How you can make the forums run faster

[ixl]

I noticed last week that my "bot reaper" was being triggered many times by what turned out not to be "bots" at all. Instead, they turned out to be forum users that are apparently perusing the forums regularly but with browser caching disabled. These users generate so much traffic that they appear to be bots to the reaper.

When caching is on, your browser keeps copies of all the little graphics used on the forum pages when you go from page to page. When caching is turned off, every single time you load a new page, the server gets hit with as many as two dozen or more requests to reload the same images again. Every new page, the same images are re-requested. It's extremely inefficient both for you and for other users.

(How inefficient? Some of these false positives on the "bot reaper" showed a single user generating over a quarter of the requests to the server in a short period of time. Generally, one sure with caching off can result in several hundred hits on the server in a few minutes. Two or three people doing this would really degrade the usability of the site.)

I have changed the "reaper" so it is less likely that this will happen again. But I am also asking everyone to please consider turning caching on when browsing here, if it all possible. (It will also improve performance on other sites.) The reaper now requires a very high number of requests to be triggered, and I haven't had any more forum "gotchas" recently. But I cannot guarantee that it won't lock someone out if they run without caching and consume far too many server resources.

Thanks for your help.

Charles

[Jiggy]

how do i find out if caching is on?

and what is a "reaper"?

[Paul Komski]

how do i find out if caching is on?
ixl or others please correct me if I have not understood this right.

"Caching" is always on to the degree that visited pages (and their images etc) have to be placed on your pc somewhere so that they can be rendered and displayed in your browser. The standard place for this is in your Temporary Internet Files.

However browsers can be configured to react in different ways when you return to a page that you have previously visited; this behaviour can also be modified depending on the length of time since you last visited the page and whether you have closed and reopened the browser in the interim. It may also interact with how you want pages for off-line browsing to be configured.

For the fastest browsing (that is re-browsing of pages) you should in IE go to Tools<>InternetOptions<>General<>TemporaryInternetFiles<>Settings and set "Never" for Check for Newer Versions of Stored Pages. Then when you return to a page it will be just as it was when you last visited it; to get the latest version you would need to Reload/Refresh. In Opera go to File<>Preferences<>History&Cache where more-customisable options for "Check Modified" (including images) will be found.

I hope that this is what was meant and if so then confirmation of the most appropriate settings to help the "reaper" would be of much value all round.

[Mark Miller]

I need to know what setting you need in Xp The chioces are, Every time explorer starts. Once a day. Auto, or Never
Want to help.
Regards Mark

[sleddog]

If you use Opera, have caching on, and regularly visit this forum, the fastest way to browse is to switch graphics to 'show cached images only' upon arrival here (press 'g' twice). Before anyone asks, IE has no such feature ;)

[ixl]

Hi folks,

Sorry I forgot about this thread and didn't reply back. Yes, Paul basically has it just about right. I only have IE on this machine, and it's under Tools > Internet Options > General > Temporary Internet Files > Settings.

I have mine set to "Automatically" and don't have any problems with excessive image requests. I don't use Opera or NS any more (both were too buggy on my last machine, just ran out of patience) so someone else would have to help with those.

[stefanus]

Thanks Jiggy or is it Tiggy, I was going to ask the same Q.I will try what has been stated here even though I still do not fully understand??
Thanx anyway:confused:

Stefanus