The site has become so latent and dismally slow that it's a burden to even come on here anymore. My computer is serviced, streamlined, and my connection is cable and fast. Every other site I visit comes over reasonably fast, but half the time I get connection errors to Renderosity, and when I do connect it takes 5 minutes to show a simple page. This site has gotten too big, there needs to be some changes made to accomodate the user load. I don't know if it's a trunk problem, bandwidth/funds problem, but it needs to be addressed ASAP. It's getting to be where I am just simply not coming on anymore, and it's quite sad for those who sell here and for those whom await comments of their posts. Not to mention there is no way to research credits or browse the freebies section or store. Either fix the ship or rent a new one because there are quite a few of us who are tired of trying to get into our own accounts. It's almost 2006, let's get with the program please. If I didn't know any better, it would seem like a certain CEO of Microsoft is in charge here. LOL! A simple explanation would be more than wonderful, and a fix is obviously more than over due. One simple thing we can all do as a community to help is to stop posting every day until they fix this mess. I post perhaps twice a month at best, and I do this intentionally. Limit posts to the forum, stay off chat...maybe even turn off your power in the house. Start a new charity for Renderosity Bandwidth Funds, call NASA and see if there's a satelite program for 3D communities. Anything to help address these problems as they are stacking up to tumble this site to the ground. I guess it's up to Admin now to answer the pleas. Perhaps start a fundraiser and call it "Please The Pleas Foundation". Come on, Admin, at least admit there is a problem here, and let's not dummy it up with a "we are working on it" answer as we have heard that for a squirrel's life now. 20 minutes lost just trying to post this.

I feel your pain. It's a huge site and I'm sure it will take time for them to fix, but it would be nice if someone came here and told us at least what they were planning by way of a fix.

I keep getting this error: "SessSQL: Host 'arthur.bondware.com' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'"

LOL SamTherapy! Seriously, this sit HAS become a royal PITA to get around on. It is simply too slow, and it MUST be affecting sales as well (even if market.renderosity.com is on another server...) I have heard something about the marketplace software being changed in january. I HOPE that goes for all of the site. But this post should really be in the Community Center or whatever that forum that no one reads is called... ;o)

Seriously, that's the error I keep getting today. :(

I got the same message for the first time(s) this morning. However, when I closed my browser, I got the same message when I tried to reopen Explorer. I dumped my temp files (which I do every day anyway) and logged back on. No problems so far, and the speed was as good as it's ever been. (I'm using a 4mbps cable connection.)

It gets slower the longer you stay on the site it seems. I usually get to page 3 of messages and then just... well... stop. Quite frankly, having to go to page 272 for a post people are still posting on (I'm exaggerating) has got to affect the speed. I wonder how much bandwidth could be saved by just having posts with new replies, bump to the top, to avoid having to chugg through 2 gazillion pages to get to the page you want. It's the most useless forum software I've seen still in existence and it has got to use a ton of server resources to put the pages up one after the other, each one a query of "ok which posts need to be on this page". That's ridiculous tbh. It slows the entire site down and I would not be surprised if it affects sales. If I get a timeout while looking to purchase something I saw... think I'll sit and wait?

I come here only when I need to anymore as it is such a pain to go into the forums or even the store. I used to love the archived files in the forums because I would often remember something and zip, zip, I could find it. Since they've changed the search feature, it is IMPOSSIBLE!!! Please let us know you are working on the current...and it has been current for awhile now...problems!! :(

What I know from the interview with Tim Choate a couple of weeks back, Renderosity will be ported to Bondware 3.0 somewhere in 2006. I'm not an admin, I just read the frontpage. But I am a programmer, and I know that a major overhaul is needed to fix the current sluggishness. And no one in his right mind would do a major overhaul on software that will be phased out shortly. So we'll have to wait for Bondware 3.0. But I sure hope the staff will make haste porting the site, this sluggishness is a royal pain, it hurts the community and it hurts the merchants.

Actually, the site made a liar out of me. It took forever to post that last comment of mine. And after I came to its defense! That'll teach me! : )

And Bondware 3.0 means exactly nothing to me. I want specifics. Bondware boasts the current (crappy) forums, the clunkyness off the site which is terrible to get around in and find anything. If I go to the marketplace... clicking on the logo brings you back to the marketplace, NOT the main site. That's TERRIBLE design as in it is completely inconsistent. The main site logo takes you to www.renderosity.com, the marketplace logo takes you to market.renderosity.com The galleries... I don't even look anymore. I wonder how many people actually do. For one thing there is not often something there that I actually want to see, for another it takes 3 hrs to do a simple search. No thanks.

Quote - Quite frankly, having to go to page 272 for a post people are still posting on (I'm exaggerating) has got to affect the speed. I wonder how much bandwidth could be saved by just having posts with new replies, bump to the top, to avoid having to chugg through 2 gazillion pages to get to the page you want.

It took me awhile to figure out a solution to that. When you click "poser forum", and come to the list of threads, at the very bottom is an option called "Mark All Read". Once you have read the posts, go back to the thread list and click "Mark All Read". Once you do that, you will only see a list of current threads. Of course you have to do that each time you read through the listed threads in order to keep only the current ones showing up.

I just looked at Bondware's main site forums. The speed is quite better than here, but I wonder if that is because the software is better, or a combination of a small number of posts, and minimal traffic.

Most of the time lately I have been okay with the speed of the site. I haven't had many hangups, not nearly like there were a few months back.

I don't know how MySQL handles data, as I work with SQL Server, but maybe that is part of the problem. Binary Large OBjects (BLOBs) such as images are hard for DBs to handle. Given the hundreds of gallery posts each day you have to figure there is almost always an image upload going on. My opinion on images has always been to save the path of a link to an image in a directory, rather than the image itself in the DB.

Given that images can be quite large (up to half a meg) and the fact that almost always there are two images being uploaded by one user at the same time (including the thumb) you have a big bottleneck on the DB. Combine that with people searching forums (another bottleneck) and 2k+ users surfing the site requesting pages (including image intensive pages like the marketplace and galleries) and you have a recipe for disaster.

I don't know enough about MySQL to judge it as a DB. I don't know how it handles things such as locks which even on industrial grade DBs are painful to deal with (I know.) I have to assume though, it isn't as ready to combat problems the way a SQL Server or Oracle could. It is a free, open source DB. Not that I believe it to be a bad product but you often get what you pay for. Please don't flame for these comments, I don't harbor ill will toward MySQL, in fact, I believe the product has been a boon to the web development world. That being said, there is a reason Wall Street doesn't house companies that run MySQL.

I think we should give Bondware the opportunity to upgade the site however they plan to. Remember, using this site doesn't cost you anything. Granted, merchants lose sales when people can't get to the products, but the common user pays nothing to post images and messages. Again, you often get what you pay for.

I am not trying to make excuses for Bondware. I, like all of you, get frustrated when I can't get to something. It's annoying that I am going to have to copy this whole message before trying to post, so I don't lose it to the black hole that is a session timeout, but such is life.

shrug Just hang in there all. There is war in Iraq, famine in Africa, tsunamis in Asia, billions in damage in the southern U.S. Life is too short to worry about slow-moving web sites.

Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, and Happy Holidays all!

the thing is, its been slower than molasses on the North Pole for a very long time. Its time for them to get off their duffs and fix it...enough lip gloss ... lets get it done !!!! Its getting to the point of leaving ... and I would except I like it here. But obviously a lot of us are getting really tired of it. I posted another thread just prior to seeing this one because It just ticked me off agian this morning just trying to read the forum. The message above took nearly a minute to post after I hit submit .... at least it didn't time out.

Well I'm not crazy about the speed either, but it IS a free site and I think maybe beggars can't be choosers. LOL

"but it IS a free site and I think maybe beggars can't be choosers" If you're a merchant, 50% of your take goes to Rosity. That's not just for admin and hosting purposes. A top selling merchant generates a lot of cash for the site.

Free? well it may be free for some folks, or even a lot of folks, but I spent nearly $400 in the store this year, which I bet is lowballing compared to a lot of people. $200 of that at least goes to the owners of Rendo ... so free its not.

Er Im sticking up for the Admin!!! All internet sites have bugs and bad days. I love this site, and I do get the error msg sometimes and it can be slow. BUT the good outweigh the bugs!!! So chill! SilverWyvern

"All internet sites have bugs and bad days." erm.. the "bad day" has been going on for about 5 years.. so please.. 'chill'

I'm probably going to get stones thrown at me...but, I've got my armour on, so, have at me ;) The programmers are working on upgrading the site, however, with as much information that has been posted on this site throughout the years, it's going to take a looooooooong time to transfer all of that over as well as make the site faster. I'm not going to go count them, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were close to 75 forums alone on this site, as well as tens of galleries, contests stored, challenges stored, as well as free stuff links for most forums. It is, by no means, going to be an easy feat. And, also, I feel your pain. If this message goes through, I'll count myself lucky. I've tried posting, myself, about a dozen times in the last 2 days, only to get the "flush" error message. MorriganShadow Poser Moderator

It does seem to be awfully busy lately. Are we be attacked by script kiddies? Has D|S brought in a horde of new users? Are people doing their Christmas shopping at Renderosity?

MorriganShadow, why on earth would we throw stones at you? You're not responsible for the way the site is behaving. I know you guys are just as hacked off with it as we are.

;) I know, but, well, I said "we're working on it". So, I was waiting for the rocks, bricks, and other throwable things to come my way ;)

Morrigan... stop ducking! reloads his mangonel

I'll stop ducking if you're throwing chocolate. Otherwise, I'll barrell-roll behind a brick wall :P ;)

"but it IS a free site and I think maybe beggars can't be choosers" If you're a merchant, 50% of your take goes to Rosity. That's not just for admin and hosting purposes. A top selling merchant generates a lot of cash for the site. I'm going to back up SamTherapy and Khai here. Free site has two connotations here. There are sites that are absolutely free for use. The other connotation is that the 'forum' is free, but there is a store. Store profits, one hopes, would at least partially go back into site maintanence. I declared myself outtahere a couple weeks ago when the final straw broke. When it takes a half hour to read several new messages here (and I've already finished email and all other frequented websites), that was it. My time is too valuable to spend so much just to read a message here or there. Now I see that the problem is becoming so ubiquitous that more and more of the forum messages are about this problem. It appears that we are at a cross-roads here. If this new-fangled Bondware site software just perpetuates the same problems, I'll only be visiting here to see my accounting and maybe buy something. Morrigan, incoming donuts! ;)

That's it. You guys need to quit figuring out my weaknesses. ^_^

even the store has been slow, not just the forums and galleries. I think its great a lot of the merchants have their own stores ... and if this stuff here isn't fixed soon, I think you will see a lot more little ma/pa stores opening up. great exposure here, but if you can't get the page to load, that feature goes right down the ol shitter.

I do have a small store here and I buy "stuff" here, but I still say it's a free site. Nobody is making any of us buy anything. The forums are free and the galleries are free and I appreciate that. The site is slow these days, but so what? I just keep trying if I need my Renderosity fix for the day. :-)

well, rockets, you must be a very patient person....but then again ... hopefully you don't get too miffed at this, but if everone had that attitude, nothing would ever be improved.

There are a lot of free sites, without the hassles we're having here. Free isn't a reason. Most of the sites I visit are free. RDNA, 3D Commune, Sam's 3D, DAZ and countless others that are free for all. Very few of our sites require a subscription fee. I have a paid subscription to Poserworld, the only one at the moment because of budgetary considerations. There are some that charge a subscription fee as well. Most of the sites, however charge nothing. There are some that have certain paid areas within the site, which are optional. Of course, most sell some items, as well. I just bring this up to clarify my position. Free doesn't mean slow or almost unreachable. I think a serious overhauling is necessary, before everyone drifts away out of frustration. Off the soap-box, for now.

hey, I don't have a problem if they're selling something, as long as there's free stuff available. (If they made this a pay site, the vast majority of folks would bail, leaving them with more than enough resources to host it..let's hope they don't go that route..

Remember, there's 1,100,000+ pictures on the servers out there, and they add up quickly (heck, just the ones I like is over 15,000 already), and all the URLS for the Freestuff, the marketplace, etc. It just is a victim of its' own success. There's other sites, like 3dCo..uh, woopsie..that are pleading with folks to delete pictures, so it's not just here..
Ok, went to Netcraft to see what 'Rosity's running on. 10 Linux servers, in 2 locations (maybe it's the traffice between the two that's causing WAN problems).

Message edited on: 12/10/2005 14:20

Are the people having the problem are on phone lines.

I'm on 3meg DL cable

6MBs Cable here...

I'm on DSL

For those other free sites, how many have a steady stream of 2000-plus concurrent users at all times?

And how many of those sites have the same number of stored images?

How about number of forum posts to scan through when searched?

Is this making sense yet? I know it's frustrating, but you have to look at it from their standpoint too. Do you really believe that they feel it is in their best interests to not have the site running top-notch? If Bondware gets 50% from merchants, and merchants don't sell product, how much does Bondware make?

1MB/s T1 destro75, this is why I mentioned CGTalk. This is no ma/pa site - it is haunted by professionals (you'll find ILM, Pixar, and the major studios hanging around), hobbyists, almost all of the major software companies are represented, handles all computer graphics, and I'd say that there are a fair number of images (there are forums dedicated just to posting them), posts, users, and online users. They do go up and down on occassion, but nowhere near as bad as this.

I just visited CGTalk.com. I didn't see a free option to register. I didn't look too hard, but from what it appears, it is a pay site. If that is, in fact the case, then you are talking apples and oranges. Again, Rosity is free to use.

Anyway, this is a silly argument. Those who are fed up are going to stay that way, and those, like me, who understand the work it takes to keep a website running, while keeping costs down, will feel the opposite.

Unbookmarking

"Are the people having the problem are on phone lines." Actually, I think it may even be the other way around. I'm on dial-up and I usually never see the 60 second post times, etc. Earlier in the week though I started getting such long timee just to load a forum page I thought the site was down. Now, it seem to be back to "normal." They're probably multiple causes but I agree with destro75 that MySQL would be the first culprit I looked at, simply because it keeps dying. Either the app isn't up to the load or it isn't configured properly.

Nope. You can become a CG Society member, but there is no compunction to do so. Otherwise, registration to the site is free. I also agree with destro75 that this is a MySQL issue. And restructuring seems to be in order. I visit many sites and forums - Renderosity is by far the worst I've ever encountered generally within its league. This is not subjective - it is from observation over several years.

I'm active in quite a few forums myself, and hit a lot of sites routinely, CGTalk being one of them. There are 202,000 members at CGTalk, so its pretty much the same size as here. They have galleries and also post a lot of images and wips to the forums. Its real fast ... real fast. Rendo is a dog, quite plain and simple, and its been this way for quite awhile. and , yes, it takes a lot of work to keep a site going ... so maybe Bondware or whomever runs this site should start to work on it.

by the way, just now on CGTalk ... 1500 people on. 2600 here at Rendo

unbookmarking again

Bondware 3.0, at least in part, can be seen in action at www.Runtimedna.com, which is using selected portions of it (I'm not privvy to what selections or features specifically). It is considerably differnet from the current software, with significantly fewer queries and considerable changes that will take time to get used to. Interestingly enough, the only time I have trouble is in the forums themselves, which take far longer to load and to use than any other feature of the site. I also happen to feel the pain -- I'm in the midst of a software upgrade for a different site myself, lol.

Ugh! I can't unbook mark this thread!!!! tries again

cackles evilly Nevah!! You shall suffer through it eternally!!!

" cackles evilly Nevah!! You shall suffer through it eternally!!!" or until the next malfunction of the Ebots, whichever comes first.

hee hee. (psst, khai -- wanna drive her mad?)