2) Consider more rigorous client-side validation on submission form
(e.g. I accidentally entered a non-numeric character in the Price field - this error was reported only after I hit Submit. Would've been easier if this were reported on tabbing/clicking out of the field)
3) Upon erroneous submission, at least the 'How is your project built?' field got cleared
Also, you might want to consider an 'auto screenshot capture/display' feature once a user types in the URL. We are very shortly going to publish a (free) API to do this - we'd be glad to help if needed, let me know.
@AznHisoka: Thanks for the reminder. Are you associated with/use them?
After you told me about them in my previous thread, we checked them out and actually ordered a server there. Turns out the only payment option they have is PayPal. We tried to make cc payment via paypal but they would make just a test transaction (successfully) and then say, can't process.
We tried four times, with the same results. OVH support wasn't much help, except saying PayPal is the only available option now.
If you don't mind, I'd suggest toning down the 'Our' side of the copy a bit... e.g. 'Our amazing content. Your expert knowledge.' sounds too boastful (no offense) and might sound better with 'great' instead of 'amazing'...
Also: 'To start you off every Pitcher account comes loaded with content we love' might be better as 'To start you off every Pitcher account comes loaded with great/useful content' ...
What I meant was feature development... that's what got frozen long ago... code revision exclusively for performance optimization has been ongoing continually.
>I can't really see how your code or queries could cause mysql or apache to gradually slow down and then speed up...
Actually, we've ascertained that it is not the code or queries that cause this per se, but it is the traffic patterns - human visitors + SE crawlers... at times, there are (natural) traffic bursts and that's when the server starts choking.
apache/mysql - stock distros, with some config tweaks, mainly in my.cnf.
>what happens if you just kill one or the other?
Good call. Actually, restarting just apache does the trick most of the times. What we suspect is, abrupt flooding in http requests causes MySQL to slow down which causes http requests to get queued up and finally choke the service.
Yes, we did investigate MySQL's internal partitioning option briefly before deciding to roll our own scheme (which, after working quite well initially, is now beginning to create problems of its own).
Perhaps, it is time for us to revisit this. Thanks again Paul.
Paying way more than $10/mo for the VPS, close to 200 - and hey!! thanks for the ovh.com link - looks very interesting, will certainly try them out soon. Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junko_Tabei
All the best. :)