[adnedarn]

I'm not sure if my situation has to do with some of you guys... but here is my experience on upgrading from 2.2.1 to 2.4.2.

First off- I want to point out that I have been running this mod since the original versions came out, so I know my way around it pretty well. After doing the 2.2.1 to 2.4.2 upgrade I noticed some pretty major differences in my server load (as I've previously posted about) and my chats really took a LONG time to pop up. For a lot of people, they'd have to refresh, wait that period of up to 11 seconds for the chatbox to populate to see new chats, submit theirs, and refresh again to see new ones. A kind programmer kinda worked with me through some of the stuff to see if he could find any reason this was happening in VBDev's absence and mainly we worked on lessening the load of my settings... Changing refresh times, removing avatars, deleting the second hidden channel that only a few people use, disabling view of the chatbox for unregistered users etc. Initially that seemed to help, but over time it really didn't. I tried going back a version to 2.3.2 which was still a step above what I had, but I didn't know if I could go back to 2.2.1 because of the script I had to run... Well, that didn't help either.

Finally I gave up and figured I'd just delete the whole thing, all files, make sure there were no more tables in the database (had to manually drop 2) and do a fresh install. So I warned the users to take note of their font choices, and anything in archive they may need... and deleted it a few days later. I figured since I had it uninstalled I might as well get the paid version, so I did.
I ended up fresh installing the newest version 2.4.2 and boy let me tell you! It responds super fast, and the load on my server is dramatically decreased (not sure if that is the new version, the fact that it is fresh installed, or just using the settings the other coder suggested) but I just wanted to put it out there as a possible solution for any of you that have been going along doing the upgrades... There just may be something that ends up hanging around and causing some problems or of course it could have been just me

For visual aid I will attach 2 screen shots of my server's CPU usage one is a week view and one is a month view I have marked the graph to show what I did where, and the effect it had specifically on CPU use.

1) upgraded 2.2.1 to 2.4.2
2) programmer helped me change settings to lessen load
6) downgraded to 2.3.2
3) deleted old files, installed new version.. lost internet during settings set up
4) finished setting up shoubox settings, preformed database maintenance (had to run repair/optimize data base a LOT!)
5) rebooted server to get the ram size down from all the work I had been doing on the server the past month

So as you can see, the load is much lower now, and take my word for it-- this thing runs great! So if you're having a similar problem, you may just want to bite the bullet and remove it and do a fresh install you may have the same experience I have. I think we all know sometimes it's best to just delete something and start over.

Good luck and I love this shoutbox

Andrew