* Update: all of our sites should now be fully back to normal, it turns out it was an issue with our servers after all! It’s frustrating how long this has taken to resolve, once again huge apologies to all of our regular readers and everyone who reads road.cc for the patchy experience over the past couple of weeks.*
You might have noticed that the website has been running a little on the slow side recently, and navigating between pages, especially when logged in with a road.cc account, has been particularly difficult. We’ve definitely noticed too, as it’s made working on the website pretty tricky and frustrating these last two weeks.
We’ve been experiencing a number of issues with the server over that time and the exact cause of them has been hard to pin down. The ChatGPT bot (and some others) hoovering up a fair bit of the server’s bandwidth certainly wasn’t helping, and we’ve blocked those, but the root cause of the slowness looks to be down at the database/application level and we’re still hunting for the fix. We haven’t released anything new to the site in the past few weeks, so the reason why the site has suddenly slowed is unclear.
What can you do?
The site currently works better if you’re logged out, because a lot of the time you’ll be seeing cached pages that aren’t directly from the affected server. Obviously you can’t comment if you’re not logged in, but you’ll probably find the site easier to navigate. Other than that, it’s mostly going to be a case of being patient with us. We’re really sorry for the continued disruption and are confident the site will be back up to speed soon.
Thanks to HoarseMann for conjuring up the lead image, originally posted in the comments underneath the live blog on 21st September. This has been a hugely frustrating time for us, but you gave us a good chuckle!
54 thoughts on “*It’s fixed!* road.cc website issues — an apology and some updates”
Superb trolling. At least I
Superb trolling. At least I hope it’s superb trolling…
Damn. Beat me to it!
Damn. Beat me to it!
I saw that and just assumed
I saw that and just assumed it was symptomatic of a dodgy query join or corrupt database index.
The new WYSIWYG comment box
The new WYSIWYG comment box editor is somewhat new, isn’t it?
I see there is a new box in
I see there is a new box in red over the Road.cc logo that lets me know how long the next comment will take to load. Which is nice.
Should have recruited ChatGPT
Should have recruited ChatGPT to help you find the problem with your database.
I just assumed you’d been
I just assumed you’d been bought by Elon Musk and hat he was applying the same technical genius that he polished twitter with
Interesting point about being
Interesting point about being logged in. I’ve just tried browsing the site using a Safari Private window and it’s loading really quickly.
Good luck with tracking down the issue. From the small amount of software development I did in the past, I can imagine the difficulty fault-finding a live system.
Thanks for the update!
Thanks for the update!
It’s a free site so I’m not gonna complain, we appreciate there will be problems from time to time
EddyBerckx wrote:
I’m a subscriber. So I’m paying, even if it is generally a free site.
When I first come to the site – before I log in – the initial pages loading are waiting (a long time) while I get lots of messages saying this or that is loading (when I’ve googled them, they’re all ad server services).
Once (if) I do manage to log in, about half the time I get a 504 error when I’m trying to ‘like’ a comment, or to reply or quote one.
I get a 502 error from time to time too, but not that often…
Thanks for the update,
Thanks for the update, thought it was my ancient Linux laptop at first.
It’s definitely getting
It’s definitely getting better, the error messages are appearing far quicker than they did at the weekend!
Not convinced it’s getting
Not convinced it’s getting better
Check your irony filter
Check your irony filter 😉
Check your irony filter
Check your irony filter 😉
I obviously meant to say
I obviously meant to say “double check your irony filter”
Two’che
Two’che
It’s an improvement, leave
It’s an improvement, leave the site like it is.
Less rubbish to read, and more elderly mamils tying themselves in knots trying to work out how to comment now haha
I’ve just been reading about
I’ve just been reading about the Purton ships graveyard again.
Left_is_for_Losers wrote:
It’s true, you have been on here less so it may well be a price worth paying.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Not to worry, it’s back to normal now pretty much so I look forward to more dialogue with you (who definitely doesn’t follow me around)
Hello everybody. Get the
Hello everybody. Get the service from servers from Pornhub, or Youporn, etc…they are the fastest in the world…really…it won’t affect the content…only the speed… 🙂
Been told off for being too
Been told off for being too quick….
Came here for this, as they
Came here for this, as they say…
Would the site not have to be
Would the site not have to be renamed road10.cc (if one takes Godley and Creme’s rather optimistic estimation…)
There’s a band name in there
There’s a band name in there somewhere… road10, that sounds good! “I’m Madone Ride Me”…
This prompted me to remember
This prompted me to remember a conversation from my student days -what would a Steely Dan and 10cc supergroup be called?
Being edgy indie kids we settled on “Utter Wank”
Spammercial wrote:
…and it’ll stay up…
I am not surprises at all the
I am not surprises at all the errors; there are loads of CORS issues which will slow down a WordPress based website down to mollases. Plus a bunch of 404s on files that really don’t need to be loaded.
Just my two inflations on the ole track pump.
boardmanrider wrote:
I thought road.cc ran on Drupal rather than WordPress.
My money is either on database snags or hosting config issue. The former maybe based on the fact it works better when browsing as a non-authenticated user.
You are indeed correct, it
You are indeed correct, it does appear to be Drupal. That said CORS will slow down a site which would as you suggest a hosting config issue.
Site seems to be behaving
Site seems to be behaving currently. Is it too soon to say?
Possibly moved? I briefly saw an error from Apache rather than nginx.
Yep it’s fixed now, it was a
Yep it’s fixed now, it was a server issue after all! Apologies again.
Thanks folks. Like a goalie
Thanks folks. Like a goalie your web support person is now either a hero (for sorting it) or leaving (for it happening in the first place).
chrisonatrike wrote:
It’s not usually worth firing someone over computer issues as they’ve now got experience on what not to do. The exception would be if someone repeats the same kind of mistake, but this doesn’t sound like that case.
Jack Sexty wrote:
I’m kinda curious now. Was it failing hardware or some software config issue?
mark1a wrote:
I saw an occasional Apache error a week or so ago, but I assumed that the backend (Drupal?) was using Apache with NgINX as the load balancer/reverse proxy. If it is Drupal, then it’s not too difficuly to run that directly with NgINX (php-fpm IIRC).
Well done.
Well done.
Though we seem to have lost post count.
ktache wrote:
yup, post count has gone. it will return. but it was an unreasonably heavy query in its current guise and needs a bit of finessing
dave atkinson wrote:
This is something I’ve always wondered – if I was going to implement a post-count, I’d just iterate an INT in whatever database table most closely resembled our user profiles for each comment, and just leave it at that. If a post is added, it goes up by one, but if a post is deleted, it stays the same.
But I’ve noticed that our post-counts drop when trolls get banned (I’ve hit 400 posts at least three times now). Surely, it’s not querying the database to calculate how many posts we’ve made, every time it our user-information is displayed?
Don’t feed the trolls, and
Don’t feed the trolls, and definitely don’t quote them, then when they go too far, and they always do, and they are erased from history, your stuff will not vanish with them
BalladOfStruth wrote:
That requires extra logic though, so it’s more usual to just do a sum of the comments that match a particular commenter. If you set up the relevant indexes (assuming a typical relational dB) then it should be a quick operation without having to worry about updating a count. When you don’t have the relevant index or the query optimiser chooses the wrong plan, then you can start having full table scans which doesn’t scale well. However, that’s doesn’t usually cause a noticeable problem until you start having millions of records.
Again, front-end guy, so I’ll
Again, front-end guy, so I’ll defer to the knowledge of people who know better, but that “logic” (one line of code) can be handled by (for example) whatever PHP script receives AJAX request for the commment. When it generates the SQL query to add the comment itself to database, it also generates one to increment the post count in the “user_info” table. Then, when that page is rendered, and the query is produced to retrieve the comment, it just grabs the value of “postCount” from “user_info”. No need to calculate anything.
Not only is calculating the post count from every comment still on the database an unnecessary overhead, it’s also “wrong”. If I’ve made 500 posts, then I’ve made 500 posts. It doesn’t matter if 100 of them were responses to someone who’s been banned, I still made the posts. I’ve been members of a lot of forums for various hobbies, and not an single one of them has reduced a users post-counts when threads/posts have been removed.
hawkinspeter wrote:
The extra logic is just a database trigger, surely?
belugabob wrote:
It’s totally doable and personally, I’d slap in an extra field to keep track of number of comments. I do dislike database triggers though as once developers start using them, you end up with a mess of logic distributed between code and database triggers. You can also run into some issues with trying to update a row when you’re also executing a query – often known as a mutating table issue.
dave atkinson wrote:
But without post count, how will we know to ignore someone as a one-post wonder…?
Good point.
Good point.
Or a troll who changes their username.
Or the knowledge of a 10,000
Or the knowledge of a 10,000 post poster…
ktache wrote:
Is there such a thing?
brooksby wrote:
If someone posts rubbish, then does it matter if they’re a one-post wonder or a regular?
Will the “latest comments”
Will the “latest comments” section return to the front page as well? And will we ever get the capacity to click on someone’s name and see all of their posts instead of a “404 no bikes allowed here” page? Please?
I didnt think you would need
I didnt think you would need it with a photographic memory.
And we’re missing the new
And we’re missing the new comments at the bottom of the home page.
My favourite place to find them.
Whats happened to off.road.cc
Whats happened to off.road.cc ?