Site hosting

Submitted by TIMMMAAY on

Question for the powers that be;

What will it take to upgrade the hosting of this site? Seriously, anytime there is heavy traffic here there are constant 522, 502 errors like clockwork. This is the only site that I visit that has this problem.

Please fix it. The hamsters on the wheel aren't keeping up anymore, and really haven't for several years now. I think maybe they be dead, I don't know.

Stashamo

December 16th, 2016 at 12:33 PM ^

often. anytime there is a big announcement or game or news tidbit, this is constantly a note that the server is up.

i know we could setup a gofundme that would solve things and upgrade at the same time. christmas gift back to mgoblog? I think so!

julesh

December 16th, 2016 at 12:36 PM ^

The problem is that no one actually associated with the site has ever seemed amenable to that idea. I'd donate if I knew there was a plan to actually upgrade servers and the site in general, but without Brian's agreement we have no idea if that's what it would be used for.

poseidon7902

December 16th, 2016 at 12:45 PM ^

There's been a couple threads in the last 6 months about a revamp of the site, but I don't think I've seen anything in a while. There is a desperate need though for more processing power on the backend as well as a redesign to something that doesn't quite resemble geocities.  But you're right.  This is Brian's site and if he wants it this way, more power to him.  If he doesn't buy into us funding a new host (Azure or AWS would be swell) then these threads are just ways to gain points while everyone talks about the fact that no one can talk during anything exciting.  

Lancer

December 16th, 2016 at 12:38 PM ^

This site needs a complete overhaul. Setup a crowdfunding page and get it done. Bunch of amateur blogs that look and function better than this site. The content is A+ and deserves a better site.

bronxblue

December 16th, 2016 at 12:52 PM ^

I don't think it's about the money.  It seems like there are some technical limitations regarding the framework (Drupal) being used along with how the hosting is configured.  My guess is that an overhaul is necessary, but I'll be honest, it's a lot of work and you gotta make it a job, and that's a hard sell.

bronxblue

December 16th, 2016 at 1:43 PM ^

It is my understanding that the version of Drupal running this site is around 6 and there is a push for version 7 ongoing.  Considering 6.x stopped getting even minor improvements to it in 2010, the framework could absolutely be an issue along with sub-optimal hardware configuration and usage.  My guess is that there are a lot of database hits for content that isn't being used and/or could be cached more effectively, as well as assets either not being cached efficiently.  Again, I've not seen the full architecture, but that's just my guess.

I don't think it's a hosting issue in the sense the provider can't handle the traffic generally; most decent web hosts I've used (AWS, Digital Ocean, Linnode, etc.) can take a beating without dying, and I doubt the traffic here is overwhelmingly high.  But if the load balancers aren't configured properly (or have insufficient backend servers to route traffic to), it doesn't matter your throughput maintained by the hosting service.

jayhawkM

December 16th, 2016 at 11:27 PM ^

Most sites have a bottleneck at the database, which seems to apply here. Based on my experience with Drupal, MGo502 is suffering from MySQL limits of concurrency and nonoptimized queries. Every page requires a ton of sql calls to construct but MySQL is not very good at handling high volumes of concurrent queries without more hardware and sharing/load balancing management strategies.

RoseInBlue

December 16th, 2016 at 12:43 PM ^

I've seen a good amount of these threads lurking over the years but I've never actually seen Brian say anything about it.  Does he even want to upgrade?  

I'm sure plenty would donate money but if there's no intention to get better hosting, there's not much point.  It seems like an automatic to me but I've never seen any comment on it.

jmblue

December 16th, 2016 at 12:43 PM ^

I thought Brian was talking about an offseason upgrade last year, or the year before.  I forget.  I wish it would happen.  I've come to expect the 502/503/504 errors whenever big news breaks.

alum96

December 16th, 2016 at 12:58 PM ^

This.  When I went on hiatus we were talking about it.  We talked about it the year before.  We talked about it the year before. 

I thought there was some talk about it "happening" finally about a year ago. 

Fast forward a year and it's the same.

I mean this is a big boy "blog" now - does Eleven Warriors fall over and fart every time a recruit announces or a big game is played?  That is a peer group member.

Yes the design is outdated but I guess that's part of the charm.  But the server issue I just don't get and I don't claim to understand - if it were as easy as hosting on Amazon Cloud I'm sure they would do it but the "don't ask because it's free" doesn't hold water at some point after years of the same issues. 

If there was a battle plan with a clear explanation of what money would go for and it would results in 99.99% uptime like major websites I'm sure the money would come through. 

yossarians tree

December 16th, 2016 at 2:17 PM ^

I haven't been on Little Green Footballs in years, mostly because the big fat lizard who runs it is an egomaniacal asshole (grumble, grumble, politicks), but even ten years ago that was an amazingly smooth-running website. Best feature was comments were automatically posted in real time at the end of the comment queu, so you could watch the thread progress without refreshing the page. I imagine there are many more innovations in 2016. 

So there ya go, fellas. Research project.