Categories: General

Announcing New V-Features: Rule V-Compliant Servers

WE'VE BEEN BUYSSE PREPARING NEW FEATURES

Anyone who has happened by Velominati this past week will know our site has been in a serious breach of Rule #5; we had a big uptick in traffic, and the site made like Van Summeren’s back tire. During this time, I’ve done everything I could think of from indiscriminately screaming at the computer screen, wall, or tech support to flinging wild Hail-Mary code updates against the wall in the hopes of a miracle fix. Sometimes it seemed a fix repaired the issue, when in reality it was just a lul in traffic and the site went right back to sucking again a few minutes later.

As a diagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive, let me tell you that this has not been a good stretch; when an inanimate object doesn’t do my bidding, my insides twist into a palpable rage. On the plus side, it forced me to make long-overdue site optimizations in order to squeegee every bit of performance out of these pages. I upgraded the database and went to sleep with the update scheduled to go live at midnight only to wake from dreams where I checked the site to find the same lackluster performance. Unable to sleep, I climbed out of bed only to find the same lackluster performance.

Finally, I had to face the fact that we’ve spent too long too near our server’s capacity. I chose the Red Pill and upgraded to a high-power server that (hopefully) can handle the load with ease. While I’ve certainly noticed some weirdness (and please let us know anything you notice yourself), I’ve been thrilled with the site’s performance so far, though our weekend traffic is always about half that of week days. Be that as it may, I’ve been having a blast today making some tweaks and just clicking on all the pages and basking in how quickly they come up.

A big thanks to everyone for their patience while we dealt with the slowness, to my fellow Keepers for keeping spirits up, and thanks to the Community for sticking around and posting despite the interminable waits for the pages to respond. We should be in good shape for the coming season. Cheers.

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

Buck Rogers says:

Feb 12 2012 at 6:44 am

Amazingly faster with posting my post from the preview to the submit! Almost thought it had not posted b/c it was pretty much instantaneous! Nothing like some Spanish Beef for the server!!!
Ron says:

Feb 12 2012 at 7:24 am

Nice work! I'm always amazed you find time to actually ride so much will all the work you put in, Frank!

Thanks.
The Oracle says:

Feb 12 2012 at 7:32 am

Nice and fast on the V-mobile site on my Fire, too. Chapeau, Frank!
BrianG says:

Feb 12 2012 at 10:24 am

Rule# 10, Frank. Rule# 10. Nice work.
BrianG says:

Feb 12 2012 at 10:36 am

Frank - Being in the IT business, I'm curious what kind of hardware requirements a site like this has? Care to share any of your traffic metrics?
G'phant says:

Feb 12 2012 at 11:08 am

Of course, the superslickserverspeed is bound to raise questions. (cCn you whereabouts test a server?) bbut the good news is that, by the time the investigation is completed and clenbyterol is determined to've been ingested via some upgrade code, 828 days will have gone by, so the retrospective two year suspension will only keep the server down for two more days. By my calculation that means we'll miss the third and fourth days of the Tour of Qatar. I think that's a small price to pay.

By the way, we're currently hosting Kim Dotcom (of Megaupload infamy) down here in NZ, in one of Her Majesty's executive suites, while the FBI seeks to finalize his extradition. He doesn't look like much of a cyclist, but he probably has a bit of spare time and seems to know a thing or two about big servers. If you'd like us to reach out to him for you, Frank, do let us know.
scaler911 says:

Feb 12 2012 at 11:20 am

@Frank. Nicely done sir. Nicely done. I can waste more time at work much more efficiently now.
Hatepe Hill says:

Feb 12 2012 at 11:57 am

@scaler911
Frank - Great job. Loading times in New Zealand are now silky-smooth. Thanks for your dedication,its appreciated.
brett says:

Feb 12 2012 at 12:31 pm

@Rob

It is hard to imagine this site without you Frank... Gianni running things would quickly lead to anarchy, Brett would yell at everyone (I can safely say this because we live on opposite sides of the world and have never met and never will) and the rest of the crew would instigate endless looping discussions of beer. So good on you and keep up with the OCD work that only you find scintillating - thank god.

Hey Rob... FUCK OFF!
itburns says:

Feb 12 2012 at 1:22 pm

Frank's secret of being so productive: