More Blog Entries Please

Thank you for the feedback. I'm glad someone is reading the blogs. I think the blog may be my favorite section of F:AT.

The dilemma we have right now is that F:AT has been suspended three times for excessive CPU usage. The primary way to cut CPU usage is to reduce the number of calls we make to the database. The way to do that is to reduce what information we have on a page.

Over the next week or so, I will be trying to fine tune the site in an effort to find the right balance between desired content and resource usage.

At this time, I am leaning in the direction of a very lean Home page, as that is the page that gets the most hits, however the majority of those hits seems to be from first time visitors, many of whom decide that this is not really not what they were looking for, and bounce away. Therefore, it seems to me that it may be sensible to create a lean front page whose primary audience is first time visitors. Something that has enough information to let then know what the site is about, and possibly entice them in, but lean enough that we don't waste our CPU use on people who are just going to load the page and then leave.

This means that we probably should have a home page for members who read F:AT on a fairly regular basis. I'm thinking that this page may have more information, but less bells and whistles - perhaps just text lists of current articles, blogs, comments, threads etc.

Anyway, as I said, I will be playing with the layout and contents of the pages to try to find the right balance. Knowing how people read F:AT, and what they actually use is very helpful. So let me know.

Ken B. wrote:

A front page for welcoming guests makes sense.


A "heavy" user like myself--and I'm assuming like much of our core readers--can use a hub that has the last five articles, the last five blogs, and a quick view of the latest blog/article comments and Trash Talk threads. One-stop shopping.

Bounce from the hub to areas of interest as indicated by new content--new blogs, new articles, new comments, new Trash Talk threads/comments.


We could really have a very lean front page with a welcome blurb, the latest article, the latest cartoon, and the latest blog. That should be pretty lean, I reckon.

This pretty much sums up what I have been rolling around in my head for the past few days. I'm going to play with different configurations to see what gets us the most bang for our CPU usage.

JMcL63 wrote:

Your trailing code is showing again ubarose!

PS. And it's screwing with the page's width settings to boot.

I know. I have to run that when I'm changing stuff around to see what the impact is, and if I create any errors. So you either have to live with it, or I have to take the site down while I work.

Notahandle wrote:

I enter at Trash Talk and then move to Articles, so if most of the regulars have a similar approach then a slim front page for newcomers makes sense... And in keeping with the F:AT attitude it should be lean and mean!

What I have learned is that there are several different ways our core readership accesses the site. We have people who come in through the forum, others come in via the front page, some head straight to the article page. We have people that check in several times a day who want to see the current article, and up to the minute comments and threads; others once a day that want to see what the featured article and blog is; others once a week that want to see a weeks worth of blogs and articles listed; and some once or twice a month who just want to see the most popular article of the month.

Each of these different types of readers wants everything that they are interested in all on one page. However, as our readership has grown, it simply is no longer possible to suit all of them on a single page. It just requires to much processing to have 10 articles, 10 blog entries, 10 recommendations, recent comments, recent threads, and the top 5 hotest articles, blogs and threads of the month, all on one page.

Death and Taxis wrote:

Yes, I was thinking more or less the same thing as ozjesting. I always arrive at the homepage, do a quick scan for anything new before heading to the forums. I could set my landing page to the forums if it helps any.

My goal is to spread the information out equally over different pages that are optimized for different reading styles, so that there are no "heavy" pages. The Front Page is now good for a "quick scan for anything new" without the additional load of trying to show a lot of older articles.

Southernman wrote:

When you say F:AT has been suspended for CPU overuse - is that just the server doing some throttling down in response to our use, or is it the provider actually dumping us for a short period ?

It's our provider being proactive and actually suspending our account before our resource use messes up the other sites on the server.