Originally posted by F4HAD:

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I dont understand how an online button clogs up the server, but a personal messaging system doesnt
It doesnt make sense, if every single user on afterdawn is alerted of buddy adds, and all sorts, the database has to make thousands more calculations per second, for example, if I were a computer system i'd be thinking, "who's added who in the last 0.000001 seconds, who's recieved a private message in the last 0.000001 seconds, who do i need to alert in the next 0.000001 seconds, etc..", i do have a point dont i?
All the server would have to do for an online button is, "who's online and whos offline", and even i could code it, so, could somebody please explain what the difference between this and the online button?
Is its because the online button is an image?
I really would like to know the answer to this question, because this is going to be stuck in the back of my mind for the next two days, lol, call it obsession :)

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Originally posted by dRD:

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Originally posted by F4HAD:

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I dont understand how an online button clogs up the server, but a personal messaging system doesnt
It doesnt make sense, if every single user on afterdawn is alerted of buddy adds, and all sorts, the database has to make thousands more calculations per second, for example, if I were a computer system i'd be thinking, "who's added who in the last 0.000001 seconds, who's recieved a private message in the last 0.000001 seconds, who do i need to alert in the next 0.000001 seconds, etc..", i do have a point dont i?
All the server would have to do for an online button is, "who's online and whos offline", and even i could code it, so, could somebody please explain what the difference between this and the online button?
Is its because the online button is an image?
I really would like to know the answer to this question, because this is going to be stuck in the back of my mind for the next two days, lol, call it obsession :)

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Say, private messages. They get "updated" only when someone writes one -- and then system inserts that into the database and then sends out a notification to the recipient. So, only one database insert there.

Same goes for writing a new message to a discussion thread -- only one "action item", in this case, a database insert, is required. "Selecting" stuff from database is much, muuuuch faster -- so when you view a discussion thread, we select messages from the database for you to view, but as "SELECT" is about gazillion times faster, we can have gazillion more people viewing stuff than writing stuff with our current database system. (We get about 1,500 - 3,000 new messages a day, so its about 2 posts per minute per day).

Now, a system that calculates who is online can't rely on recording data when users are logging in, as most of us don't ever log out. Thus, every single page view a user makes on our site would have to update the database for that user, stating "WOOHOO! YO! I'm still here! Actually the last time I was seen was when I loaded a page today at 10:59:32". And as we get about million page impressions per day -- and if _every_ page load has to update that data, it'd mean one million "INSERTs" or "UPDATEs" into the database. And as those operations are "gazillion times" slower than "SELECTs" -- and our system "survives" currently about million - two million selects per day, we'd need to have gazillion times heavier database equipment, just for this feature.

Clear enough?-)

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Originally posted by F4HAD:

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point proven, i understand.
one more question, if you dont mind me asking, what are the server costs per month, approximately for afterdawn, and does making donations to the site affect that?
say, for example, if i were to donate £20 to afterdawn, what would that be put to?

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Originally posted by F4HAD:

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i understand now, so it works a lot like google adsense doesnt it?
So, if i were to click one of those links, afterdawn oy gets paid 20p, etc...???????

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