What is wrong with this website?

Pretty good cover-up for a rant that's not mean to be a rant. Have to wonder what it would have been like if it had been a rant!

Hey mate mine does it to but most of the time my photos do actually work even tho it comes up with that page. If you read in the whats new forum the creator of this website says that theres a few bugs and he's trying to sort it. My last photo i added seemed to go thru ok

The site is a little broken at the moment. The last news from Andrew was in this thread http://www.tramper.co.nz/?view=topic&id=485 I take it that he is working on an upgrade and isn't working on the existing code until he finishes that. But I don't think we will be disappointed. Andrew usually comes up with the goods.

This site is designed from scratch, the developer has not installed a bunch of open source scripts, when a change needs to be made, it is usually done fairly quickly. A lot of forums have too many features, this site changes and grows features as needed. Recently (over the past year) the site has grown very quickly, which means databases are getting large. Object and variable attributes that worked a year ago, struggle now. I wrote the content management system for http://www.quaystuff.co.nz it took a long time, and has no where near as many features as this site. Personally I can not praise this site enough, also, Mathew has said he is working on a huge upgrade that should sort a lot of the issues. Just as well I am not replying to a rant.

Thankyou for the replies. @ normclimb. Sorry if it sounded a bit strong. Was feeling a bit frustrated yesterday but it wasn't my intention to offend. @ Jono51. Thanks, somehow I have completely missed that section of the forum! Cheers for the heads up. @ pmcke. Thanks for the link. Wasnt aware of that, so cheers. @ Hagii. Thakyou, didnt know that stuff, its all good to know. Hes sone alot of great work for a one man band! Anyway, I'll just be a bit more patient in future. Oddly, my picture is showing now when it wasnt loading yesterday, so goodness knows whats going on. Thankyou for your time.

Usually the site is pretty good. I am just holding off adding new content until it is sorted. Saves frustration. The issue with the photos comming right later isn't new. Matthew has mentioned that before. Something to do with a server catching up with what is going on.

Hi Yarmoss and everybody, Sorry you've been having problems. It's perfectly fine to be frustrated. I would be too. I quite agree that the performance of the site over the last two weeks has been unacceptable. I would recommend that if you find something doesn't work, don't waste any more of your time on it. Send me a message and I'll look into it and let you know when I've fixed it. Please note that this is not a commercial site in a meaningful sense -- it earns advertising revenues, but these are meagre and don't even cover hosting costs. I have to make the best of the hosting I can afford, and the time I can find to work on it (I already have a full time job). Realistically, this means I have around 10 hours a week available (this week I have 18 as I'm taking a day of annual leave to work on it). There appear to be some issues with the database this website uses running out of memory. When that happens, *anything* could stop working. It tends to be the geographic queries that fail, but these are embedded deeply in the application, meaning pretty much anything could fail (except the forums). It is relying on SQL Server 2008 for the geographic data manipulation, and I am not convinced that platform is bug-free at this point in time. I have been working with the hosting company for the past week or so on addressing issues with memory. It's true that I am working on an upgrade which includes a new wider design and a more flexible layout engine (this won't mean much to you but it means a lot for the site long term and a lot of work for me short term). However, I will attend to issues with the site as they are. BTW if you are all wondering about the mysteriously appearing photos, here's what's happening: when you upload a photo, that's working fine, but for some reason the resizing is falling over so the smaller one you see on the page is missing. Every few hours a little automated bot comes through and looks for any missing small images. If it finds one and the source file is there, then it resizes it and your image mysteriously appears! There are several bots working behind the scenes doing similar menial tasks (for example, there is another one that looks at every item on the site at intervals and tries to figure out how interesting it is -- that is still a work in progress). Matthew

thanks Matthew for a good nz based site while its buggy i have found none better content wise so im sure when you get it right it will be brilliant brent

Hi Matthew, this seams to be an awesome website and exactly what I was looking for when I signed up. You have done an amazing job for a 1 man band. Cheers for the explanation.