Aaron offered an idea to lower the server load in the shoutbox:


It would lower the load a tiny bit.

Every page on BOINCstats needs database access, even a static page. This is because for example the menu comes from the database.

But, because the DB pieces for the menu and the fronpage are accessed many times, these are cached by MySQL and don't require many effort for the server.

The load goes up when data is requested that is not in the cache, and needs to be read from the harddisk.

Also, lot's of pages are (partially) cached, meaning that their contents is stored in file which is deleted when the data used for that page is updated in the database.

The frontpage has a few of these parts, but the projects table isn't a part of that because the time since last update is dynamic.

I also think that every project banner should be clickable.

Currently, there are a few pages in which the project banners are unclickable, I.E. - the first level of detailed stats.

I find myself sometimes going to a more detailed level of stats just to get the clickable portion of the banner and to go to the project site.

Does this include people's Sig Stats?

Like the signature you have where it has a BOINCSTATS stats layout? Do these require DB access when, say.. someone on the SETI server pulls up my signature in a post of mine on their forums?

These could be 'generated' and stored also, on a daily basis or part of the incremental update - depending on how many types you have.

I've recently made the index page my browser's homepage. If that is bad for server load, let me know, and I'll change it.

mm

Don't change it

Signatures and charts are all cached when first requested. When the stats have been updated the signature and chart cache is cleared.

This means that if you have a signature on any board, only the first time it's requested it generates some load.

The most load is generated by requesting ranking tables, which for some projects consist of thousands of pages, and can be sorted in a dozen ways. These are also cached, but it is unlikely that many people request the stats of users 9600~9699 from the us, project SETI, sorted by credit last month (just an example).

But I don't want you to lower your usage of these pages, this is what they are made for. The new server should take care of the high load.

Yes!! I use BOINCStats often to get to the main page of some of the projects (particularly on those that I choose to disable in the project navigation bar), but since the banner only links to it on certain pages, getting to the page with the link is troublesome.

Would it be possible to 'generate' the more common ones all at once if they have been requested in the previous 24-hours (or 7 days, or 30 days, or w/e)?

This would enable you to confine a small portion of load to a particular time of day that you choose, like when the server isn't normally busy (1 o'clock in the morning US time or something)

Don't get me wrong, I'm only using signature graphs as an example, perhaps there are other areas where this might be useful?

Perhaps you could lower the load on the server on those pages by narrowing the search depth?

instead of looking at stats in 100 user pages, perhaps the DEFAULT should go to 20 or 50 user pages, with an option for 100 user pages.

Would that help out, or am I looking in the wrong direction?