Infrastructure

shadeland 2003-04-17 11:56:49 ET I was in a really, really boring meeting, so I decided to better utilize my cycles by sketching out the rudimentary framework for a BME/SK style site. I mainly concentrated on the MySQL table spaces and how they're laid out. Bascially, I'm trying to keep it as modular and compartmentalized as possible, for two primary reasons. One, it's easier to task out various parts to other people that way, and two, keeping it compartmentalized means individual tables don't grow to enourmous sizes and hold everything up, performance wise. Another question was how to handle thumbnail generate. PHP has GD built in and it does a great job of generating thumbs, but it won't work with GIFs, as GIF is a patented (and therefore requires a license) image format. ImageMagik might do, I think they just forgo the patent issue and work with GIFs anyway. Image storage is an issue too.. ImageMagic would make it difficult to store images in the database, but storing them in the database might be a huge performance issue, I'll have to do some research on that.

pixi 2003-04-17 11:58:36 ET wow. impressive computer talk. *goes to find something she understands*

Alice 2003-04-17 13:05:22 ET I'm hoping that we don't need a new SK. But I'm glad that you are capable and willing if it does come to that. As we all wait for m0xie’s next word.

shadeland 2003-04-17 13:09:26 ET I think as a project, I'm just going to set one up anyway. If SK goes away, SK members are of course invited, but there's plenty of room for other online communities.

stormzealot 2003-04-17 13:15:19 ET ya i totally think u are right on in starting ur own community but see the big thing that makes sk so special is the fact that new members were limited, and screened, would u do the same? that's what makes us a community. the very fact that we are all very like minded, intelligent, level headed (for the most part anyways) :-) that's the only thing really. sk was built as a new kind of community if we were to go to a new community as a whole or build a new one, we should (in my oppinion) at least go to/build one with those ideals in mind.

shadeland 2003-04-17 13:28:39 ET Yeah, for just resource reasons alone users would be limited/screened. Why give a service away to assholes? :) At the same time, it has to be balanced with growth versus stagnation. If a community stagnates, atrophy occurs and the site decays (which hasn't happened here, but it's something to be mindful of. There's alot of trepedation among SK users at the prospect of change, should SK go away in it's current form and having to switch to a new community, which is understandable. Why change a good thing? Because of that, I'm thinking it's best not to try to emulate SK fully (the way SK didn't try to fully emulate BME), as that would be futile, since it wouldn't be SK, and people would probably have a hard time not noticing the differences, no matter how subtle.

slaad 2003-04-17 13:35:18 ET Generally the best way to do it is to store the filename in the database. That way you use like 20bytes vs a couple of thousand bytes.

shadeland 2003-04-17 13:47:27 ET Image management is much easier (especially when images and site are stored on the same system) when it's in a database. However, the database might not like constant calls so much. I guess I could write something that would look for orphaned image files and delete them.

shadeland 2003-04-17 13:49:27 ET Front-page generation will be based on the user table itself, via a field called "last updated" which is updated everytime the user adds a diary entry. This way, instead of doing a select on a much smaller table, only a few hundred or perhaps few thousand rows, rather than on a diary table, which might contain hundreds of thousands, and will grow much more quickly. Select caching would be much more efficient with this, as well, making front page views very cheap as far as resources go.

stormzealot 2003-04-18 01:49:05 ET yes i realize that would be futile, because it would be a new community. If Mox goes things will change thats a given if he leaves his code behind, more power to him, we truck on. If he doesn't i don't see the problem in keeping it sk and rebuilding we'd want to change a couple things anywayz just because we can but the general system and site would be great to keep the same. Everyone knows if we have a change in admin that means rebuilding or moving things will change dramatically, I'm not disputing this. I think the biggest thing, is people want(if possible) to keep it SK in name spirit and feel.

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