Nice, gj.

- modified url shouldn't work
- lose the id

titles are not unique

That's why there's supposed to be url column in the database which would actually be unique, so it can be used as an identificator. This is still doable.

titles shouldn't be forced to be unique in our situation. just look at what everyone uses for their titles and the fact that we have over 2 million. integer 'id' is the unique id, its also faster and more convenient in all possible places.

Ok.. I just wanted to say that ability to change the text in the URL to whatever I want and still have valid URL is not good :)

Posting links to ESR on other sites and then changing the topic name which makes older links to be invalid is even worse.

Why would older links be invalid? Just don't allow modification of url once it's set.

Topic/URL needs to be changed in several cases:
- there's typo in it
- there was an update of the topic (e.g. added '[updated]' to notify that there were major updates or even change like that: 'madix goes to quakecon' -> 'madix won't go to quakecon', then your wonderful url loses its sense)

Additionally as Demiurge said searching database using string key is much more expensive. When you have integer ID you just look up in index table for its location. When you have string the database is probably calculating hash for it then it looks up in hash index table for the list of entries with this hash, if there are multiple then in runs linear search and matches equal string by content. For such huge database it is meaningless to decrease performance because of change in how URLs look like.

Making a typo in the url and realizing it after you make the link public is news writer's fault :). And if the topic is updated, it doesn't mean that the url should be. Url can still stay the same.

2 millions of rows in a single table is far from being huge database. I've worked with tables with hundreds of millions of entries and using select with varchar index didn't make the performance noticeable lower to int index.

I guess it depends on how you percieve those things you mentioned.

Just to mention, no it's no matter how much rows you have but the number of rows times number of viewers in time unit :). ESR used to fail during big events even with fast indexing. However it is not a big deal and I think its very minor to discuss about :). Regards!

unfortunately nested comments we have O(n^2) efficiency due to the recursive lookup. with all the related fields, we have about O(n^4), so yeah. it's totally possible to add date+title search to retrieve the first post, but really, the usability isn't any better than it already is.

With a quick check when posting/editing they could be.

By rewriting the URLs in the way you have, which is flakey to say the least, you've created endless variations of the same page - not good practice at all.

well, no, they can't be, but more importantly and they're specifically desired not to be. anyone can use whatever they want for the title.

www.whatswrongwithhowitisnow.info

good job, it will be easier to find esr topics in google and possibly will attract more visitors.

Great!, but one little note: currently ' is exchanged to -. I think it would be better to exchange it to nothing, so it's would convert to its and not to it-s.

not from rss doh!

Nice :)

[+], looks good.

the site improving at a rapid pace!

For the last few days, whenever I click "more..." in the sideboxes, it minimizes to zero threads and the "more...(fewer...)" disappears, however this only happens when I'm in a specific thread, not on the main page or any other page. Could be related to the recent URL changes.

mmm yes thats a bug

fixed

picture descriptions (position mostly) is bugged
(you know, those bubbles)

Having bubble trouble?

You didn't 301 you old urls to the new urls. Poor show mr esr web developer. Should at the very least set a canonical tag for the tag with the seo url.

It's flakey to say the least:

http://www.esreality.com//post/2235418/sdjfhsd3242342fsd
http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=2235418
http://www.esreality.com//post/2235418/123456789
http://www.esreality.com//post/2235418/-
http://www.esreality.com//post/2235418/-------

Even works without the slug lol - http://www.esreality.com/post/2235418

All point to this page.

yea, that's the desired effect. titles are in url for readability only.

Seems wonky to me... editing gives you the older cached version when submitting.

ok, i'll fix it in the case of posting a new reply

Also, haven't you noticed the webby is kinda slow to react? :)
And clock is 4 minutes ahead of proper time :)

'webby'? no, i think its pretty fast.
time was off by 240 seconds, synced now

I still get it slow sometimes... Try the busy euro hours maybe

today, i was deleting orphaned comments, which locks up the site. i tried to keep it to up to 30 seconds of freeze...

actually, yesterday wasn't too slow :)