Is it me, or is the GRM forum moving slowly these days?

In reply to dean1484 :

How many hours of work do you think low 5 figures gets you in the software development world?  It is a lower number than you think.

Migrating to a new set of forum software while maintaining old posts is not going to be a low 5 figure job even with a friends and family rate.

IT and software development are not the same thing.

I am hoping there is a scheduled process or forgotten process taking up more time than it should.  If the forum has reached the limitations of it's design due to size issues, GRM is in for a world of pain.

In the meantime, do what everyone else does and open links in a new tab and let them load in the background.  If they time out, your computer or phone should automatically try again in a minute or two.

EDIT: This post took 4 seconds to write to the database and 11 seconds to render the page after writing.  Ouch.

At this point, the developers haven't found the issue, but don't anticipate it being related to our choice of framework or general site structure. And contrary to some of the posts here, our site isn't actually bespoke: We use a relatively common framework as the underpinnings of this site. What is bespoke is the forum and the user-facing pages, and I won't rehash the reasons for that in this forum post.

As the next phase of diagnosis, the developers are currently implementing more detailed monitors and logs to hopefully isolate the problem and then fix it. And as a temporary band-aid, we're investigating a faster/larger server to hopefully run the broken site faster until it's fixed. 

Think of it this way: Our car won't go more than 20 mph. And while we've built a custom body, the underpinnings are all common Honda parts. The developers are installing a few extra gauges to try and see what's happening under the hood. 

Tom Suddard said:

And while we've built a custom body, the underpinnings are all common Honda parts.  

That is funny!!!  Seriously made me chuckle Tom.   

At least it is Honda.  If it was a Mustang it would have crashed into a crowd of Forum users.    ;-)

ojannen said:

In reply to dean1484 :

How many hours of work do you think low 5 figures gets you in the software development world?  It is a lower number than you think.

Migrating to a new set of forum software while maintaining old posts is not going to be a low 5 figure job even with a friends and family rate.

IT and software development are not the same thing.

I am hoping there is a scheduled process or forgotten process taking up more time than it should.  If the forum has reached the limitations of it's design due to size issues, GRM is in for a world of pain.

In the meantime, do what everyone else does and open links in a new tab and let them load in the background.  If they time out, your computer or phone should automatically try again in a minute or two.

EDIT: This post took 4 seconds to write to the database and 11 seconds to render the page after writing.  Ouch.

Around my parts, 10K will get you between 60 and 100 hours of time depending on the level of the person working on something.  If you are talking about a Sr programmer then it is more like 40.  I have had similar issues that GRM appears to be having and I have been asked to write the same checks for IT services and IT contracts.  I also have two brothers that are Sr programmers.  I would like to think I have a reasonable grasp of what it takes and the costs of things in the IT world.   Finding a good IT company is like finding a good Independent Mechanic to work on your car.  

Y'all own the playground, and I'm grateful to get to ride the merry-go-round, so y'all can call it whatever you want.  However, since I'm the one that called it bespoke I'd also like to say, I didn't just pull that out of my butt.  Every similar thread since I've been here, it's been pointed out that this place is custom, and why you can't just migrate or upgrade to an off the shelf solution for "reasons."

So if it's really not so custom, well, see my previous post for the link to XenForo.

In reply to Lee :

Thanks for posting that link. I have a Porsche forum that is a mess (because Phpbb and I don't have time to learn all the little nuances of it) and I have been looking for a platform to migrate it to because my host Is dropping support for Phpbb.  I am going to look at that and see what the costs are as it may be worth it especially if its admin interface is simple/intuitive.   

Things seem to be much better this morning!!!  

In reply to dean1484 :

IT and programming are different.  IT is significantly cheaper.

Back when I was doing contract work for a company, I was lucky to get 1/3 of the billed rate.  I am not sure where you are finding programmers that work for $35 per hour.  It isn't in a central Florida metro area unless they are just out of college.

Quick update here: We're going to implement one fix late tonight/early tomorrow morning, and are expecting about an hour of downtime while it's applied. Hopefully it helps!

ojannen said:

In reply to dean1484 :

Back when I was doing contract work for a company, I was lucky to get 1/3 of the billed rate. 

People often confuse a company's billable rate with what their employees earn, that 1/3 ratio (more or less) is pretty typical across many different occupations.

ojannen said:

In reply to dean1484 :

IT and programming are different.  IT is significantly cheaper.

Back when I was doing contract work for a company, I was lucky to get 1/3 of the billed rate.  I am not sure where you are finding programmers that work for $35 per hour.  It isn't in a central Florida metro area unless they are just out of college.

Lower level IT and Lower level programmers are getting between 70-100K a year that is 35/50 an hour with a billing rate of 105/150 an hour.  The scale goes up from there.  I think I covered this in my previous post noting the various numbers of hours 10K will get you. What is your point anyway? If you want me to be wrong I will be wrong if it makes you happy.  I don't really care. 

stuart in mn said:

ojannen said:

In reply to dean1484 :

Back when I was doing contract work for a company, I was lucky to get 1/3 of the billed rate. 

People often confuse a company's billable rate with what their employees earn, that 1/3 ratio (more or less) is pretty typical across many different occupations.

This ratio is still in play.  It is exactly the math I use to bill out my employees.  

EDIT:  there is a caveat to this in that as the hourly pay rate goes up the multiplier comes down a bit as the overhead for some things remains the same no matter what an employee is getting paid/hour.  In the higher paid employees the multiplier can drop to about 2.4-2.7.   There is also the fact that it is really tough to get people to pay those #'s   I have an employee that is making 200K a year by the numbers I would be billing him at $300/hour but that is just not what the market will bear and about 50% of his overhead cost is similar to that of the employee that is making 65K a year.  So in reality I will be billing the 200K a year employee at closer to 240-260/hour 

Tom Suddard said:

Quick update here: We're going to implement one fix late tonight/early tomorrow morning, and are expecting about an hour of downtime while it's applied. Hopefully it helps!

Thanks Tom!!!

This site just got quite a bit snappier out here in the corner of the interwebs..  milliseconds instead of seconds kinda improvement.

Yeah, it does seem to have improved.

Hmmm.  Seems a bit laggy this morning, but not as bad as before.  Hoping that the fix doesn't turn out to be a flash in the pan:

Oh, this one is even better: