news.php used to work for us, but now it simply doesn't

[TPTP]

Ok, so here's the deal. Before we upgraded to 3.0.1, I was able to add threads to news.php and not worrry about the cutoff date. Now that we upgraded to 3.0.1, that cutoff date is killing me. I don't have an answer to why it wasn't a problem before or why it's a problem now. The only other change was an update from vB 3.6.8.something to 3.7.3 PL1. My traffic is down a bit, so I can't even blame it on an increase in traffic.

I used the news.php module as a tempate to create "Featured Media" and "Featured Threads" modules. I didn't modify the module at all, just copied. For whatever reason, there wasn't a problem with the cutoff date before the update, but now it's impossible.

As it stands, I need to be able to "feature" threads that might be 2-3 years old, because the content is still very viable for my forum. Unfortunately, when setting the cutoff date back far enough to allow those threads to display, the database hit is now so huge that I'm grinding to a hault with over 850 online, and on busy nights I can have over 3000. See the problem?

So, I'm hoping that someone can either provide a module like news.php that will just display the threads that I want to feature, or tell me what to modify in news.php to get rid of that huge table scan.

Thanks in advance!

[Brian]

You can avoid the table scans by picking specific threads in the 'News Threads' setting and then changing the Cut-off Date option to 0.

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[Zexsi]

Ok, so here's the deal. Before we upgraded to 3.0.1, I was able to add threads to news.php and not worrry about the cutoff date. Now that we upgraded to 3.0.1, that cutoff date is killing me. I don't have an answer to why it wasn't a problem before or why it's a problem now. The only other change was an update from vB 3.6.8.something to 3.7.3 PL1. My traffic is down a bit, so I can't even blame it on an increase in traffic.

I used the news.php module as a tempate to create "Featured Media" and "Featured Threads" modules. I didn't modify the module at all, just copied. For whatever reason, there wasn't a problem with the cutoff date before the update, but now it's impossible.

As it stands, I need to be able to "feature" threads that might be 2-3 years old, because the content is still very viable for my forum. Unfortunately, when setting the cutoff date back far enough to allow those threads to display, the database hit is now so huge that I'm grinding to a hault with over 850 online, and on busy nights I can have over 3000. See the problem?

So, I'm hoping that someone can either provide a module like news.php that will just display the threads that I want to feature, or tell me what to modify in news.php to get rid of that huge table scan.

Thanks in advance!

You could create a new forum, perhaps even hidden, to which you move only those news items you wish displayed, and have the news program point to that forum for its news exclusively. Your table index will be small, so it wont have much to search to return results, regardless of their age.

[TPTP]

You can avoid the table scans by picking specific threads in the 'News Threads' setting and then changing the Cut-off Date option to 0.

That would have been super handy knowledge a few months ago. :)

I went through and made the change to all modules which are affected by the cutoff date, and that seems to have worked to a point, but something else is going on, as well. We're still grinding down pretty badly under what should be a moderate load (800-850 online), when we have handled over four times that number online in the past, and ran better than we did tonight.

I'm starting to think that the minor part of the problem was vBa, and maybe there's a bigger problem with vB. (we updated both since last season.) We're having additional database issues. Sigmachat is kicking back what appears to be login errors when we get busy. Also, a number of our modules based on news.php are now operating very strangely.

For example, I have one news.php module that pulls recent threads from the Gaming forum. I have another that pulls recent threads from the Sports forum. There are several of these little modules. During peak times, I disable them. Last week that went fine, and when I re-enabled the modules everything worked as expected. Not so tonight. When we got past our rush, I re-enabled them, and though nothing has changed in the modules themselves, each of them is displaying the latest three threads from anywhere on the forum. WTH? I've got a bald spot from scratching my head.

You could create a new forum, perhaps even hidden, to which you move only those news items you wish displayed, and have the news program point to that forum for its news exclusively. Your table index will be small, so it wont have much to search to return results, regardless of their age.

I considered that idea a while back, but because of the way our forum operates, it would cause nothing but confusion to have a group of threads in a separate forum. The threads are not really news items. They are "featured" threads, which our members and lurkers would be looking for when coming to the site. For instance, when a new episode of a TV show airs, we have a dedicated thread for discussion of that episode, while more finely detailed threads will crop up in that show's forum. Since we're a very diverse media discussion forum, we have a lot of forums based on a lot of specific subjects.

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[TPTP]

For example, I have one news.php module that pulls recent threads from the Gaming forum. I have another that pulls recent threads from the Sports forum. There are several of these little modules. During peak times, I disable them. Last week that went fine, and when I re-enabled the modules everything worked as expected. Not so tonight. When we got past our rush, I re-enabled them, and though nothing has changed in the modules themselves, each of them is displaying the latest three threads from anywhere on the forum. WTH? I've got a bald spot from scratching my head.

Ok, so that part was resolved when it was discovered that a setting was somehow reset in each of the affected modules. No idea how, actually, since nothing in the modules was modified except the enabled status. When that change was made the previous week, we didn't have any issues. Odd.