TMC website overload

Agree, lurking in general & not commenting is fine but on especially high traffic days/events it is not unreasonable to limit use to registered members.

Heck, y'all could be charging for all of this great information instead of relying on donations and volunteer moderators.
I know that I am much more confident & comfortable in my decisions & purchase because of the lurking (at first) then participation in these threads. <3

Being a technical admin on a few other forums (the guy who works the guts to keep it running)... forum operators really have to aim to handle their normal traffic very well... and swells pretty well.

Last night, judging from the numbers I saw intermittently... this was a FLOOD.. If the forum hardware / bandwidth were sized for the flood, it could become cost prohibitive to operate. I think it's a good compromise where it is.. They're also using CloudFlare to cache and absorb much of the actual traffic.. so they've done the right things to stay up most of the time.

Re: Locking out guests... The forum is really here in the spirit of sharing knowledge and helping those who want more details to make their decisions. I don't think it's prudent to lock out those seeking knowledge on a night that generates so much interest...

Just my $0.02...
LK

it might be wise to consider breaking the model X topics into a sub forum for those who really aren't interested in reading all the new threads relating only to the model X

Thanks for the feedback. We've had this issue in mind for a while and are working on ways to better handle such events. The difference between steady state and peak is huge. There are intelligent ways to deal with such things, but that as always, it needs to be balanced with cost.

Last night from my phone (risky, I know), within 5 minutes I actually shut down the server and relaunched with a monster. That helped a lot, but then there were other limiting factors.

Anyhow, we'll try to do better.

kort677 said:

it might be wise to consider breaking the model X topics into a sub forum for those who really aren't interested in reading all the new threads relating only to the model X

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Err... the Model X is already a sub forum.

doug said:

Err... the Model X is already a sub forum.

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poor choice of terms. What I was going for was how the foreign or regional forums are not part of the "what's new" search the X related forum could not be part of a search for new posts.
maybe the X related forums be segregated to a dedicated sub forum for those who are interested in discussing X related topics

Do you know about the Subscribed Forums feature? If you subscribe the forums you like, you get a "Subscribed Forums" tab at the top which is like "what's new" but only from the forums in which you're interested.

It's set up for you to add what you like, rather than ignore what you don't.

For example, you could add Model S and Florida if you wanted. If you want the Model S sub-forums (like "Model S: Driving Dynamics") you add those separately.

doug said:

Thanks for the feedback. We've had this issue in mind for a while and are working on ways to better handle such events. The difference between steady state and peak is huge. There are intelligent ways to deal with such things, but that as always, it needs to be balanced with cost.

Last night from my phone (risky, I know), within 5 minutes I actually shut down the server and relaunched with a monster. That helped a lot, but then there were other limiting factors.

Anyhow, we'll try to do better.

Click to expand...

That's amazing!
Thanks for the great job on the forum.
It's probably impossible to meet all demand all the time and users should expect to use something like Twitter to communicate during peak events.

doug said:

Do you know about the Subscribed Forums feature? If you subscribe the forums you like, you get a "Subscribed Forums" tab at the top which is like "what's new" but only from the forums in which you're interested.

It's set up for you to add what you like, rather than ignore what you don't.

For example, you could add Model S and Florida if you wanted. If you want the Model S sub-forums (like "Model S: Driving Dynamics") you add those separately.

Click to expand...

thanks for the advice, I was thinking more in terms of lessening the load on the entire site by splitting into separate forums.

kort677 said:

thanks for the advice, I was thinking more in terms of lessening the load on the entire site by splitting into separate forums.

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Oh, yeah that's not really the way to do it.

mspohr said:

That's amazing!
Thanks for the great job on the forum.
It's probably impossible to meet all demand all the time and users should expect to use something like Twitter to communicate during peak events.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I think we can configure things to be able to automatically scale for the occasional very high load. It just requires some more work.

doug said:

Oh, yeah that's not really the way to do it.


Thanks. I think we can configure things to be able to automatically scale for the occasional very high load. It just requires some more work.

Click to expand...

Only 6 months until the next heavy load (Model 3 reveal).

FWIW, I didn't really notice much slowness last night, but you might have bumped up the resources by then. Good job!

I'm getting a lot of slowness and DB error screens

Jeva said:

I'm getting a lot of slowness and DB error screens

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Same me here and it's intermittent.

Do those that donate (Tesla Motors Club - Enthusiasts & Owners Forum - Support TMC via PayPal) get any priority for responsiveness?

Speaking as someone who hasn't donated, I think they should. Just sayin'.