This is not a high priority task, as our current set-up is running just fine and far beyond our processing cap. It would just be handy for future improvements, including non-WP related ones. I’m just gonna leave some handy links out here in case anyone wants to take a crack at it:
I have done lots of config with nginx reverse proxying, so I might be able to help you out with that php5-fpm thingy. But if you do not need to switch at the moment I would recommend staying on Apache/mod_php… it might not be the fastest, but it is rock solid and it’s one thing less to worry about…
About that redis solution… It does not use any of redis feaures so memcached would work aswell… and I do believe a properly configured HTTP cache can do the same work as that hack. One could even skip the memcached/redis tier by placing the pregenerated html pages on disk and let the web server worry about serving them.
Well I can help out a bit with nginx as I use it for my own frontend webserver, but not so much with the php stuff as I use mostly exclusivly gwt behind it.
Thanks for your offers and advice, greatly appreciated!
I might as well spill the beans. The main reason I asked is actually because I want to start gradually preparing for Discourse, a next-generation forum platform that runs on nginx (default) and redis (mandatory), written in Ruby and founded by Jeff Atwood, co-founder of StackOverflow.
I figured maybe this could be a win-win in terms of making our current set-up run faster as well as getting better affiliated with the tools we’ll depend upon in the future. This is long-term stuff though, i.e. stuff that might not even happen. So I tried to be a sneaky monkey about it for as long as feasible; so not long ^^
Now that you know the horrible truth, we can do a 180 and and change the topic completely: Discourse. What do you think?
Show me a Java forum that works and looks as good as Discourse (don’t forget about mobile responsiveness) and I’ll gladly consider it. The forum is the key piece of the puzzle.
We’ve contemplated going down this path before, but the thing about Java EE apps is that they tend to include everything and the kitchen sink.
Discourse looks interresting, I’m gonna try it out since I’m already on the hunt for a forum software. At a first glance I got the “google wave feeling” which is not good… but I gonna give it a try anyway.
As you probably know it is built upon the ruby on rails stack, which in it self is a wast topic. Running an rails app in production is much more server admin work than the good old LAMP stack, I know since I do this at work.
@kwando said:
Discourse looks interresting, I'm gonna try it out since I'm already on the hunt for a forum software. At a first glance I got the "google wave feeling" which is not good.. but I gonna give it a try anyway.
I wonder where you got the "wave" feel from, because it's not doing any of that funky (read: chaotic) stuff as far as front-end data presentation and thread structure goes. These are straight forward flat conversations, no funny business. I guess the AJAX loading (are people still using this buzzword?) is kind of wavy, but imo it works.
As you probably know it is built upon the ruby on rails stack, which in it self is a wast topic. Running an rails app in production is much more server admin work than the good old LAMP stack, I know since I do this at work.
Yep, I've read up on it to the best of my ability. The good news is that they're aiming to be "the WordPress of forums", meaning ease of install & upkeep is a major priority for them. Obviously that's not gonna be a priority until they're out of beta though, but in the meantime there's a whole bunch of deployment options to pick from. My favorite is JuJu, because GUI :P
@erlend_sh said:
I wonder where you got the "wave" feel from, because it's not doing any of that funky (read: chaotic) stuff as far as front-end data presentation and thread structure goes. These are straight forward flat conversations, no funny business. I guess the AJAX loading (are people still using this buzzword?) is kind of wavy, but imo it works.
Yeah, my initial judgement about discourse was a bit off. It seems to be rather straight forward to use =)
About deployment options, the cheapest way to run it would be a VPS/cloud server somewhere I think… far away from GUI’s =P
Well, since we’re already paying for a dedicated server with plenty of resources to spare, we’d definitely host apps such as Discourse there as well.
About “deployment options”, to be clear I was strictly referring to install & update solutions. My only point being, the way you’d set up and maintain Discourse today is going to be different from how it’ll be done once the software has gone stable. Just something worth keeping in mind.
Call me old styled, but I find at least their main page somewhat ugly with a 1920res (I mean its like i have a long iphone centerd in the middle of my screen? wtf, hope the forum is not doing that)
Not took a very close look, but what is with the forum they use? http://www.coderanch.com/forums
I honstly dont know how good it is for mobile, as against my age I have none intrest in that stuff at all.
As for the wiki I would use jamwiki, wich is a mostly mediawiki compatible open source application.
Discourse is filled with tiny convenience features and elegant refinements, so a big part of my infatuation comes from it getting so many smaller things just right. But some big ones would be:
Excellent markdown editor that lets you reply from anywhere, drag&drop images and saves drafts.
Great ‘Likes’ system (only likes, no dislikes, shows who likes what and notifies you about it)
Internal linking. Someone links to your thread? You’ll be notified about it and the incoming link always shows in the sidebar.
Reply as linked topic (works with the above). Great for all those times when you start your post with “this is a bit off topic but…”
Automatic duplicate thread search. So when someone searches “can’t load blender model” they’ll see 5 other posts about it.
Automatically scaling user roles. Veteran users gradually take on moderator responsibilities.
Great forum-wide search.
A comprehensive JSON API. It’d probably be quite feasible to make our own jME app at one point.
Has a nearly non-existent community (and user base)
Doesn’t appear to have a theme or plugin directory of its own, so we’d be left to our own devices there.
Doesn’t even mention plugins
Sure we’d have a Java-based app that a bigger part of our own community would feel comfortable contributing to, but on the other end of the spectrum they don’t have a community of their own to contribute themes and plugins and tweaks for us to borrow and learn from. I’m not going to choose an inferior application just so we can do more work ourselves.
I have a couple spare throw-away machines I can run some simple tests with too. My last install was nginx + a laravel PHP app, with some virtual server linking between a couple of my other self-hosted sites. I’ll let you know when I have something might be a few days though so if anyone can do it quicker feel free to bypass. Also for consistency, what OS is the webserver on?
@sleaker said:
I have a couple spare throw-away machines I can run some simple tests with too. My last install was nginx + a laravel PHP app, with some virtual server linking between a couple of my other self-hosted sites. I'll let you know when I have something might be a few days though so if anyone can do it quicker feel free to bypass. Also for consistency, what OS is the webserver on?
Good =) This is on my radar also, but I do not have the time for approx 1-2 more weeks.
Our webserver is currently running Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS). You will need to install ruby and a whole lot more to get started with the discourse platform. I know @erlend_sh follows the development of discourse so there might be some “easy” way to get it up and running.
If you need any help with the more technical parts I will do my best to answer your questions.
@kwando said:
Good =) This is on my radar also, but I do not have the time for approx 1-2 more weeks.
Our webserver is currently running Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS). You will need to install ruby and a whole lot more to get started with the discourse platform. I know @erlend_sh follows the development of discourse so there might be some “easy” way to get it up and running.
If you need any help with the more technical parts I will do my best to answer your questions.
I’ve had a gitlab setup on that box in the past (Deb7 though), so shouldn’t be too brutal. I should be able to have it wiped and something up and running on it later tonight depending on how late I stay up
Mkay, that’s good. Docker is 64bit only, so I had to test it on my 13.10 machine as all my older boxes are 32b only. The only difference I can see between Docker on 12.04 and 13.10 is that you have to install atleast Kernel image 3.8 when coming from 12.04.
atm I have Docker installed, and the app is running the Discourse download, we’ll see how it works here in a bit.
