Maximum forums limit

[birchy]

What is the maximum number of forums this system will handle.
I'm thinking my 300000+ are too much for the caching subsystem.

I could throw some subforums out, but I need to know what number I'm shooting for and have to work with.

[xiofire]

Are you talking about TOPICS or FORUMS? If you have 300000 topics than great job, if you have 300000 Boards then wtf?

[birchy]

(07-04-2009 02:30 PM)xiofire Wrote:  Are you talking about TOPICS or FORUMS? If you have 300000 topics than great job, if you have 300000 Boards then wtf?

300000 forums. most users will only deal with 13 at a time, but I have a target user base of about 25,000 separate user pools (US towns).

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Ok, looks like each forum/category takes about 2k of the DataCache table's Cache field, which is a MEDIUMTEXT. MEDIUMTEXT is a 16,777,215 character data type, which means Cache can only hold about 8400 forums/categories. That's only enough to have just one forum for every US city, if we throw out all towns below 20,000. Which excludes my biggest user base.

Do I remember caching being an install option? If so, and I turn it off, will the system be too slow to use? Navigation through the highest level categories won't be common, I'd turn that off if I can and use my own front end to get the user to the lower level subforums that they will use.

Changing the field to data type LONGTEXT will up the number of forums to about 2,150,000, but I get an "Internal Server Error" when I try to Rebuild the Cache in Tools.

[ghazal]

MyBB supports Unlimited forums, subforums and users/posts etc. Unlimited means Unlimited..!

[birchy]

(07-04-2009 05:06 PM)ghazal Wrote:  MyBB supports Unlimited forums, subforums and users/posts etc. Unlimited means Unlimited..!

I wish that were true. Obviously the datacache field won't allow much, and the utility tries to send too big of a datastream for php to handle. I'm trying to test with 300 forums now...

[frostschutz]

I think you'll have a hard time finding a forum system that can handle 300k subforums. The forum system would have to be designed and optimized for that kind of situation, one of the key conditions being that it really does not even try to touch the other 299995 forums when only 5 forums are relevant for the current visitor.

In MyBB, the index page already touches all forums no matter what, so you won't be getting anywhere with that kind of requirement.

[birchy]

(07-04-2009 05:36 PM)frostschutz Wrote:  I think you'll have a hard time finding a forum system that can handle 300k subforums. The forum system would have to be designed and optimized for that kind of situation, one of the key conditions being that it really does not even try to touch the other 299995 forums when only 5 forums are relevant for the current visitor.

In MyBB, the index page already touches all forums no matter what, so you won't be getting anywhere with that kind of requirement.

You're probably right. I *can* replace the index page, and would want to regardless.

I've successfully auto-loaded 1000 forums, expect to fail the next test of around 2k forums.

[Schmarvin]

Might I asked the point of creating multiple forums? Especially beyond the necessity. Me? I find it pointless, a waste of time, and a waste of disk space.

[birchy]

It would be useful, if the existing structure/logic had a single field added, for "worlds". This would just be another level higher than the categories. It would probably affect almost every piece of code though, so I'm not holding my breath.

Only workaround that I can see so far, is to setup up a dozen installations and trim the sublevel forums back to a bare minimum. That's a admin nightmare, but beats hacking the code.

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After mulling it over, I think I'll just give up on forum software and just code what I need. My feature needs are quite simple, I would end up disabling or hacking out much of what myBB (or phpBB) does. The screens are way too busy, it is hard for me to find the content in all the avatar/sig/smiley noise. My users are typically not "power users". What will initially be somewhat crude, can at least be improved as time and interest permit.

Unless, that is, someone can tell me how to disable the forum caching in myBB.