone)

 

CWDF Forum Stats and another forum stats( I believe 'Active' users are posting more than once per week) I wonder how many 'Active' users CWDF actually has ?

 

 

 

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by Alan de Enfield

[DHutch]

Firstly, thank you very much to @RichM for fixing this for us.

 

Secondly, yes this is the sort of reason we need a technical person to do the occasional work needed.

 

I terms of the site reliability and performance, I use a range of sites and find that Canalworld works very well and is almost always not down! As above we use a 3rd party search engine because it gives much better search performance than found on most forums* around, for which the infrequent short outages of which I believe this is the second in two years, is manageable. If anyone who has experience or would be interested in the challenge of running the technical side of a site like this, there is currently by good fortune and opening for you!

*typically either a much more basic core search engine, or a basic google search implementation which cannot filter by area/date/etc.

 

In terms of if we run Invision PB, vBulletin, or any other alternative software this is a debate which comes up from time to time, and something we have reviewed several times both with RichM and previous technical admins, and while their are pros and cons (and people migrating in both direction) the outcome has to date always been that any perceived advantages in moving are outweighed by the significant changes and the disruption is moving to another provider, better the devil you know, grass is greener etc. although if the new admin put together a strong case for the move this would absolutely be put to the membership and carried out if it was felt the best option and something which had support.

 

 

Thanks

 

Daniel

[RichM]

1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

I use a couple of forums which are much larger (in number of members, number of posts etc) and having 'discussed' it with Rich he agrees that it is a much more reliable platform and his choice would be to use it rather than Invision.

 

Have you used a forum that is using VBulletin - in 10 years as a 'heavy user' I cannot recall any 'outages' and maybe the software  has had one update every couple of years. (they could be happening overnight, but as it is a worldwide forum it will be daytime for someone)

 

CWDF Forum Stats and another forum stats( I believe 'Active' users are posting more than once per week) I wonder how many 'Active' users CWDF actually has ?

 

 

 

 

 

Having managed both vBulletin and Invision from a technical standpoint, I agree vBulletin has the edge overall. It is more powerful and better written than Invision and has more flexibility in terms of integration with third party software. However, as Dan alluded to it is significantly different in terms of user functionality, design and behaviour. Given the number of complaints received when we made the mandatory upgrade from Invision 3.x to 4.x a couple of years ago, I imagine a change to vBulletin would receive similar feedback, if not worse given that it isn't mandatory and as such cannot be justified as such. Not to mention that for the most part Invision fulfils its purpose. People are often quick to point blame at it when oftentimes it's not actually pertinent to the issue/fault at hand. (this topic being an example of that)

 

Also, the site you reference uses a very old version of vBulletin, 4.2.3. This version actually has some serious security vulnerabilities documented here. It is possible that they may have applied a patch but in any case I still take the view that running legacy software is not a great idea. It risks introducing compatibility issues when the underlying & associated technologies advance and change (whether it be a web browser or server software) Not to mention the risk of software vulnerabilities as already touched upon. The latter of which can lead to the site being compromised and and/or user data being stolen/harvested. Not good! 
 

While they may have better uptime than Canal World (I don't know, do they?) I'm not convinced that they have no outages or issues. If the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft can have serious outages lasting several hours, it is safe to assume that any website or service dependant on technology is at risk of the same. That aside, the overall uptime for Canal World is monitored and is not bad at 98.85%.

Edited April 15, 2020 by RichM

[Alan de Enfield]

10 minutes ago, RichM said:

Having managed both vBulletin and Invision from a technical standpoint, I agree vBulletin has the edge overall. It is more powerful and better written than Invision and has more flexibility in terms of integration with third party software. However, as Dan alluded to it is significantly different in terms of user functionality, design and behaviour. Given the number of complaints received when we made the mandatory upgrade from Invision 3.x to 4.x a couple of years ago, I imagine a change to vBulletin would receive similar feedback, if not worse given that it isn't mandatory and as such cannot be justified as such. Not to mention that for the most part Invision fulfils its purpose. People are often quick to point blame at it when oftentimes it's not actually pertinent to the issue/fault at hand. (this topic being an example of that)

 

Also, the site you reference uses a very old version of vBulletin, 4.2.3. This version actually has some serious security vulnerabilities documented here. It is possible that they may have applied a patch but in any case I am always of the opinion that running legacy software is not a great idea. It risks introducing compatibility issues when the underlying technologies advance (whether it be a web browser or server software) Not to mention the risk of software vulnerabilities as already touched upon. The latter of which can lead to the site being compromised and and/or user data being stolen/harvested. Not good!
 

While they may have better uptime than Canal World (I don't know, do they?) I'm not convinced that they have no outages or issues. If the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft can have serious outages lasting several hours, it is safe to assume that any website or service dependant on technology is at risk of the same. That aside, the overall uptime for Canal World is monitored and is not bad at 98.85%.

 

Thanks for that, as a simple 'user', and an ignoramus of the technical issues, I assume that since they appear to have separate security with vBSecurity (dated 2020) that would be pretty much up-to-date.

 

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[haggis]

Thanks for your explanations RichM and while I don't pretend to understand it  I am very much in awe of your technical knowledge on the subject. Many moons ago I was a programmer and systems analyst in PLAN (bet most folk have never heard of it) running the PAYE system for the whole of Scotland in the Inland Revenue on an ICL  mainframe which was updated from 16K to 32K.  That has nothing to do with CWDF but it just came into my mind so I thought I would share it! 

 

haggis