Forum Maintenance & Technical Issues

[MSPtoMKE]

Or, just click on the orange square with an arrow that is to the left of the Thread Titles that have unread posts. This will also bring you to the first unread post, whichever page it is on. For whatever reason, I like to browse the forum by geographic category, so that is what I do...

[Nick]

I'm thinking I might do another picture run tomorrow. So if you've been holding onto any recent pictures, you should post 'em so I can skip those projects!

[Nick]

Picture run accomplished. Missed Elan of Uptown because I got a beer with another of our fearless posters and the sun went down.

Also, I saw Don Samuels at LynLake, bringing my picture run Councilmember sightings to two for two (I saw Robert Lilligren last time). And I saw State Rep Frank Hornstein on the 6. Very productive.

[mamundsen]

I'm new. I've posted twice and they both said they had to be approved. I wonder if this one will too?

[Nick]

I'm new. I've posted twice and they both said they had to be approved. I wonder if this one will too?

Your first post has to be approved (many new user have much great deal on penis enlargement!) and if you make more before the first is approved, they do too. You're set now.

[twincitizen]

If anyone wants a nifty bus/LRT/Northstar vehicle for their avatar, find 'em here: http://metrotransit.org/logos-images.aspx

[Nick]

If anyone wants a nifty bus/LRT/Northstar vehicle for their avatar, find 'em here: http://metrotransit.org/logos-images.aspx

Any word on my MetroTransit ringtones?

[Nick]

I was going to go out and take pictures today, but I'm homebound with a really bad cold and/or mild tuberculosis. I'm going out of town next weekend, so it may be a while before I have a chance again. If anyone feels like going out and taking some photos of projects they happen to live near, it'd be much appreciated!

[mattaudio]

I hope you don't have tuberculosis! I assume you meant something else?

[twincitizen]

It just so happens I'll be doing some xmas shopping in Uptown tomorrow. I will take some photos for sure.

Checklist, east to west:
2900 Lyndale
Track29
Elan
City Walk
Library

That's it for Uptown, right?

[Nick]

I hope you don't have tuberculosis! I assume you meant something else?

I was kinda joking but blerg it feels gross.

[Nick]

Going out tomorrow morning/afternoon to take pictures. I think I'm borrowing boyfriend's car, so I may go see what I can find in the first-ring suburbs. Is Ellipse's second phase started yet? Or any of that Southdale stuff?

Let me know if anyone has specific requests. I rarely drive anywhere so it's like a big deal to be on the highway

[twincitizen]

I doubt there's anything moving at Southdale, regarding the apartments or new P&R. So unless you want to take pictures of the mall's interior renovation and weird new entrances, probably skip it.

I thought someone had posted here that e2 was underway.

Flats at West End is getting close to completion I think (at least on the outside). If you can, try to get a photo of how incredibly close this is to the hotel next door. You could seriously toss a football window to window, unusual for the burbs. Driving through this area sucks balls. I could not figure out how to get back on Hwy 100 south and traffic mid-day was surprisingly awful (since everyone drives to get lunch). I was shocked at how much of the Shops at West End is vacant and covered in that weird wrap to mask the vacancy. Possibly picture worthy...that bad.

Lyndale Plaza should be complete by now. I don't think anything is happening at the Richfield Garden site yet (other side of Lyndale).

Pretty sure all the Penn-American phase 1 is complete and has secured a couple restaurant tenants (with pretty bad visibility / weak signage from the road...good luck Which Wich)

[twincitizen]

[Nick]

Ha! Why thank you. I was just about to post a roundup comment here. Also, I didn't even crash the car once.

I did some cleanup and relabeling today in addition to posting all the new photos. I also added a "Nostalgia" forum because it'd been previously suggested and I think that could be cool.

With some of the cleanup I consolidated some topics. In the future, if folks could try to post news articles, random thoughts, etc, on an existing topic, that would be great. If a topic doesn't already exist, by all means, please create one. But I know we've had at least three separate topics created for the airport, for example, and a lot of times things can be posted in existing discussions instead of making a new topic for whatever thing you read in the Strib or the Atlantic. It's handy to keep a record and keeps things clean and organized.

[Shawn]

Due to our large bandwidth and CPU usage, our hosts are threatening to shut us down tomorrow. We have taken steps to drop our strain on their servers by:

1) From now until the issue is resolved, UrbanMSP will not allow attachments. Please use an outside file hosting service for this
2) GUESTS can no longer see the majority of our forums. Instead, they must register and log in in order to see the full website.
3) Guests can no longer search more than once every 120 seconds (if one guest searches, all must wait 2 minutes)

That is all I can think of off the top of my head to do to decrease our usage. If it does come down to them taking us offline, I will quickly upgrade our hosting plan to get us back, but unfortunately this costs more than we currently bring in via advertisements so we will have to find a way around this. Thank you guys for your patience, and if anyone has any suggestions on decreasing bandwidth/memory/CPU usage, feel free to chime in. Our hosts are: http://site5.com and in the past have be incredibly helpful and supportive.

These are the resource points that we are going over on: http://kb.site5.com/policies-and-inform ... -overview/

[mattaudio]

Are there any PHPBB templates that might be more streamlined? Or other caching options? That might help immensely.

[Nick]

I imagine my photos are probably a large part of this issue, because I've been attaching them to posts instead of hosting them externally and linking like everyone else. I should probably try something else out...

[seanrichardryan]

That's why 'view unread posts' and 'view active topics' haven't worked all day?

[mulad]

I imagine my photos are probably a large part of this issue, because I've been attaching them to posts instead of hosting them externally and linking like everyone else. I should probably try something else out...

Perhaps, but even the baseline level of usage is twice the resource point limit. You weren't out taking pictures every day. Images do consume massive bandwidth compared to HTML, but some of the recent tweaks to automatically downscale the images and only serve up the big versions upon request should have already helped a lot.

Is there a breakdown of contribution to overall points by CPU, memory, and bandwidth (and actual amounts for those)? I'm suspicious that requiring folks to log in will increase CPU usage (at least on a per-page basis), though it should reduce bandwidth a lot (temporarily). Similarly, caching would probably increase memory usage. But regardless, the site appears to need 3x-4x the current resource limit -- considering how attacking one problem will probably drive the others up to some extent, I don't see a good way out of paying more.

I'd lean toward setting up a PayPal account and suggesting that folks contribute $10 or $20, and see how much comes in -- if our active users contribute, it should be possible to pay for a significantly nicer plan.

I hope upgrading beyond HostPro+Turbo (600 points) won't cause any disruption -- looks like the site really needs the 1st- or 2nd-tier "reseller" plans judging by points.