Changes Are On The Horizon For Total Format

[Detomah]

Over the last few weeks and months, many things have been added to Total Format, to make your time on the site more enjoyable, some have been very successful, other much less so...

During this time however, the speed of the site has somehow become compromised and the focus of the site has become somewhat lost among all these features.

In the last 3 weeks I have virtually not been able to use the internet, due to a huge hardware failure of my personal computer, which had left me using an antique computer on a 56K modem and it was during this time that I noticed that Total Format is left severely lacking in some area's and needs a lot of work doing in those area's to get things back up to speed and looking the way I would like it to.

Therefore, I would like to give notice, that over the coming weeks there are to be some wholesale changes made to both the website and forum for Total Format, to correct the speed situation the general look and feel of the website and forum and some of the core features that need a big overhaul. During this time, there may be need to turn the site off for small periods and there may be some times where features suddenly change appearence or disappear altogether. Some features are to be removed during this time as they are either obsolute, bugged or simply not used enough to justify their overheads.

While I am open to suggestions as to how you feel things can be improved, I have to say, that over the last 3 weeks, I have put together plans of where I want to take Total Format and how I plan on achieving that and I am aware that although some of the things I plan on changing may be very popular, I am also aware that I will be making some very unpopular changes. All I can say regarding this, is, give it time, like most things, you will almost certainly forget these changes will have happened after a short while and will learn to enjoy them.

During this time of change, you may also notice various things such as bizarre colour changes and graphics changes that either don't suite or don't match everything else. This is to be done as part of my tests and although they may scare you, don't worry, I don't intend leaving everything in a mess once i'm done.

Anyway, this is just a heads up to pre-warn you.

Thanks for your understanding in advance.

Kind Regards

Detomah

Keep On TFing

[BabyBear]

Good luck with whatever you will be doing with TF ^^

(as long you don't kill the critters )

[Cintaria]

Originally Posted by BabyBear

Good luck with whatever you will be doing with TF ^^

(as long you don't kill the critters )

some poeple get too attached to things like virtual pets =/

Go Det!
TF FTW!

[Detomah]

Originally Posted by BabyBear

Good luck with whatever you will be doing with TF ^^

(as long you don't kill the critters )

The critters aren't going anywhere.

There is going to be a bit of an update to the critters in the next couple of days though, including the addition of extra species.

[Fallen-Angel]

how about you give me me badge from xmas and my mug from last years copms eh

[Ratio]

Well the front of house changes I have noticed so far:

The report button,
The forum thread activity icon things,
The top posters etc being cut to 5, on the main forum page

Have all coencided with a significant decrease in page loading time,
thats both at work and at home.

But i guess it's the back of house stuff that actually giveds the performance boost.

Great work.

[Detomah]

Originally Posted by Brandy

Have all coencided with a significant decrease in page loading time, thats both at work and at home.

But i guess it's the back of house stuff that actually giveds the performance boost.

I know it's a bit of a cliche saying - "it's just the tip of the iceberg", but it quite literally is just a tiny tiny tip of this particular iceberg.

Since getting back online i've had my second monitor sitting there constantly monitoring every single action done on the server, so I can see exactly where the spikes are stemming from, where the server is being hit hardest, who is doing what not and all that.

What i've done to the backend so far is nothing compared to what I have to do, but it has made a small difference to the speeds so far. It will make a much bigger difference within the next couple of weeks.

Changing a few of the graphics was more cosmetic than anything else though, it will have saved a small amount of load, but not a huge lot. the main reason for those changes was to check whether my planned overall change was actually doable and thankfully it looks like it is going to be, when those changes are finally implemented, it should make page loading virtually instant, throughout the entire site and forum.

I've so far managed to pinpoint 3 major areas that are causing drag, I can now concentrate my efforts on making them all together smoother.