Okay, so I am not the grand wiz of message boards, I just opened my own though…
Anyhow, I have noticed that recently a few threads pop up that are meant to die For the last time, NSYNC is not a damn BAND!. Started July 27th!!! It should be freakin dead now especially given the God-for-saken topic.
This is just a weak example of recently resurrected threads that need to be pushed to the center of the earth and no longer revisited.
With that said, it might be prudent (not doing a politician imitation) to archive threads older than 3 months. You can view em, even start your own thread about the OT (original topic) but it might help speed things up here on the SDMB, MAN I have noticed that even hours that used to not be considered busy are taking resources from the servers and it takes forever for a thread to load.
So anyhow, don’t kill em, just archive them. Get them out of our way…put them in the “dead” file and if someone really needs to comment on the drivel they can start a new topic and link to it but archiving has to be the easiest way out of the SDMB’s current tail spin into the great depths of internet hell…easier than buying a new server.
Well, now, it seems to me that the loading of threads is what would put the biggest strain on server problems, not just posting, based on the sheer amount of “stuff” that needs to be accessed.
To load the main body of a thread (as opposed to the “preview” portion you see while posting), the server needs to find the post count, profile, sig file, E-mail address, and all the other handy-dandy little tags that go with each button… for each individual posts in the thread. Just archiving them (disallowing people from posting) may not help so much.
Not that I’m disagreeing with you, Tech’ems m’dear… some threads should be tossed in the ol’ Vaults simply for posterity’s and decency’s sake. With regards to server stuff, I’m just speculatin’ (at 4:30 in the morning). And, also, every little bit of saved server space helps.
Archive “Classic” threads (Ask The Gay Guy, Guy Stuff, etc.) in book form and sell 'em to the teeming millions for profit. Use the money to buy a better server.
The problem with this is that vBulletin doesn’t have an archive feature like the old UBB did. The only option I see with the software as it is currently architextured (nice word, huh?) would be to put anything we wish to save in a “archive” forum, which obviously would function exactly like the current ones. My guess is that wouldn’t have any significant positive effect on load times, though. The server would still have to sift through all that stuff to compile a page. However, since I’m just guessing, maybe this would be a good question to ask the vB folks. Specifically, is load time reduced when a given number of threads are distributed across an increasing number of fora?
Even better would be if archived threads could be saved in “snapshot,” that is to say, as a fixed text file with links, etc, frozen as they are. Since vBulliten processes links based on user ID, those links for each post (such as profile, email, etc.) would still work. Only post counts, and member status would be “frozen in time.” I’d think this would save massively on pulling up archived threads, and effectively locking them for all time.
inkblot
Yeah, InkBlot, that would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not currently an option in vBulletin. The folks to talk to are the programmers over at Jelsoft, not us.
Well locking a thread effectively archives it and by playing with the server clock you could probably convince it, that you had done it a long time ago (and thus not bring it to the top of the lists again).
If vBulletin uses a separate index to perform its search functions you could strip out the html for the archived threads then all the old threads would require is a link to the html page. So grab the post rendered html delete the thread recreate the thread title post an article with a link the html file. Then insure that the search index does not rebuild for these threads. and do all of this in an automated function that operates on all thread more than 3 months old (that have not been previously archived). Sounds: easy (Salesman); that may well be impossible short of a 10 digit budget you know (Programmer).