User blog:Yyp/Blog System Update & Slow Load Times Lately

Posted:23rd July 2010 Last Updated:9th August 2010 Quick update on a few wiki related things. Some of you may know this already, but it is worth pointing out for those that do not.

Server Downtimes

I'm sure that many of you have noticed the occasional slowdown of the Wiki lately, sometimes resulting in nobody being able to save any edits. They are happening because Wikia is moving servers (or something to that effect) and that is resulting in "a few read-only times" due to increased demand on the servers that are still active while others are being moved. There are also moments when various features stop working or displays change etc etc. Load times should be improved once the whole thing is done (so they say), but no eta on when this will be - we'll just have to bear with it for now. They are supposedly keeping these things to low traffic times.

Blogs

There will be an update to the commenting system late next week.


 * Threaded replies: You’ll now have the ability to add an indented reply directly to a specific comment as you can on talk pages & forums to allow for a better organized flow of conversation. Not sure if this will involve using code or if there will be a button/tick box (I assume it will be a user friendly check box);


 * Paginated comments: Large numbers of comments slow down page load times and keep content from appearing quickly. So soon the blog comments will be split up into pages, with each page containing up to 20 comments (and allows for an unlimited number of threaded replies, apparently).


 * Comment sort order: The default sort order for comments will now be newest first (was oldest first). If you prefer to have comments sorted by newest last, you can adjust that setting to meet your personal preference.


 * Update
 * Wikia have decided that "while this isn’t necessarily the way everyone prefers to read comments the best choice for the whole community is to show the newest comment first. In order to maintain a cleaner, simpler layout there will not be an option to change this sort order in the current release." The update is now expected next Wednesday (4th August). Also, good news that the blog double posting bug has (supposedly) been fixed.


 * Update 2
 * Wikia have finished installing their new servers in Germany. These will be handling all Eastern & Central European traffic, so any continental European users will see faster loading times across all of Wikia. I suppose this will lessen the pressure on west European servers, so there might be a gain for all European users there, but I'm not sure. There will also be new servers in the U.S. These will help with some of the heavier work, including Semantic MediaWiki and creating image thumbnails.


 * Speaking of images, over the last few days there has been a problem with images not showing up. This is a Wikia wide problem and Wikia is aware of it. However, I have no idea when it will be fixed. We've been quite lucky with it only affecting a small number of pictures so far, but other wikis have apparently been suffering much more from it. I have no idea what the cause is, but you should still be able to view the image by clicking on it or going to the picture's page and clicking on it there.