Morrus, can I help?

[der_kluge]

Morrus, I don't know PHP, and I'm not knowledgable of Win2k, and I'm not that proficient in MySQL, BUT, I am a database guru (work with databases every day), and understand database technology inside and out. I also understand data modeling and schemas.

Did the MySQL database come preconfigured for the boards, or did you have to set them up from scratch? The reason I ask is that maybe they weren't set up in the most efficient way. I'd like to examine the MySQL database schema if at all possible. And the queries that run against it if that's possible. I want to make sure the tables have appropriate indexes, and are not fragmented.

 

[drothgery]

I'd add here that I do know Win2K, only know fragments of PHP, and what I know about MySQL is almost entirely secondhand (I primarily work in ASP/SQL Server), but I think that ENWorld might just be stuck with architectual problems.

As near as I understand it, PHP performance on IIS/Windows is rather bad because it's implemented by cgi, rather than as an ISAPI filter (like ASP and ASP.NET). On Apache/Unix, PHP is usually implemented as an Apache module, which is roughly the same thing as an ISAPI filter, and so a lot faster.

Then you've got a MySQL back-end. MySQL isn't a bad database when you're reading a lot of data, but when you're writing a lot of data (like the message boards at peak hours), it's not all that great.

 

[der_kluge]

That, and I imagine Win2k probably doesn't manage all those disk writes itself very efficiently. Disk performance would play a large part of this.

 

[Morrus]

The mySQL database is set in its default configuration. I'm certain that that isn't the best way to go about it - I've been told that it needs to be 'optimised'.

As for the Windows server - it may not be as good as, say, a Linux server - but I've never seen a Linux server in my life. I'm sure that switching would cause far more problems, of the error-between-chair-and-keyboard nature.

 

[der_kluge]

As they say in the programming world - moving from Win2k to Linux would be "non-trivial".

 

[Morrus]

Ah, but I'm not in the programming world. I'm in the 'Dreamweaver is my friend' world.

OK - so if, theoretically, I were to do something like this, how would it work? How long does it take to change OS? How would it affect the site itself in the meantime? Would I have to change the site in any way?

Bear in mind that in order to make this change, it will cost me money to switch my server package to another - and the EN World budget is in serious deficit right now, even with the shop, Wild Spellcraft and the advertising. That may change in the future, but I'd have to be really convinced to spend more money at this stage - everything I have spent money on so far has been at people's recommendation, and look at the mess that has gotten us into. This server was recommended to me by someone who shall remain nameless, and it turns out it may not be adequate; the previous server - the same thing. I'm not going to spend more money on resources to find out 2 months down the line that I've wasted it.

 

[drothgery]

I wasn't suggesting switching OSs (heck, I'm a long-standing Windows advocate); it's just that the software you're using for the boards isn't well-suited to Windows. A well-designed ASP.NET/SQL Server (or DB2 or Oracle) based board, on the same Win2K server, would almost certainly be a lot faster than the equaivalent coded in PHP/MySQL.

I don't know the bulletin-board software market, but I think it's likely that anything that plays very nicely on Windows would probably be out of your price range because it would use an SQL Server back end.

It might be a good idea to have two servers (which although more expensive than running one server would be a lot cheaper than a license for an enterprise database); a Linux or FreeBSD box for the boards and a Win2K box for everything else.

You're trying to do a lot of different things on one server right now, which is probably what's causing most of your problems; this server is fine for everything but the boards.