I've run some test on the performance BEFORE and AFTER.

My test was conducted on an average page, and I recorded the "Page generated stats". I had 191 replacements, and using the DB cache.

The results were page loading time on average more than doubled, from an average of 0.5 secs, to 1.2 secs. This is an unacceptable increase, so despite really liking what this has to offer, I'm going to have pass on using it. If anyone can think of a way to make the performance better I'd love to take another look at this - unfortunately you can't get round the fact that for every new link added it has to check it against every word in the text, so in my case 1500 words x 191 links = 286,500 comparisons being made. Even on my dedicated dual-Xeon server it takes a big performance hit.

I wonder if a different approach can be taken, along the lines of how some sites you have words linked to ads - they don't seem to do anything with the html itself, but must be some clever javascript at work - perhaps this could be the answer.

All the same, praise to The Greek, for all his hard work, and if your only using this on a handful of links, I think there would be no problem in doing this - it's only when you want to have 100+ links you'll start to slow down signifcantly :(

alexi - usng the db cache gives you more whistles and belles (ie real time exclusion of links that have expired) however it requires a query to be called. Not using the query means that the datastore cache is used. You get the same basic functionality but not so many of the whistles and bells.

To be honest, The extra query isnt much of an overhead.

Pigsy - I appreciate whate you are saying and yes, the more replacements... the more server load. Even with a js callback, your server will need to scan the text for matches you have wich I doubt will lighten your load much. Personally, I never envisioned people using it with 190 replacements! If you come up with a different method, I would love to hear about it for the next release.

Cheers all!

(BTW - just an FYI - Im not around much right now as I am in Spain on holiday with the family. In fact, my wife is going to go nuts if she sees me on the system!... Be back soon ;) )

The Geek, thanks for this mod, we're toying with it at forum.notebookreview.com

One thing that would really help me is date ranges on the stats report. Right now it's set up as a lifetime, but for us, viewing performance over a week or month is more useful. If you could work that in some time, we'd be appreciative.

Hi,

Where does this hack install itself? A friend of mine did it, but I can't see it in Admin. :(

I've installed it and it's working great, thanks geek.

I have one problem though. I also have vBadvanced installed but the autolinker doesn't work on the vBadvanced homepage.

Is there a way of getting the autolinker working on the vBa homepage (and I've somehow missed it while searching for the answer) or is this still a problem to be solved?

Paul - check the gish folder for changed files

croupier. Im on holiday right now so I cant tell you exactly where and what, however yuo can simply call (something like) $gal->process_text(text);
Whereever you want gals to link. You may have to play about as I said - im away from my system so I cant tell you exactly what to do.

HTH´s

Problem for me as well. I need it to be turned off for a while and I've set all usergroups to be exempt from it and my field value to off but still no luck.

Hi Geek,

Can you elaborate a bit on "check for changed files" please?:)

Also, whereabout in Admin CP should it show up? May have to pay someone to do this for me. :(

Paul Ross,

You are currently showing up as unlicensed. To be able to download hacks and/or receive support here at vBulletin.org, we ask you to please click here (vB-germany users click here) and enter your email address, to show us that you are licensed.

You will need to use your customer number and password (which will be in the email you got when you paid for your license) to access that page. Please note that your email is case sensitive. The update of your account may take up to one hour.

Thank you.

I've adjusted that Marco.

Yup you're showing up as licensed now. :D

I could do with some help installing this and am prepared to pay for it, if anyone's interested?:)

Paul

If you are asking someone to do a job for payment, please post your request in teh Service Request forum.

almost working, but i'm having a problem with IE displaying 'glossary' links (set them up exactly per instructions):

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/4564/gal8rp.jpg

it seems to appear fine in firefox (just showing the text under the link, no <td> code)..

tried rebuilding as well.

from the debug:

any ideas?

Looks like a bug... "Box style" (box_style) setting does not take when adding a new category. The category can be edited to fix it though.

Hey, what's with the vB versions you guys are claiming to be running?

MarcoH64: 4.5.0 Beta4
The Geek: 4.06

As far as I know, vB 3.5 is in beta now.

mkdevo - it looks like you are running in danger mode. Make sure its in safe mode and rebuild.

Thanks tom... ill look into it. :)

Geek,

You didn't envision people using it with more than 190 replacements? I would expect it to be very common to have more than that once you get rolling with it.

GAL 4 is substantially slower than GAL 3! It's an absolute show stopper. Even a dual Xeon system is brought to it's knees with hundreds of replacements.

In addition to adding extra features, did you mostly switch from simple string replacements to using regular expressions - or is there some other reason that it is substantially slower than the previous version?

Other than turning off the DB Cache and removing some replacements, what else can be done to speed things up?

How do I turn off GAL4 completely (disabled) without un-installing it? I don't see an option in the admin area.

Can replacements be disabled rather than removed?

Geek,

The large amount of CPU time seems to be spent in the regular expression searching of preg_replace().

Since 99.9% of the time, the replacement text is not present in any given post, how about pre-processing the list of replacements "text" fields to see if a simple string search using the quicker stristr() function finds the text in the post before adding it to the find/replacement array to be used by "the CPU hog" preg_replace() function? I would then expect the preg_replace() to usually only be working with a few search terms or less.

I think this would speed things up a lot when using hundreds of replacements.

Hi Tom,

The actual processing of the preg_replace is almost identical to the previous version (Especially if not using the DB cache). In fact, off the top of my head it IS the same.

Lets say that you have 190 GALS to check, you would then need to run 190 stristr´s THEN run the preg_replace on the results (for each post in the thread). Whether this has any cost implications, I couldnt say. Seems to me the ultimate solution would be to find a way to GAL the page results instead of on a post by post basis. The problem with doing that (as it is easily done) is the increased risk of GALing stuff you dont want GALed. If that could be done, you could cut the average preg_replace cost by an average 15 times.
If you want to give it a try, run the process_text function on the postbits after they are created.

As I mentioned before, I didnt envision 190 replacements at a go though I guess can easily see it happening now. The previous version would give you about as much overhead as this one would so I dont think it really has much to do with that.
Ill look into cost implications of the stristr or strpos when I start to migrate this to 3.5 however I think the real benefit would be by GALing the results instead of the post text.

HTH´s

Where in script can I find the link "autolink.php" which is called when processing a link? I successfully autolink other scripts, but they are in a folder under forums and of course autolink.php cannot be found. So I would like to hardcode it.
thanks

I placed autolink.php in other folder and did a chdir to forums. That worked.

Ive installed it after the readme.html, did everything it told me to without any errors. But i cant get it to work.. and i would love to have it working. Ive added a link, but nothing happens with it.. i have set all the options right but it just wont work :( Any thoughts?

Have you tried rebuilding the cache?

Do you mean the "Rebuild" button on the "Debug" page? "No Results"

Edit: Ok, i added a link again, and then tried the Rebuild button. Now the link turns up red, using the sponsor thing. Hmm?

Edit 2: Hm, now its gone again.. it just wont work..

if you want me to look into it - pm me an admin account and ill see what the problem is :)

Firstly, I thought of this hack yesterday.. put in a request to see if ti could be done.. and lo and behold somebody had already done it. A big thanks for this, it is a great hack.

I've tried searching this thread and can't find anything... I want to remove the hyperlink.. disable it, I only want the popups... I've tried removing the href but then the colour and the underline disapears, what is the quick fix for this?

Cheers /me sends The Geek a beer

no worries.. sorted it. I changed the replacement 'popup with title to;This is a great addon, look forward to seeing more of your work.

~vb

I'm sure this has been asked....

but any thoughts on an update for 3.5 RC 2?

geekster, can u view the attached files..

this is what i did:

1. picked my nose and read your instructions
2. installed with gish
3. had to manually edit 1 admincp file
4. copied over the edited files from your gish dump
5. followed the rest of the instructions
6. i made a new display under "today" with the settings u see in the attachment 3
7 then in the attachment #2, thats the results

problem: the ads/test is showing up like its transparent or something. on other parts of the page, on the today text, its coming out wierd. theres no yellow box or anything around the text. let me know if im doing this right or if there is something up.

thanks.

btw im running this on 308

Check to ensure that the category's box style is set to something and then rebuild (debug->rebuild).

that worked. thanks.

oh, how can i make it where the underline is something other then black? like i rather have the underlined word like....yellow or red or pink, something that stands out.

Check out the CSS declaration in the readme... just change it to whatever CSS you want.

HTH's

ok got that down. now if i want to make the text bold, how would i do that?

oh and i would actually like to put a background color around the text, to make it stand out more.

Mr. Geek. -

is there a way to offer this to paying subscribers?

the idea:

user goes to subscription page. purchases the contextual linkage option, and i set what they are getting, what kind of plan, like...example

1 context link with drop down and title bar for 5 days- $5000
1 context link with drop down, no title bar for 5 days - $2500
4 text link with drop down and title bar for 5 days - $19000

so they choose their plan, lets do the 4 text links one, then once they pay for the plan through paypal (ofcourse), then the IPN takes em back and boom, now they purchased this ad space. now, they goto their UserCP maybe, and have a field to enter their 4 text ads in a slot, with drop down and title bar category.

then after 5 days, the plan expires, and the ads get removed.

is this possible o holy one?

i think i found a problem

the drop down stuff is only showing on 1 style. the main style. not dropping down on any other style. any ideas?

Not sure what you mean about the drop down stuff.

Yes, I am working on a system to allow people to purchase and manage GAL and GAB entries.

Colour issues is really a CSS issue. Just change the CSS in whatever way you fancy.

HTHs!