fordsbyjay
Active Member
I have to say I really like the message section that is at the top of the screen. I can't tell you how many times I find some notice in my mailbox that is 3 months old because I never check them.
Welcome to XenForo
- Thread starter Mike
- Start date
Mike
Well-Known Member
I loves me some XenForo! To be honest, everything is so much easier to do than it was in Invision.
That being said, I've discovered some definite casualties of the conversion. Don'tCallMeJimmie's account is gone. Fifthwheel's account is gone. Waffle's account is gone. I'm hoping the accounts have changed somehow and still exist, but I need to find what happened to get things corrected. If anyone has any external contact info for these members, please contact them and have them get with me via the Contact Us link at the bottom of every forum page. After the conversion, we found jimbo01's account had the username changed and was reflecting his first and last names. I've no clue how that could have happened.
I've taken all the Donation Tracker logs from the past year, as well as all of the donations I've manually entered in this last few weeks, and I have laid all of them out in a spreadsheet. I have them alphabetized with the month of their most recent donation marked in the appropriate column. That was a bit of a nightmare job, but it is finished. And with those records, I have purged all members who had not donated in the last 12 months.
Just a couple days ago, a coder released a Beta 1 test version of a Donation module that is very similar to what we had on Invision. As soon as I get a feel for how solid the code is, we'll be adding that module to this site. Nothing is worse that having to do things by hand, when computers should be doing them for you.
The subject of smilies has come up in a couple of discussions. And to be quite honest, I think I'm going to stick with what I have. I know the (drop-dead gorgeous) young lady who designed the default XenForo smilies. She is an excellent graphics designer and I suspect she will be releasing more smilies to use as add-ons. I will consider those, if and when she releases them.
In the past, you could take a folder full of smilies, FTP them to a server, then wade through all of them, assigning them names and replacements codes to add them to a forum. This version of XenForo has broken new ice in that department. Rather than uploading 50+ smilies, each an individual file, you can now upload a single image, with the smilies laid out on that image. From there, you can designate the coordinates for each smilie on the sheet and the software will take it from there.
The first two sprites Kier shows have what once would have been 23 different images on them. From 23 images down to just 2 images. The smilie sprite is one image to replace 35 images. And whilst the savings isn't huge, it does amount to a savings of 100 KB on the server. Any time we can save some space and some resource time to load in a smiley, we're making some exciting headway.
Here is an example. The package that drives the red style on the forums requires 201 image files, in order for everything to display. (And because XenForo 1.1.0 is using some sprite calls, you actually are not seeing everything there is to see.) I know of one designer who has managed to develop a custom style that uses three images. Three! Once you've made the http calls for those three images, there's no more need to re-negotiate with the server to get any more images, because you already have them. Page speeds are going to drop, uber-significantly, with this new method. Which is why I am not going to bother uploading 150 images, all over again. When Shelley release some new smiley sprite sheets, I'll grab them and we'll use them.
This may sound insane to you, but there's no sense binding ourselves to horse and buggy technology, when the ability to use Star Wars technology is already in the XenForo core.
Another area I've been working on is reducing image "weights". Can anyone see the difference in the logo image, at the top of each page? Neither can I. But I can tell you that image is now 13% "lighter" than it was when we converted the site. Image size is the same and image quality is the same. But after running it across pngcrush, the image "weighs" 7 KB less than it did a week ago. That will save us well over 100 MB of transfer, each and every day. And since the image is lighter than it was, it will pick up page load speeds, accordingly. You get pages served faster and I burn up less bandwidth doing it. That's pure win-win, in my book.
I am still weighing out how to handle our Tech Library. I can do that with some custom pages, from right within the XenForo core. Or, I can add a XenCarta script, that works like a Wiki. I need to spend some more time playing with the Wiki, to see what will look best and server our purposes best.
I have good news on a photo gallery script. Jeremy has formed a partnership with two other coders (one of whom is a real whiz) and they have added Jeremy's Galleria to scripts their new company will be offering. It has gone from being a free script to a commercial script, but it will also now have commercial support, so that's a good thing. I am hoping this will speed up the development process and we might be seeing a release in the next few weeks. And the good news is that they will be developing importers, so we just might be able to salvage our old IP.Gallery images. Assuming they do not price Galleria in the stratosphere, of course.
Things are really looking good for our future with XenForo.
If anyone has problems or questions, use that Support tab in the NavBar. And don't forget the Members Map and the Media Library.
Don'tCallMeJimmie
Member
Mike, DCMJ is here, just as my old 'handle' Beemryder if that helps with the detective work... Seems my name didn't survive the transition and truthfully, I didn't notice until you mentioned it...
Ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance is bliss.
Mike
Well-Known Member
OK, that solves part of the mystery. Your account status is upgraded.
Let me know if you want your username changed back to DCMJ and I'll get it done for you. Takes all of two seconds to accomplish.
Mike
Well-Known Member
I'm jumping for joy.
A dear, sweet, little angel was visiting the site and she has solved the mystery of the vanishing usernames.
In Invision, you can register with John Doe as your log-in name and Ed Smith as your display name. During the conversion, XenForo grabs the registered log-in name and that ends up being the username on your account. People are not disappearing, only their display names are away.
Lisa, you're only the best! That's another pop out of the dark place. Tell Gary to give you a big hug on my behalf.
A dear, sweet, little angel was visiting the site and she has solved the mystery of the vanishing usernames.
In Invision, you can register with John Doe as your log-in name and Ed Smith as your display name. During the conversion, XenForo grabs the registered log-in name and that ends up being the username on your account. People are not disappearing, only their display names are away.
Lisa, you're only the best! That's another pop out of the dark place. Tell Gary to give you a big hug on my behalf.
Don'tCallMeJimmie
Member
If/when you have a moment and aren't jousting with the Weevils or Boggins.
Mike
Well-Known Member
Be sure to check your PMs before you log out.
Lisa is snickering at me, because I managed to fix some major problems with the out-dated styles. If you look at the forum home page, you'll see there are now icons to show which forums contain new threads and which do not. You'll also see the RSS icons appearing where they should. Tacks are on the pinned threads and the padlocks are on the locked threads. Lisa is laughing at me, because she is pretty darn sharp at graphics herself and I was in low hover, trying to make the sprite sheets. But I learned a bit about using the GIMP today AND I fixed some problems. So life is good.
Don'tCallMeJimmie
Member
Frosty sir and thanks!
Mike
Well-Known Member
You may see some strange things happening over the next 45 minutes to an hour. The site might slow way down and might even refuse to load. But you will appreciate it, when we get everything finished. We're out to set a new land speed record in the XenForo class. 
EDIT - Looks like we're still up and running. That's a good sign. <fingers crossed> I'll try to keep everyone updated with what to expect.
EDIT - Looks like we're still up and running. That's a good sign. <fingers crossed> I'll try to keep everyone updated with what to expect.
Mike
Well-Known Member
Wow, we've stripped all the trick scripts off the server and the site is still running pretty fast. Wait until we start doing some memory caching on the database, as well as opcode caching AND data caching on the backside. 
And I'll be tweaking the database a wee bit, as well. That should pick up some more performance, as well. The site is going to be fast enough you'll be able to read your posts before you even submit them.
And I'll be tweaking the database a wee bit, as well. That should pick up some more performance, as well. The site is going to be fast enough you'll be able to read your posts before you even submit them.
Mike
Well-Known Member
Oh yeah, baybee!
Page rendering times on the forum index page (average of five loads each)
Invision forum with eAccelerator doing opcode caching - 0.4500 second
XenForo forum with eAccelerator doing opcode caching - 0.3670 second
XenForo forum with eAccelrator doing opcode caching and storing back end data to files - 0.1556 second
Xenforo forum with eAccelerator doing opcode caching, storing back end data to files and some php.ini tweaking - 0.1304 second
XenForo forum with APC replacing eAccelerator as opcode cache engine - 0.1346 second
XenForo forum with APC doing opcode caching and also caching back end data - 0.1233 second
Much as I thought, APC slowed us down from what eAccelerator was doing. But as soon as I started caching back end data in APC, it picked right back up.
As soon as I can get Memcached configured, we should pick up some more.
Page rendering times on the forum index page (average of five loads each)
Invision forum with eAccelerator doing opcode caching - 0.4500 second
XenForo forum with eAccelerator doing opcode caching - 0.3670 second
XenForo forum with eAccelrator doing opcode caching and storing back end data to files - 0.1556 second
Xenforo forum with eAccelerator doing opcode caching, storing back end data to files and some php.ini tweaking - 0.1304 second
XenForo forum with APC replacing eAccelerator as opcode cache engine - 0.1346 second
XenForo forum with APC doing opcode caching and also caching back end data - 0.1233 second
Much as I thought, APC slowed us down from what eAccelerator was doing. But as soon as I started caching back end data in APC, it picked right back up.
As soon as I can get Memcached configured, we should pick up some more.
Mike
Well-Known Member
Cha-ching! I got it working. And the average time dropped another 0.002, down to 0.1213 second.
Uh, guys, that means page load speeds have dropped 73% in the last 8 days. And guess what? I think I can make it faster yet. It's going to take some time, because I need to change some 130- 140 database tables from one storage engine to another. But I want to give you everything we've got to give, so I'm going to tackle it.
Uh, guys, that means page load speeds have dropped 73% in the last 8 days. And guess what? I think I can make it faster yet. It's going to take some time, because I need to change some 130- 140 database tables from one storage engine to another. But I want to give you everything we've got to give, so I'm going to tackle it.
