Folks:
I’ve been attempting to chase down some performance issues around these parts for quite some time now. I am coming to believe that the Ecosystem status code which I provide for folks to put on their blogs may be the root cause of the troubles.
The problem is that, if you have the status Javascript code on your blog, every single time you get a hit on your site, I get a hit on the database here. And these days, it is becoming difficult to convince my server to stand up under the strain.
So: for the moment, I have altered the Javascript status code to simply return a message such as the following:
Profile
in the
TTLB Ecosystem
The ‘My Profile’ link will go to your details page. This still gives you a direct link to your details page, but avoids a hit on the TTLB database, which was the big problem (I think).
I’d welcome feedback on this change: is this a major disappointment? I need to make a decision as to how much it is worth investing to save that one feature, so I’d appreciate responses/thoughts.
Thanks all…
-NZB
Update 1/13: Thanks for the feedback, all, and please keep it coming. A bit more information: I seem to have tracked the problem down to a sudden loss of memory on the server, which seems to be caused by a single Apache thread suddenly going wild and grabbing a huge amount of available memory. Anybody with thoughts on why that might happen, please chime in!