The NEW BoardTracker is here!...

I know.. we said that repeatedly in the past, but here it comes.. BoardTracker Version 2 is HERE. Granted, in beta, but public beta.

So here is the story...

We are launching the new BoardTracker now under a separate subdomain.. http://v2.boardtracker.com/
We keep the older version under www, until version 2 is ready to fully replace the existing one. Once that happens, v2 will change to www and the old system will be fully transferred to the new one, accounts, settings, the works..

When will that happen?
In the coming days certain milestones should be met, each such milestone will get us closer to the official launch. Note that during that time, both systems will be working.
While at it, new boards will be added to the new system and both the tag and search mods will be running from both systems. Note that if you have a mod installed, you do not need to do anything right away. You 'could' shift to v2 in the meantime, but we advise to simple wait patiently until the official shift.

Why not shift systems now? Why??
The new version of BoardTracker is several magnitudes bigger and more complex that the existing system. This causes several issues during the transition. Those issues both require us to carefully shift the system as well as cause certain problems and limitations while the shift occurs.

Limitations? Such as?
Slowness, missing features, partial coverage of data.
All those will be dealt with in the coming days. As days pass, so will the slowness, lack of full coverage and missing features.

So what are the milestones? When do we get to see the new version replacing the old one?
1. Coverage: By the end of this month (probably within 15 days), recent data should start showing on the index. While now we the index is about 20 days behind, the system is heavily indexing (at a rate of about 7 million posts a day). As time passes the gap will be closed. Also, as time passes, new boards will start showing in the search. Note that many of those boards are already in the system, but not yet showing in the search.
(As was said before, the new system will be working during this time, but the coverage will be partial until it finishes catching up).

2. Slowness: The new system will be dog slow (and in this case we don't mean cute little puppy kind of slow, but simply bad kind of dog slow. Both search and browse (see next milestone..) will be slow but will catch up in speed as time passes. As part of the change, we are in a process of setting up the backbone/infrastructure of the new system. We expect to see the first change in speed in about 8 days and the final and more significant change in speed before the end of the month (hopefully around the 28th).

3. Features: Certain features in the system are faulty, not working, or working in the wrong way, others are simply missing or saying "coming soon". At the moment we know of them all, so for now there is no need to alert us of any. By the end of the month we expect to see most of them represented in their working state.
Among those features are: Browse, Thread tools (member ignore, report bad links ..)
In addition the following parts of the system are not showing/functional since they are still working from the old system and will not be switched until the final step: Alerts system, Signup, Login. For those, please use the older version still.

4. New features: Although most of those are not part of the new version's "switching" timeline, among the new features are, language based search, New tagging and Search mod with added features including replies based search, New board ranking system and much more.

One last note, the categorization of threads/forums on the new is not fully updated due to a mechainsm change. While this has no effect on the system's operation, it will take a while until all new forums are properly categorized. We will release news about that for board owners, when the time comes to release the new board owners' admin panel.
_________________
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Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 9:59 am Post subject: Author: Administrator

Update #1: We estimate a full index catchup on the 22nd to 24th of this month.

Update #2: Right after the switch we are planning to replace the Koalas with Puppies. (Don't worry, we had the parents sign a consent form, so its all legal)
_________________
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Feel free to use this forum to ask question and discuss anything that is BoardTracker related

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 9:56 pm Post subject: Author: Administrator

Update #3: Speed improvements. We have taken certain measures to increase the speed of the system. Although great slowness is still common, speed is somewhat better. We expect tomorrow night, or a night after to get the speed of the new system a giant step ahead as a major milestone in the new infrastructure setup is met.

Update #4: Indexing goes along as planned, or actually rather faster than planned. We currently estimate that on the 22nd, the indexing gap will be narrowed or eliminated. As we are adding new boards daily now, the gap might expand a little in the next few weeks, but we expect the system to handle it properly as speed improvements continue.

Update #5: Rumors about an event titled "AddFest" are thrown in the air.. While details are still elusive, expect to hear more about it soon Cool

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Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 3:15 am Post subject: Author: Administrator

Update 6: The new version of BoardTracker will soon surpass 1 billion records. This is a 20x larger than the old version, and is expected to grow 5x more in the coming months, due to: 1: New boards being added to the system; 2: Existing boards historical scanning advancements; 3: naturally added data to existing boards.
To maintain scalability and improve performance of the system, we are committing a big and important change to the system's design, a change which is important to take before the release of the new version.
Once this change is completed, few features will be (re)introduced to the new version, including - ignore list, thread tracking and alerts browsing.

Update 7: We estimate that a considerable speed increase in browsing and searching in 4-6 work days from now. Additional changes to the Full-Text indexing mechanism which will take place after the official release, will increase the speed of searching even further. However, while we expect Full-Text indexing mechanism upgrade only after the official release, growing data-set in the index might affect timeline if it requires an earlier change proves to be necessary.
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Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:33 am Post subject: Author: Administrator

Update 8: We have finished most of the backend modification and are rolling out the new design on the servers now.
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If you need help, you are in the right place
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Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 10:42 pm Post subject: Author: Administrator

Update 9: We estimate the shift and addition of new boards to happen in 4 days from now. In the next 6-7 days we will finish indexing the backlog data after which we will release the new system under v2.
Following this release we will start adding new boards to the system, beginning from the existing ones in the queue.
In the days following the release, we will work on finishing stabilizing of the system and replacing it eventually with v1 (taking over http://www.boardtracker.com). While this may take a bit, and while v2 will still be in beta, we expect v2 to work completely in parallel to v1 until the final switch.

Once v2 is release and switched, we will announce... AddFest..

Details coming soon Twisted Evil

_________________
If you need help, you are in the right place
Feel free to use this forum to ask question and discuss anything that is BoardTracker related

Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 6:23 pm Post subject: Author: nuvolona

Hello,
will there be also an updated version of ur Advanced Topic Tags Mod for phpbb? should I wait or install the current 1.9.1 ?

Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:55 am Post subject: Author: Support

Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:17 am Post subject: Author: nuvolona

Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 1:07 pm Post subject: Author: Support