I wanted to do the Flirtbox relaunch this weekend - but I was advised to do it on Wedneday/Thursay as it is full moon on Monday

Statistically - for some reason - projects that start on full moon or shortly after, tend to go wrong

This means projects are not supposed to start during a full moon period

i never had god pegged as the superstitious type !!

hope it all goes well
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Myspace clicky

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Seriously now, if the moon's phases control the tide, why not the electricity forces in the atmosphere, which presumably the Internet is affected by at some level?
Another thought, mad people were called "Lunatics" because it was proven their thoughts/behavior got worse at a full moon (think 'werewolves') as in "Luna" - so maybe people in general are more likely to throw a hissy fit and make mistakes when starting/doing something important and/or complicated?

Or am I just talking tosh?

The good thing is I have 3 additional days left - everyone is happy and I am even in phase with the moon

The was a scientific research and it showed a big difference for those dates...maybe it is because humans make more errors at that time....or they are in a bad mood during full moon (because they can't sleep because it is too bright outside?)

I only know that for example certains plants don't grow or grow better if it is done at the right time that coincides with the phase of the moon...nobody really knows why though.

To be honest I don't really care about the moon - but if I have the option and someone asks me I just do it - it won't hurt

Am excited about this, can't wait to see the new design

I really hope you like it

The only problem is that people are used to the old design - and the new design will be completely different .... so I guess most people will need some time to get used to it!

I think it will definitely look better and it will be easier to navigate.

There will be the same design for the forums on flirtbox.net and the other flirtbox websites (apart from flirtbox.mobi and flirtbox.tv which will be relaunched later). The forum posts will also be linked to from the other websites more visibly so that I expect more people will use the forums in the future.

I am also working on additional features that will be added to the website after the relaunch (but to avoid that the relaunch takes too long I already relaunch it next week with less new features but a new design at least).

All sounds great almighty one

Quick question. Is it a memory issue that affects the site most days? There seems to be alot of DB connection issues which I presume are the number of open connections at anyone time. My only concern is that if you expect an upturn in forum users this may increase the number of connection problems.

Obviously I see only part of the picture so I'm making assumptions and none of it is a criticism. I've experienced similar problems on sites I've built in the past and it interests me...or I'm just plain nosey
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I can't help it!

Have you seen these errors recently? If so, when?

The number of connections is not an issue depending on the number of users at the moment - I have also had 400 people online with only 3 connections.....the main problem are bots and crawlers that generate the same traffic as 100,000 people.

I even had to block yahoo and msn crawlers as they ignore the robots.txt.

There will be more database queries though for the new design as there are additional boxes with information - so the website might become a little bit slower - but I am working on caching as much as possible.

I can't recall all the messages I get but I usually get several per day. Can't connect happens often and I've had a few too many connections. When I get the next one I'll PM you the error. I also get alot of blank page loads and occasional partial page loads. This usually clears with a refresh (using Firefox 2.0.0.14). I know what you mean about the bots, I usally try and block them all and try and get a single page indexed instead. A constant battle though!

Good luck with it, you're doing a grand job
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I can't help it!

If you have any suggestions, let me know:

looks reasonable enough to me. I haven't much experience with PHPbb so don't know what the loads are like. IPB, which I have alot of experience with, has quite high loads but you can usually tweak it and turn off bits. Are you running a dedicated or a VPS? I run a VPS and since I switched to it have few problems, though I did have to upgrade the memory eventually.
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I can't help it!

Both the database server and the webserver have
2 x 2 x 2,4 GHz Dual-Core Opteron CPUs, 8 Gigabytes of RAM and 2x500 Gigabytes mirrored harddisks....a virtual server would not be enough unfortunately.

blimey, hope you are getting some good ad revenue to pay for all that!
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I can't help it!

Arrgggghhhh.....Geek Talk *Runs away & hides*

Looking forward to the relaunch though
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