With the avalanche of new Members in recent days, a website that had struggled to deliver under the barrage of comments, blog posts, videos, and just plain visits, has been brought nearly to its knees. Heroic folks have reached out to us offering to help.
Today begins a (likely long) process of optimizing what we have, and then moving to a platform robust enough to handle the magnificent content cataract created by our Members.
As a first step, Member Chris J. coded a patch for our Member directory. It’s under development, but yesterday my attempt to search for a Member named “Tim” took 91.3 seconds…a span generally referred to by internet experts as “literal eternity”.
This morning, my search for “Tim” takes 2.39 seconds.
Results appear as soon as you start typing a name, and you can click the red button to search the entire database.
[Geeks among us will note that a search for "Tim" will find any string with that letter combination, including words like "time" that appear in Member profiles.] Chris says the new directory is a Band-Aid and may eventually fall off.
For now it demonstrates what’s possible when a gifted, determined man meets a challenge. We’ve laid out a road-map for a massive revision of the site over the coming months, and will have more news as events warrant.
In the meantime, check out the new (beta) Member Directory.
5 replies on “Need for Speed: Member Directory Beta Shows Hope for Future”
Terrific! I long ago quit using the member directory because of its nonfunctionality. This is a huge improvement!
I vote for some kind of forum/bbs way to interact in addition to the blog. When you get around to it!
We had a forum a while back and it got so little use we discontinued it. Perhaps as Membership grows we’ll reconsider.
Great news.
Excellent work!!!
Agree! Thanks Chris, Scott and all who helped