A few days ago I finally sorted out the major slowdowns on ESR. It was down to some innocent looking queries hogging the database, slowing everything else down. Since then I've been going through the php and rewriting anything that looks like it might be a database hog. The site seems to be super speedy now since the changes. So much so that I've put back in a lot of the features I cut to try and improve the speed.

The search page is back and working properly.

You can browse posts by user again (from the profile page).

The archive is being used for listings when you go past page 1, so older postings should appear as normal even if they are archived).

I also rewrote some of the comments section, so that the "First unread comment" link is back. I know a lot of people used that link so I'm glad to reinstate it. The tricky part was working out which is the first unread comment from a list that might span pages, but it all got worked out in the end.

Another problem was uploading big demos, which caused Nicky some grief when she had some huge TDM files to upload. I modified the java upload app from the galleries so that it can be used for uploading larger files to any kind of post. That should sort out anything up to around 32MB, which is enough for demos for now. If you need to upload a file bigger than 8MB, you need to make the post without the file first, then edit it to attach files using the java applet.

I also made a few more changes today following some requests. The latest threads box now remembers how you left it, at least until your session expires. nvck didn't like the betting box taking up so much space at the top right, so I made it collapsible to a smaller version. Also Jamerio reminded me to look into a bookmarking system, so I've added a 'Save' button to threads. Hopefully these work as expected, and I'll tinker with the details until they're right.