Comments Problems Resolved ... I Hope
CQ readers know that we have had nothing but frustration with the comment process here, a problem that has long predated the recent site upgrade. Over the last couple of weeks, we have tried everything we could think to resolve it, and I've spent more time on this problem than I have on my actual blogging. One reason for that is that the same problem commenters have in posting on CQ happens for me when loading new posts as well. The server load has driven performance to a crawl several times a day, and none of us could really understand why. The Blog Studio and Hosting Matters have put a lot of effort into trying to make the comments work properly again.
Eventually, the good people at Six Apart (creators of Movable Type) explained a number of facts about the commenting process that made the problem clear. We knew that the comments script invoked a rebuild script, but what we didn't know was that it invoked a rebuild for all archives as well as the index files. Earlier, I had applied a fix that addressed a different rebuilding process, but it didn't apply to the archives.
Six Apart suggested that I try a plug-in, Rebuild Queue. This defers all automatic rebuilding queries for archives until a scheduled program runs. I've set it for once per day, overnight, when not many comments get left on the blog. That way, all rebuilds will happen at once, allowing the site to operate much more quickly and the rebuilds to occur more efficiently.
Hopefully, this will be the final fix. Let me know if you see any improvement, and thanks for all your patience!
UPDATE: Actually, I've had to try another kind of fix, also from Movable Type. RebuildQueue works too well -- it also stops rebuilding the RSS feeds and the main index file that creates the blog, which means that I'd have to rebuild both manually whenever I create a new post. I'll try this other fix for a while; it seems to be only slightly slower than the plug-in.
UPDATE II: If you got an error message with the word "abaltach", it's fixed now. I wrote the wrong script name into the program, and it took a while for me to find it. Sorry!
Posted by Ed Morrissey on August 31, 2007 8:28 PM | Comments () | TrackBacks (0)
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