islandwarfare.com coming soon

I am currently looking for users to beta test Island Warfare, which is a new game I am developing. In it you start with an empty island that you can build various types of buildings on, train soldiers, and sail off to conquer other players islands.

To sign up to become a beta tester go to:
http://islandwarfare.com

Image upload issues

So Dreamhost recently locked out creation of new files on the account that hosts editthis.info. It turns out that that account had 250,000+ files, and huge file systems have been a problem for them regarding stability. Almost all of the files were in the image upload directory.

The problem is mediawiki creates a large number of directories, thumbnails, and archive files for every image uploaded. Many of the directories it creates are actually empty, and every directory in linux is really just a file.

I went into the image storage location and ran the command:

 nohup  find -depth -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \;&

Which deleted all empty directories, which brought me back under quota, but it won't be long before file count gets to a point where real files will have to be deleted... so I am blocking image uploads for right now.

The solution I am looking at is possibly making image uploads a premium service only, and just charging a small cost for this. So many users create wikis on EDI, upload a few images, and then stop using the site. This will make it so those users don't have an impact on the usage, and the more heavier users most likely won't mind paying a few bucks to host their images.

As always, if you ever want you can host images elsewhere, and then include them in your pages. You simply put the url to the image in your page, and it automatically shows up there.

Transfering old wikis

Some of the wikis still reside on the previous server. There is now a transfer system in place. Simply go to your wiki's url and it will ask you if you want to transfer. Click the link and it will add you to the transfer queue.

If the transfer queue gets stuck (no wikis are disappearing off the queue after an hour) feel free to send me an email (account robkohr and I use gmail). It was hacked together the other night, and sometimes needs a little push.

Wiki Creation back up and running

Create a new wiki today!

.....
UPDATE: Ok, not quite working yet. Debugging...


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Updated update: didn't really do anything, but it seems to be working now.

Editthis.info downtime

UPDATE at the end of the posting
---
Editthis.info will be down from Friday May 23rd to roughly Friday May 30th. My family and I are moving from New Jersey to San Francisco, California, and it will take about a week before the server is set up out there. My goal is to have it set up in 5 days, but I think 7 is more realistic.

I will rush and push to get this set up immediately, and I am sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

Thanks,
Rob



UPDATES:
This will be a partial downtime. I am transferring some of the wikis with the highest traffic to a dreamhost private server, and moving the domain temporarily to point to that server. Unfortunately all of the wikis cannot be transfered and will be down for the week. These are the wikis that are currently being transfered in the order that they will be transferred:
'choose_your_own_adventure', 'scp_wiki', 'code_wiki', 'londonbirders', 'timesplitterswiki', 'psy3241', 'psy3242', 'bs01_game_team_', 'bloggerhacks', 'elimine', 'rickyrab', 'superdickery', 'vandalpedia', 'glitches', 'runewiki', 'sonar', 'kaiserreich', 'charas_project', 'ben10versepedia', 'usgs', 'jtv_wiki', 'sotf_wiki', 'dxx', 'cecilia', 'undertherainbow',
'top_trumps', 'inselkampf', 'flab', 'egs_mayhem', '20803', 'sandboxwiki', 'expanding_your_horizons', 'bidoof', 'kokorodatabase',
'deathmenwalking', 'pornopedia', 'wormpedia', 'wolfapedia', 'fat', 'wikiventure', 'hanfburgwiki', 'cod', 'roach_busters', 'super_formula', 'ms_paint_brawl', 'banarte', 'dexnet',

This is based upon google analytics for count of unique vistors. The rest of the wikis will be back up by the end of next week.

cueFlash version 2 is here!

The new version of cueflash is now out. It has been rewritten from the ground up with the following goals:
*Easier to add features to - my previous version was pretty poorly coded
*Decks are no longer copied when imported by new users - this created a bloated db
*People can edit each other's decks, making the system more wiki like

There are lots of other features I have planned, so stay tuned. This is just the first iteration.

All of the data from the prior system has been imported into the newest version. You can still access the old version at http://old.cueflash.com , but keep in mind that it isn't being maintained and nothing you add to it will be imported into the new version of cueFlash.

Thanks!
Rob

EditThis.info .... fast

The network seems to be back up to speed. I am still going to moving off the current ISP, as I haven't been happy with their service recently.

EditThis.info .... sloooowww

I am currently research new ISPs since recently it has had intermittent slowness/outages. I didn't really have a problem with them when they were out for a power outage, or a downed line, or a nearby transformer bursting into flame. That is just the way the network crumbles. Now it just seems to be random and frequent. Obviously their success in signing up new customers has led to me losing customers as their network gets saturated.

Current options I am looking into:
*Signing up with a new ISP. Most seem to be more expensive for what I want to do and/or provide slower outbound bandwidth
*Moving back to a web hosting company, except dedicated
**This would be more expensive, but may be worth it in the long time as I am looking to host more products and they will be more relyable
**I will have to do a rewrite of editthis.info so my tweaks play nicer on another companies server... this may be good since ETI is in desperate need of an upgrade.

In the end it comes to a cost/time issue.
C)EDI makes just enough in ad revenue to support its current setup, and dedicated hosting would put it in the red. There is a lot of free wiki hosts out there, and I don't know if charging a premium would really increase revenue enough to make up the difference
T)The system would have to be revamped to both upgrade it and to move it to most servers.

In the end, I think rewriting it will be the best plan. I am not satisfied with its current lack of portability and a number of structural issues. I also admit I am a better programmer than a sysadmin, and it is better to hand this off to be hosted by professionals. I expect to have cueflash out the door by the end of the month (another project I felt needed a rebuild) and after that I am going to try my second crack at rebuilding EDI.

cueFlash version two!

A new version of cueflash is in development and will be released shortly. It will feature deck ratings, ajax card loads (just loads the content of the cards to speed up card viewing), comments, and a cleaned up interface.

The current design (not really functional) is at:
http://robkohr.com/dev/cueflash.com

You can see the current working system at:
http://cueflash.com

Feel free to comment here with any suggestions.

Thanks,
Rob

ConstantSun blog moved to blogger

1In an effort to maintain information flows during down times, I have moved the ConstantSun status blog to blogger.

Please go here for to check for updates:
http://constantsun.blogspot.com/

Thanks,
Rob

PS: Old posts will still be available here.