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Bob and I are experimenting with a mirror for TopShelf on one of Bob's servers.
Remember this is a test system, it's probably not going to continue in the long term but we're experimenting on what we need in a mirror. Right now, it will update maybe once a day, maybe skip a day now and then or update twice somedays.
Ads are turned off, commenting and making new member accounts, blogs and posts of all kinds are turned off. PMs are either turned off or read only, same for looking at other user accounts and modifying some of the things in your own user account. Anything you do modify in your user account at SecondShelf may or may not be saved next time you visit.
Search is turned on at SecondShelf, including advanced search for visitors. In fact, there's not much point of logging in.
If you want visit and check things out, click SecondShelf.
If TopShelf goes down for some reason, SecondShelf should still be running since it's at the other end of the country. :)
Have fun while it lasts, this experiment is likely to end by mid-January.
Make comments here on this blog.
Hugs,
Erin
Comments
I like it. I went over and
I like it. I went over and started looking around.
How often is data replicated from TS?
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May the Stars light your path.
Joy
The Plan
Right now it's not. :) The plan is to do it once a day in the wee hours of the morning but we may not have that working right away.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Search Now Available at SecondShelf
Search is now enabled at SecondShelf and disabled at TopShelf, just for testing the system. Advanced Search will even work for non-logged in visitors.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Not bad but
Why is there always a 'but'? :)
I liked the cleaner layout but only some of the story front page graphics were removed.
I read Wendy_J's comments over at SS but I only understood partly what her problems are. I have no problems at all scrolling over images and I'm also using the latest Firefox version on a Windoze XP system; my BB speed is only 1mbs so it's not because I'm on a super fast cable connection.
Where I did agree with her was that the story headers are often far too big. There is no need for fancy graphics. A simple, standardised title, author, categories and (brief) synopsis is all that is needed. I don't find the quick list at the top to be of any help at all.
I also don't see why there's a list of users currently logged in. It doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother Wendy but I'd prefer to see it scrapped. However I do like the list of latest comments (I often click on them out of curiosity) and the list of newest blog/forum headings.
My dislikes are really very minor and I'm quite happy with the site as it stands. The really big plus is the ability to self-post. The lack of up dates at both SS and Sapphire's Place show only too well the huge advantages of allowing writers to post their own stories.
Thanks to you all
Geoff
The big "B"
The layout over on 2S looks amazing like my layout does here, as I have most of the extraneous stuff turned off here.
I got a laugh out of the dueling complaints about BC. Wendy wants a directory tree listing, nice and stripped down, just the posting date and title. One of the others was complaining about the lack of good story synopses. Can't have both.
I agree that some of the front page blurbs have gotten far too large, and need to be scaled back. I also never use the Quick Links and begrudge the space they take away at the top of the page.
The Recent Comments are something you'll have to pry out of my cold, dead, hands. I personally feel those are the easiest way to spot interesting older stories, by seeing what somebody else has found way back in the back of the Closet. Awhile back I went back to the very first page on the current site and whenever I'm looking for something to read other than the latest stuff I go back there and am slowly working my way forward. I hope my comments about some of those older gems encourages others to go check them out.
As for the complaints about images and non-.txt formating, I see all that as a plus for BC. There are some stories I will never post on a .txt-only site, just because I can't put the images and formating the way I want. Thank you, Erin, for giving us such a neat site! I love it just the way it is. :-)
Karen J.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Not an attempt at a different look, Geoff.
For practical reasons the ads and a few other things had to be removed to make the backup site work and not upset the main site. The backup site is NOT an attempt at a different look for TopShelf. Instead it is an experiment in the resources needed to run the site on a new generation of server(s) for the TopShelf site.
I really don't expect the backup site to run beyond the middle of January or so at least on my server. I have a rather limited bandwidth on my T1 line. The normal BCTS site is on a 10 megabit Internet connection and has about 6 times the available bandwidth than I do.
Again,
Fiction Only
I don't know if it would make any difference in transfer rate or search speed, but I was wondering if it is possible to exclude blogs and forums from being pushed to SecondShelf. My reasons for this, is that they are the community part of this site and it seems counter-intuitive to move this to an area where people have no reason to sign on, in part to stay out of the community.
There are limits here folks
Due to the nature of the Drupal CMS used to rum the sites there are some limits on what we can and can't do in setting up a backup site. I just got the thing running properly so give us some time to explore if it it even practical to have a backup site available.
The backup site is also an attempt to determine what server resources are needed for a future server upgrade. The server used for the backup site has a different type of hard drive in it and a different CPU/memory combination than the current BCTS server.
Bob Arnold
Looks Good and Other Comments
Great that there could be a backup when the main site is down, and if searching there helps with performance and stability on the main site, even better.
I really like the Online Users list. It lets you know when you PM someone if you're likely to get a quick response. It also provides a bit of hope when I see someone like the Admiral logged on once in a while that he's still around (and the possibility still exists that Christina Chase will be finished someday).
Erin, I've seen some of the threads that you've been involved in over on Story Site regarding navigation and the look of this site. I'll admit that for a long time, I avoided BCTS preferring FM and SS, but once I started reading a few stories here and spending more time here, I found that I preferred the BCTS layout. FM and SS are just places to find and read stories. This is much more of a community. To a large extent the layout (blogs, recent comment list, who's online on the front page, comments integrated with the story text) supports that.