How I enjoyed weekly update meetings with the BBC's message board team. The cycle generally went like this.
Week 1: The message boards are knacked and overloaded, we are going to put some extra servers in, that will double the number of messages we can handle in a day Week 2: BBC Technology / Siemens haven't put the servers in yet Week 3: The servers are in, and we have doubled our capacity to handle messages. Week 4: Now that the boards are working better and are stable, we are getting three times as many messages as we ever did before Go back to Week 1 :-) m On 06/08/07, Andrew Bowden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nico Morrison > > On 30/07/07, James Cridland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On 7/30/07, Nico Morrison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > But for heavens sake BBC - put a proper forum up, not this manky > > > > 'messageboard'. > > > The manky messageboard is the BBC's "DNA" system, which talks > > > correctly to the single sign-on service, and does other > > useful fancy > > > things. There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes; > > much of what > > > I see of the BBC's current web infrastructure (now I'm > > inside) is very > > > Web0.5, but that's being sorted. Don't panic. (That > > previous sentence > > > was, I note, an unintended pun, given that 'DNA' is > > actually based on > > > the H2G2 engine.) > > There are several scalable, user-friendly forum software > > packages, with the facility to login externally from another > > sign-on service. > > They can also connect to web pages news/articles - often > > called 'talkback', much superior to blog comments, as they > > connect news articles to an automatic forum topic and the > > article can also be founs from the forum. > > For many years in a previous life, I worked on the predecessor to the > DNA engine, Howerd 2 (named after Frankie Howerd because a funny thing > happened on the way to the forum - you might guess that Howerd 2 was the > successor to Howerd) > > One of the problems the BBC has had with its forum software in the past > is the /sheer/ scalability that such software has needed in the past - > it's far more than most people imagine. > > Millions of users, at one point nearly 100 different themes, a > requirement to moderate across different forums easily. And ultimately > software that doesn't crash every lunch time under the enormous weight > of board office workers :) > > Last time it was looked at, external software was looked at and > discounted because nothing was scalable enough - hence a bespoke > solution was built. Indeed most large sites of the scale of the BBC > have had bespoke solutions over the years. > > In the meantime the forum industry has continued to improve their > offering. Next time there's a requirement for a software refresh of the > forum software, then it might just be that an off the shelf offering is > suitable. > > > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please > visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. > Unofficial list archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ > -- Martin Belam - http://www.currybet.net - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
