Regular visitors might notice that occasionally for brief moments lasting at most a minute or so, the website will go completely down. It happens more often than we would like, but for most readers, it should happen only rarely. It’s been happening for the last 3 months or so and usually happens near noon.

We’ve been tracking the problem for some time now. The problem is related to open mysql connections which are not being closed properly. We think it’s related to one of our plugins. Once the number of open mysql connections reaches some maximum amount, the mysql database resets with zero connections and starts afresh.

On another note, there are some general performance issues which we are trying to address. Sometimes the main page loads sluggishly, although to be honest, it’s a big page. Apparently, for many similar types of weblogs (engadget, etc) , it’s common for the home page + graphics to contain 500+ KB of data. (the single posts are rarely anywhere that big). (Obviously, if you are reading this through a feed reader, you won’t experience these issues at all). Even though the main page is that big, regular visitors don’t have to actually download 500 KB worth of data each time they load. More often, the graphics from previous loads are already in cache, so the amount of download is substantially less. Running a website involves tradeoffs. Yes, the main page may be a little slower to download, but on the other hand, it’s a long page full of the 12 most recent posts. That is a lot of content!. Obviously, if we wanted to, we could put only two or three posts on the main page, and the site would load as fast as lightning. But we’ve opted for a main page heavy with content than one a fast-loading one. (Feel free to throw in your two cents about that strategy).

In the past TeleRead has used the caching plugin to speed up page load time with mixed results. It’s probably time to reconsider doing that again.

Two other subjects to bring up. We’ll be testing web ads over the next few weeks, and we’ll do our best for it not to interfere with the user experience. We may play around with locations and prominence.

One other announcement about comments. When you make a comment, most of them (say 80-90%) should go live within seconds of hitting submit. A small percentage of comments end up in the moderation queue, but those are approved fairly quickly. If a significant amount of time has elapsed without your seeing the comment go live (maybe 12 hours), chances are akismet has identified it as spam. You should definitely let us know fairly quickly. Use the email links at the top right, and we can rectify the problem immediately. This really has not been a big problem, but when it happens, it is frustrating for all of us.

NO COMMENTS

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.