[Logician]

Originally posted by Parker Clack
I am a bit confused on the load number myself. By lowering the load number does the program start up closer to midnight? That is if I set this number to 5 is it going to be sending the emails out closer to midnight than the setting of 30 that is in there now?

Even though we are a high volume site our load averages aren't that high on the server. I would just as soon have the birthday greetings (I am using the email option only) sent out closer to midnight than any other time of the day.

Please read the message of mine I explained the performance issues and how the hack works. I think you'll find the answers there.

A quick summary:
load number is the estimated visitor number of your board main page. In other words how many times the file index.php is run daily. If you set it correctly you'll help the hack to run only 3 times a day to save your board from an unnessary SQL query. If you higher the number too much, it will run less frequently and sometimes can miss birthdays (in fact it never misses, just greets late). If you set it lower than it should be, greeting time will be closer to midnight but hack will work more frequently (daily) so everytime it works it will run an extra a SQL query. Since index.php has already more than 20 SQL queries, this extra query may not harm anyone and if it is no big deal to you to run 21 queries instead of 20, you can lower it too much and hack will then greet the birthdays VERY CLOSE to midnight.. For my 2 cents on the issue, read my suggestion to David..