[AndrewD]

Originally Posted by Ophelia

Okay, some side questions.

I have the download manager now installed on another site that I'm admining for. On Friday, they send out a newsletter to roughly 12,000 subscribed members advertising the download for that day. They will typically have roughly 2-3,000 hits on it by the end of the day.

We are seeing a huge strain on the main database, which is on the main server. A new server, dedicated to the downloads, has been purchased. Now the question is.. can we have a seperate database just for the link manager, or does it have to be inside the forum database? Right now, when that newsletter goes out, it overloads the database and shuts down the site, which is bad because the store is also there.

I never dreamed that this would end up being a heavyweight....

First thing to work out is whether it is the load on the database that is killing your server, or the physical effort of transferring the files which are being downloaded. I would be inclined to suspect the second - recall that the files themselves are not stored in the database.

Second, how are the urls being specified for the downloads? If they are being entered as full urls (even if this is the same server), this is a sure fire recipe for hammering the server. Far better to have the files specified using a local filename (or uploaded, which amounts to the same thing).

I really don't know about being able to run LDM in its own VB database - but one way that should work is to have two installations of VB on the same server, and use one of them for LDM. Might need some clever work to keep the usernames in sync.

Originally Posted by Ophelia

Older install... those who are allowed to upload can do so, but it's putting all their files into "moderate". I've looked everywhere to see if it's really set to moderate them, but can't find anything. It's driving me batty. Ideas?

Take a look at the Control Settings tab for the category into which they are uploading (or its parents), as well as the Admin/Settings page. Moderation can be set on a per-category basis and globally.