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I may start posting over here again. I am going to try to devote a block of serious time to the system software. But I am not rewriting the system (don't worry Alex!) and any changes to the database will be very minor. If I ever do a full rewrite again (I guess that's happened twice? I can't remember, I'd have to look back) it would be done in Python instead of PHP, but I'm not nearly ready to do that.

Still, there are lots of things that I would like to fix and a few things I would like to add. Writing about it here is a way to get myself to think more formally about how to tackle all this.

First is speed. I'm starting to see some problems. Both here and a little more at datamantic.com. The bottleneck seems to be associated with having lots of users. I'm guessing especially lots of inactive users (resulting in unread information piling up in the database.) I think I have a fairly easy to implement solution here involving putting subscriptions "to sleep" after a certain period of inactivity. This sleep state will be recoverable, in the sense that if the person ever returns they can choose to wait for a moment and I can restore the "new" information about posts and comments.

There is also a deeper issue about speed that I sometimes think about, but I'm not sure whether I will address this or not at the moment. Ideally I agree with the notion that the ideal CMS (or weblog system, or whatever) has a database back end but uses that to generate static .html pages. Right now we assemble each page out of the database for every request. This gives us some things (like the personalized [new comment] counters which obviously can't be static,) but comes at a very high price. Especially as you try to scale. A good solution for us here is to at least have static pages for non users.

I guess I want all members to be able to create top level pages. Pretty easy change. But creating a page itself has some problems now. Especially in terms of who gets subscribed to the page, and whether the new pages automatically goes on other people's home pages.

I like the idea that members have total control over their own home pages (the system never adds or subtracts without being told by that user) but then how do you find out about new pages? I guess it could just be a social convention to announce them in /treehouse?

Adding users has to be completely redone. Right now I have to do a lot of tweaking in the database, mostly around the issue of home page listings, and posting permissions on group pages. I think I see how to fix this using a model account which has a base subscription set which is copied onto each new user as a starting point when their accounts are created. Maybe this model account could be somehow accessible to other members so that when you create a new page you also set the subscription for the model account, and then this is the subscription settings any new users will start with for that page.

And then there is the upload features. Obviously music is completely unworkable. Movies haven't even been addressed, but will follow easily on the heels of a solution to the music problem (I mean, it's the same problem.) I think when I move the server in house, and to OS X where I am more comfortable, I will be able to solve this issue. Possibly this will be a script that will have to be written in Python (I can mix languages like this without problem,) since I think the upload speed issue for big files is a PHP problem.

Those seem like the top of the list concerns at the moment, but no doubt I will add to this.
- jim 2-10-2004 12:34 am [link] [5 comments]