README: Fixed Issues (sort of)

Saturday, October 11th, 2008 | Site Updates

So for about 24 hours there has been a script that my friend so generously made for some beer (yeah, beer) that helps make sure my site can be loaded and my email can download. All it does is “restart apache” every time the load jacks up too high. Apache is the web server for those not in the know, and it’s what is causing all the issues.

You load the games page and each game you load will very briefly use 1 to 3 % of the CPU power of my server. Once the game is loaded it is no longer using any of the server CPU and is just using your CPU. However ever since the additional traffic came to the site from collegehumor.com, 80% of my traffic just plays games. So if 90 people decided to load a game at the same time, the server flips out because it is using too much processing power and it prevents anything from working. So when this happens the site becomes unreachable and those people not able to load their games probably still can’t load the games.

So now, when too many people are doing things at once the web server will go off for a couple seconds, which will prevent whatever they were trying to load from working, however in a couple seconds they would be able to load their game and new people will still be able to get to the site.

Okay, it is obvious this is just a “quick fix” and not a real solution. I’m sure nobody likes it when apache is restarting and they can’t load their game or change page. So my more permanent solutions will be:

1) Cut down the CPU load of my games page. Hopefully the new design will do this, though honestly I have no idea if it’s the java applet or the current design causing the extra processor load, so new design may not fix it. This however will need to come pretty soon in case it is the design and the way the games load.

2) My dedicated server only has one processor. Seems as my site is getting more popular it can’t handle the extra traffic with just one processor. So I need a more expensive dedicated server with 3 times the ram and 4 times the processor. Funny thing though. I lose money on the site as it is paying for my current server. Not enough to bother me, but enough to not be willing to pay for the new server myself.

So as soon as I get the new games page up I will be looking for a good deal on a new dedicated server (I’d like to stay with current company as they don’t bitch about my content at all) however I WILL NOT buy it until I can get at least 2 months worth of the cost of a fast new server in donations.

Site is expanding, and I have been spending too much time trying to fix the speed instead of making new content. Not to mention that I have been working on the site and not on my computer repair business so I am starting to go broke :(

Anybody have a good cloning device?

               

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