SearchIRC updates

Jason · Posted: Jun 28, 2003 1:19am Post subject: SearchIRC updates

- Everyone who uses netscape will be glad to hear the CSS styles used on the sidebar have been looked at and taken care of. So the text on the left sidebars shouldn't "bleed" over previous text on the front page, or the network pages.

- Submitting IRC networks will be a bit easier, it's now a two step process, with the first step just asking for the network name. If you enter something that matches an existing network, you'll be told, and if you enter something that sounds like a preexisting network, it will ask you to make sure the network you want to add isn't already added.

- The new MyChannel now has 4 definable pages instead of 3 (not counting the messageboard page).

- SearchIRC has now been on the new server for two days and is running great!

- SearchIRC has a total of 900 IRC networks in its database, with 761 currently being indexed.

- More caching: A while back, I wrote a page caching program -- which has been in use on the search results pages. I've now expanded it to cover the network pages, and the front page. Also, I'm now using a php file compiler, so the pages are all binary and not recompiled each time the page loads. This should help make the site faster..

Jason

Jason · Posted: Jun 29, 2003 1:41am Post subject: June 29th

More changes:

- Fixed the bug where entering any search term with " or ' in it would keep escaping the text each time you changed pages. ie; searching for "what's up" would appear as "what\'s up" on the second page, and on the third page it would be "what\\\'s up"... with each page it got long and longer....

- Front page search reassembles the search terms, and similar to the above bug, "what's up" would be converted to "what/'s up". This too has been rectified.

- MyChannel sidebar for page5 was using the sidebar from page4, this has been fixed.

- MyChannel login process now has clear instructions on what to do should you be unable to login (details how to enable cookies)

- Network graphs should no longer display if the network graph is more than 24 hours since last being updated. There was an issue from small networks getting hit by floodbots, which made their userbase > 2,000, creating a graph, but only for a short time. These types of situations will be eliminated with this fix.

Jason · Posted: Jun 30, 2003 8:13pm Post subject:

After 4 months of partial /lists from IRCnet, I've managed to aquire an iline!

IRCnet is virtually impossible to get a full /list on, from any server. I tried for 4 months without success. At long last, the listings may now be complete on this network.

Special thanks goes out to http://www.kpnqwest.cz/

Jason · Posted: Jun 30, 2003 10:32pm Post subject:

searches using the defaults (ie; you didn't change the search paramaters) now have a nicer format:

http://searchirc.com/irc-<term>-<page>

e.g; http://searchirc.com/irc-darkbot-1 <- for page 1 of a search on "darkbot"

Also, at 1am, the server was rebooted for a new kernel.

Jason · Posted: Jul 01, 2003 3:55pm Post subject:

I noticed the site starting to get sluggish -- which it shouldn't be doing with the new machine.

I looked around and made the following tweaks:

1) When inserting new data, the database would insert 300 records, then check to see if there was pending items. If there were pending items, it would then let them go first, before continuing. I have lowered this check down to 100 records before looking for pending items.

2) There is a program called process_channels that takes all incoming channel data, and adds them to the database. The original idea was to allow for several concurrent copies of this program to be run, so if there was a sudden influx of channels to process, they would be processed quickly. The problem with this concept, was in reality, all that happened was the database got tied up with many records being added at the same time, and it swamped the server. Only one process_channel program will run from now on.

Between the two changes, the site is reacting at near instantaneous speeds now.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Mary · SearchIRC Admin Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 692

are you trying to say, you gave the monkeys more bananas?

Jason · Posted: Jul 01, 2003 4:12pm Post subject:

feh. I use dolphins. Much smarter, and less likely to toss poop at me :P

Jason · Posted: Jul 06, 2003 10:04pm Post subject:

Tonight the follow changes were made:

1) Introduction of the Chat Directory.

2) Database internals has been modified from dynamic length structures to a fixed length structure.

3) Due to the above change, channel color codes are now rendered on the fly, instead of at addition into the database. The only immediate effect of this is, that until all the channels are updated in the database with new data, everything not yet updated, will be in black and white, instead of color.

4) Due to the failure of the "(User Comments)" field in several of the search term definitions, I've removed them all. No one used them. Not one person. lol.

5) SearchIRC now has 5,137 motds cached. That is, 8.4 megs worth of motds.

6) There are now 934 networks listed in SearchIRC.

Jason · Posted: Jul 07, 2003 9:27pm Post subject:

Tonight a few changes have been made:

1) On each network's network page, there is now a new sidelink called 'Add stats to your website'. On that page, you'll have the following options:

2) On the network pages, I'm now parsing the length of the top 5 channels. If the channel names exceed 20 chars in length, it cuts off the channel name with "...". Without this, long channel names can destroy the sidebar formatting.

Here is an example page:

http://searchirc.com/add_stats/AustNet

Raider · none Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 1

Hi Jason,

This is exactly what I was looking for to add to my site! Take a look at http://www.superchat.ws.

Cheers! Very Happy

Jason · Posted: Jul 10, 2003 11:14pm Post subject:

Some changes today:

1) Networks listed in alphabetical order showed only channel count, and nothing of user count. I updated it to now show (graphically) the user count.

Example: http://searchirc.com/networks.php?ID=L

2) MyChannel signup page has been greatly simplified. Also when you sign up, you can set your channel category and description.

http://mychan.searchirc.com/

Jason · Posted: Jul 13, 2003 2:26pm Post subject: July 13th

Today the following changes were made:

1) New section for the front page, called "Top Listings".

2) Removed from the front page is the top searches for the day, and top networks, both were added to the "Top Listings" section.

3) New "box" type format that is now on the front page, to group similar topics together. ie; "Top Listings", or "Latest Forum Posts".

4) Returned is the "top 100" irc channels, and the 'largest 5 channels for each network' page. Both are added under the "Top Listings" section.

5) Added 'network issues' section to the front page. This page now contains so much info that it's a definate worthwhile addition.

6) Fixed various html issues on some pages.

Jason · Posted: Jul 14, 2003 4:30pm Post subject:

The front page search box now allows #channel to be entered.

Previously, entering a #chan would result in an error -- the reason is that "#" is a special symbol for url strings to signify a "A NAME" link within a page.

Now the front page search will convert the # into %23 (html for "#"), and since you're searching for a string with a # prefix, it will default to searching only channels for matches, not channel topics.