tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, May 24, 2011:
Is anyone else noticing that SF posts take forever now, this has been going of for a couple of weeks for me.
-Tony
bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, May 24, 2011:
hey,
It’s odd. They get posted right away (I know this because the email from monitoring the forums gets sent to me right after I click ‘Add Reply’) however the forum in the browser just seems to hang for a minute or two before refreshing.
-brady
sunsetsystems wrote on Tuesday, May 24, 2011:
Yes that’s my experience too. Might be worth an inquiry to SF support.
aethelwulffe wrote on Wednesday, May 25, 2011:
Good to know. I guess that means that we can just trust to that and start clicking away right? I have taken to copying my posts and being ready to re-paste. SLOOOOOOW……
Let’s face it. This forum is really bad. I would rather set up a private forum somewhere else (like one of us use our own server), and just have really good links to all that git crap in the menu.
This forum is not real searchable, you can’t pin stuff, edit stuff, or…well anything. Aside from that, security has not been great. Mostly, I understand, because it is a big outfit and therefore a big target.
tmccormi wrote on Thursday, May 26, 2011:
Ticket #19588 (new)
Refresh extremely slow on forum and tracker posts
tmccormi wrote on Thursday, June 02, 2011:
Just chatted with support …
<@ctsai-sf> tmccormi: okay, I’m seeing the slowdown you mention when trying to post to your forum. I’m going to escalate this to our engineering team to investigate.
<tmccormi> thank you!
bradymiller wrote on Saturday, June 11, 2011:
My ticket has also been escalated to the engineering team:
Comment:
This has been escalated to our engineering team here:
https://sourceforge.net/p/allura/tickets/2212/
hopefully this is cleared up soon.
bradymiller wrote on Saturday, June 11, 2011:
Weird, the ticket above directs to Tony’s ticket. Here’s full message sent to me.
#19568: forums are very slow when posting a message
----------------±---------------------------------
Reporter: bradymiller | Owner: ctsai
Status: assigned | Keywords: ENGR NF-2212
Private: 0 |
----------------±---------------------------------
Changes (by ctsai):
* keywords: PEND => ENGR NF-2212
Comment:
This has been escalated to our engineering team here:
http://sourceforge.net/p/allura/tickets/2212/
-brady
tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, July 05, 2011:
They are working on this, to the point where it’s causing more problems for the moment. I’m getting server errors, but reload/refresh repeatedly seems to make it eventually work
tickets:2212 Refresh extremely slow on forum and tracker posts 19588
Status: in-progress
arnabnaha wrote on Saturday, July 09, 2011:
Phpbb is a nice option. Testing it…it has lots of cool features and fast too… Its really good…Tony, Brady…you can consider phpbb once…
aethelwulffe wrote on Saturday, July 09, 2011:
I’ll host a phpbb3! 
uhsarp wrote on Monday, July 11, 2011:
+1 for phpbb
jcahn2 wrote on Monday, July 11, 2011:
A switch to our own phpbb sounds like it would have several advantages. I wonder about a few things. Art, are you in it for the long haul? Could the IP of the hosting server be easily transferred? Can we use an existing OEMR server and still assign a volunteer to (Art?) to manage it? I vote FOR the switch. Jack
tmccormi wrote on Monday, July 11, 2011:
I do not recommend doing this on servers outside of the oemr.org domain. We have plenty of server power on a solid backbone at our data center in North Carolina. What we would need is a Primary administrator, ie: Art, maybe.
I would like to let SF get a chance to fix the slowness issue and maybe even see what their new tool (Allura /SourceForge 2.0)
-Tony
zhhealthcare wrote on Monday, July 11, 2011:
There is a plan in the works to move oemr to drupal. We could use the drupal features very effectively.
Shameem
bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, July 12, 2011:
Hi,
On a somewhat related topic, there has been some discussion on migrating the developer forum to a mailing list. Please read through these discussion that entertain this idea:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openemr/forums/forum/202504/topic/4596697
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openemr/forums/forum/202506/topic/3725447
Although they discuss migrating developer forum to a mailing list, most of the same major issues arise when migrating the forum to phpbb. Just some cons to consider:
1. Sourceforge ranking will drop since forum will no longer be used.
2. Sourceforge openemr site will likely take a google ranking hit since will no longer index the forum messages
3. Need to migrate all the old messages to the new forum
4. Our community would now be responsible for administering the forum and the site (ie. no downtime would be acceptable).
The only pro is that users get more features when sending messages (editing, bracketing code, etc.).
Not saying it’s a bad idea, but it’s important to understand the ramification.
-brady
aethelwulffe wrote on Tuesday, July 12, 2011:
Well, I’d like to see some much better management of the forums, which is impossible on this board from what I can see. Here are issues/problems/benefits that a more capable board would solve with those “few features” brady is talking about:
1. The searchability of this forum is nil, so while it might generate great ranking for the sourceforge page, the older posts are just data, not information. The value of the forum is low to first-time-sourceforge non-ubergeeks. BTW, on a search for OpenEMR, the sourceforge forum is 4th to 6th on the engines I tried, while PHYAURA® EHR (Openemr.net) is #2 or #1.
2. It is important to be able to edit posts, post stickies, faq’s, etc… This makes the information flow much better for developers. Just updating links is invaluable. When you post a bad link here, it is here in perpetuaem.
3. It is REALLY REALLY important (especially for the help and user forums) to have categorized forums for each and every version. I personally have never used a non-dev version of the EMR myself…they just don’t stick around, and most deve versions are “post this mod, or post that mod”. This is a serious deficit.
It would be nice to only post and search for answers that pertain to your own version, instead of dredging up some great advice dated 2004. This makes the forums usable by the average person, where these forums are not only difficult to navigate, but frustrate many *ahem* users when they are trying to join.
We need a forum to link to that makes it worth hitting that “help” button on the leftnav (or wherever it is now). Forum use would grow greatly, and improve the reputation of the program.
4. It would be nice to manage our forum problems ourselves…on oemr’s server.
5. It would be MUCH MUCH better to have a non-sourceforge download page that is easier to use for grabbing stable versions and variants.
6. The old posts are mostly just old, and add more confusion than they help sometimes (no versioning on the old posts, y’know?). In a few weeks even developers will have no need to refer to the old forums. For new forums, we can grab some of the best “tutorial” posts and paste them into a tutorial/workaround sub-forum that digs them out of hiding.
7. If we have 30+ posts a day, the forum searchability will help keep us at the top of dear McGoogle’s list. Folks search the web for stuff, they don’t search Sourceforge. Yes, having fellow opensource geeks finding us on the home turf is great, but we need users, not just fly-by developers.
8. Organized forums are much better work environments than listservs. This 3 category forum (where the HELP, USER, and DEVELOPER forums are horribly blurred) is little more than a listserv.
In closing, I’d be perfectly happy tossing in as an admin/moderator. I can handle approving members, and flushing out the spam. I would be glad to organize a layout to serve all the interest groups and dig around for old content that might be useful. I only “dropped out” of one thing like this in my life, and that was when the internet came to town in 1993 and I finally gave up on my FIDONET BBS. All the content of that BBS made it onto the forum started a few years later, and I have kept up/reconverted databases for it several times, making my forum one of the oldest (but no longer the nerdiest) on the internet.
Wouldn’t you guys love to see sub-forums dealing with RX stuff, CCR, Billing, forms, and all that sort of thing? Wouldn’t that be just downright USEFUL?
bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, July 12, 2011:
Art,
I never wrote “few features” anywhere.
1. I search frequently and it works for me (I generally click on the Date header after the search to get most recent items).
2. Doesn’t a wiki fulfill this purpose (faq’s etc.)
3. Agree that separate forums for each version would be a nice feature to have. I disagree, though, with the generalization that the support button is not worth clicking with our current forum.
4. Need to ensure oemr’s forums are online 100% of the time. oemr.org does go down occasionally and now it’s tolerable since it holds the wiki, but any downtime would not be tolerable if it holds the forum.
5. Unrelated topic, but I agree having a much better website at oemr.org that was nice-looking and linked the common things (project info page, etc) is important. Perhaps working with Sam in the Drupal oemr website should be the next step here.
6. Disagree with this generalization. If at all possible, would like to keep the old posts.
7. But google indexes the sourceforge forum, so if you search for something on google, it will provide link directly to the pertinent sourceforge message. Plus, trying to predict what will happen to a site on google’s ranking is just guess work. If you have a highly indexed site, goal should be to maintain it(ie. don’t rock the boat too much).
8. Agree
Again, not saying we shouldn’t upgrade the forums, just ensuring the cons of this are known. Perhaps a good place to begin here is working with Sam in the Drupal oemr website (get an acceptable home page up, then focus on a download page, then when comfortable consider migrating the forums if that’s what the community wants).
-brady
sunsetsystems wrote on Tuesday, July 12, 2011:
I pretty much agree with Brady’s views here. Frankly it’s puzzling to me that SF is not dealing with the issues more effectively, as they affect all of the projects here.
aethelwulffe wrote on Tuesday, July 12, 2011:
Frankly Brady, I also effectively agree with you, though as someone a little further away from things, I might feel a little more strongly about some of negatives of using souceforge. After all, I didn’t slave away here over the last million posts. I’m just the peanut gallery heckler that yells out the faults of everything from the back row.
1. I am not stating that the forums are useless…to you, and to a lesser degree myself. I am stating my impressions of what the ladies at the clinic tell me about their attempts to use the forum to find answers to questions that bother them so. Sometimes a little more organization than just a general search is needed. Sometimes, when you know absolutely nothing, you need some ideas on what you are searching for. Cataloged sections will help a lot there.
2. Yes, Brady, you have put in some serious work on the wiki at times. Others that wish to can certainly contribute. I just feel that when you compare a good oft updated wiki that only one person that doesn’t need it looks at regularly to the support forum of a project that all users of every level see every day…well the forum beats the wiki hands down in my experience. Consolidating (or even repeating) information in a forum makes the full range of stuff more accessible.
3. Yeah, I’m not for just dumping and running myself either. I do feel however that if conversion was not practical, then archiving and going on with another format might be better than the status quo. I am less of a cyberhoarder than some though.
4. Yes I agree, but I have a statement/question:
In 2004, I took an “old” junk Dell that didn’t “work” anymore, loaded it with Server 2003 and fired up some forums, pages and a mail server. It’s still on. It restarts for windows updates at 3am when needed, but it has had no other down time. There is a new server at a new location, and once the static ip is in, we are gonna swap over 'cause this is just STUPID to be using that old machine, but WHY should the OEMR server ever be down when that hunk of junk has been up effectively 100% for seven years running?
5. Glad to hear Sam is starting up that project.
6. Yes, generalizations suck and history is valuable. My main issue with preserving the forum outside of an archive setting is the difficulty of presenting it in any sort of organized manner compared to utility it would have to someone dealing with current issues. At Orbiter, http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ we thought that archiving and starting over to get rid of the bad host and shitty forum ware was gonna kill us. A month later no one noticed any more, including developers.
7. When I search for “Openemr billing help” this came up:http://www.oemr.org/modules/newbb/index.php
I never knew it existed, but Sam’s forum comes up, not sourceforge. Anywho, we don’t need searches for “sexo de cabra” to lead to us, just fairly well directed searches. Once they are HERE, things need to be easier. After all, click on the downloads link on the Wiki, and count how many links or re-directs you get before you find that little 8-point text line that says something like “198754g597h952834hf9235692769o794857n698_openemr.zip” that you use to download with. To folks that are not used to that, and do not love and trust sourceforge, it kinda follows the pattern of scam trojan malware download. You know: “Click HERE….Now Click HERE….uncheck HERE is you are almost but not quite sure that you do not not want to pay $19.95 for a VIP pass to Goats_In_Love.com!”
Sam’s forum (XOOPS) isn’t exactly bb3, and hasn’t seen much activity, and seems to have some spammers, and hurts the eyes a bit, but it is not badly organized. What is the relationship between here and there? Any?