foyleman

MODSonline.com was having some major server issues. About a month ago, the server was experiencing CPU loads over 500% of capacity. It was driving me nut trying to determine the cause.

My first thought to fix the problem was to rebuild the forums. I built the original forums years ago as a module for PostNuke (some free content management system) and then I ported them to my current CMS. With over 55,000 posts in the database that totalled over 20Mb, 50 or more simultaneous users of these forums, I figured this was the cause of the slowdown.

As I completed the new forums, but before launching them, I made another adjustment to the server… the log files. I found out that the log files were compiling overnight and this may have been hurting things. WOW was it ever. Ever since adjusting the logs, the site has sped right up again.

I finished up the new forums anyway. I’m glad too. They needed a rebuild and they run 100 times better than the previous system. I also got to write a new bbcode system that is really quite awesome.
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I created some great new code this week. It takes RSS News feeds like this one and presents them in a list that allows me to pick which ones to posts as news and which ones to ignore. The idea is to make posting news easier to different websites.

but.. hmmm…

After developing it and using it for a day I am finding that the availabe RSS newsfeeds out there kinda suck. They aren’t well formatted and are not easy to find (not good ones). I was under the impression that RSS was starting to come around as something hot. Perhaps I am still a year or two early on this.
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It’s good to be able to relax for at least one day a week. This was my first weekend without a ton of work. To give you an idea, I went to the food store with my wife today and saw a GameSpot store that opened up nearby. I pointed it out and she said, "Oh that? It’s been there a while." lol. I haven’t been out in a while. Continue reading »

Who knew it was so easy to make a basic ftp client in PHP. I was able to throw one together in just two days between other projects. Quite awesome. Continue reading »

I finally got around to updating the website. Mainly, the forums needed to be fixed, but while I was at it, I updated an number of other backend features.

I almost finished getting my own fedore core 3 Linux server working on my own. Usually, I just purchase ready-to-go servers. I may update the programs and php, but I never had the opportunity to start from the beginning until now.

I setup a linux server in my office and at home to play with whenever I had the chance which was off and on for the past 4 weeks. I now only have one issue to resolve before I am satisfied with the results. The problem (if anyone has a suggestion) is that I don’t know how to limit the access of an ftp user. I can setup an ftp account, but simply defining their home folder does not restrict them to just that folder. They can still go to the root of the server which is a horrible risk. That’s the final issue I am having at this time.

Perhaps when I am complete, I will go through the entire process again, but this time take notes and publish them as a guide on this site. Let me know if you’re interested in this.
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