Registration Experience (Good or bad?)

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

I'm back to the "you are not signed in" business. *humph*

 

[bolen]

How hard is this problem to fix. It seems like you just need a large bandwidth to your server. Is this a really difficult problem which no one is willing to put the time into fixing OR
Is this a matter of money which people are unwilling to spend on a server capable of handling the trafic OR
Are the IT people at GenCon just not very good OR
Did I miss a point?

Does someone here have any knowledge of this

 

[The_Universe]

My new favorite:

Content-type: text/html
Software error:
Can't call method "fetchrow" without a package or object reference at /gcmain/rr/rplib.pl line 1010.

Of couse, now it's also telling me (drum roll, please) "You are not signed in."

 

[vutpakdi]

How hard is this problem to fix. It seems like you just need a large bandwidth to your server.

My understanding (a layman's understanding, relatively speaking: I'm an interaction designer, not a web backend guy) is that it's a combination of high bandwidth + high web server capacity + performant database server + performant payment server that is required to handle something like lots of people trying to hit a transaction server at once.

Lots of bandwidth doesn't do any good if your database server is a P2 with a really full, slow hard drive.

Ron

 

[freebfrost]

Der Kluge, I'd never thought I'd say these words, but you are one good-looking guy!

 

[bolen]

Ron

Why cant you run a queue of say 100 people let the first one on and then queue the next one? Is it not that simple? (Note I know nothing about this I am a physicist)

Brett

 

[The_Universe]

Der Kluge, I'd never thought I'd say these words, but you are one good-looking guy!

Well, I hear he used to be Die Kluge....at least until the surgery....

And with that, I'm giving up and heading home. Best of luck to all of you!

 

[Mixmaster]

My understanding (a layman's understanding, relatively speaking: I'm an interaction designer, not a web backend guy) is that it's a combination of high bandwidth + high web server capacity + performant database server + performant payment server that is required to handle something like lots of people trying to hit a transaction server at once.

Lots of bandwidth doesn't do any good if your database server is a P2 with a really full, slow hard drive.

Ron

Exactly.

Dual (or Quad) processers would be better.
More RAM is always a good thing.
Seperate each application to it's own server solves a multitude of problems.

I can go on like this all night.

 

[CarlZog]

I acknowledge your point. You don't have to spend all the money the 1st year. You can do a 2 or 3 year upgrade. But don't trumpet all the "changes" you're making and have it fail EXACTLY the same way as last year.

Furthermore, we (the gamers) are willing to help (FOR FREE!) on stress testing, tips and feedback - They bristle. I could always have used a extra hand if offered. It comes across as arrogance.

Don't get me wrong. I'm just suggesting reasons why they may not care. I'm NOT defending bad service.

Yes. If I were them, particularly given the computer-oriented nature of the customer base, I would have gone to substantial extra effort to insure that an online registration scheme for my biggest product was working as intended under heavy load.

As for accepting "free help," I wouldn't have bristled, but I would have politely refused. It wouldn't be arrogance -- just not as useful as you might think. It's the kind of thing where a million experts and would-be experts would be knocking at your door with a million opinions, ideas and suggestions, but none of them would have the whole picture, so you'd be wading through a LOT of well-meaning but flawed and largely useless advice. It's just not as effective as having one, well-organized, competent team in place. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they have that.

 

[der_kluge]

Der Kluge, I'd never thought I'd say these words, but you are one good-looking guy!

Yea, I get that a lot!