Couple of Comments on the New Search Engine

Here are a couple of quick things to keep in mind as we test this new search engine:

- The site is not fully indexed. There are some pages that can not be found with the new search engine. We are working on this, and should have it corrected shortly.

- New additions to the site will not be found via the search engine. There will be approximately a 24 hour lag before new additions to the site start showing up in the search engine.

- The new search engine will only return items. So if you do a search for "Horror Movies," it will not return a link to the main Horror Movies section - just individual restaurants within that section. We're working to correct this as well.

- The site continues to be divided into three partitions for the purposes of search: RateItAll, Weblists, and Local. You'll need to specify which part of the site you are searching via the drop down menu.

As we work through the kinks, the old search engine will stay available here:

http://www.rateitall.com/search.aspx

New Search Engine Live

Finally we have a real search engine. Try it out, and please give me feedback.

We're going to be making some tweaks to it during the next couple of days to make it easier to use.... but again, feedback is much appreciated.

RateItAll is Back Up!

The new database is live, and the site seems to be flying.

RateItAll is Going Down....

.... Right Now.

We're putting the new database online. Just to review, this will double site processing power, and should have a noticeable impact on performance.

If things go well, we'll be back up within the hour.

RateItAll Will Be Down For Maintenance....

.... Tomorrow, September 13 from 11AM - 2PM EST.

We're going to try and install the new database again.

My first preference was to do the upgrade in the middle of the night. However, since we've had some difficulties with this upgrade, to be safe I decided to do it when the Tyan customer service desk is open.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

The Return of Real Time Comment Updates

I have enabled real time updates on both the recent comments page, and the user page.

So you'll now be able to immediately see comments that you post on your user page, and all comments that post on the recent comments page as they come in.

We'll see how it goes.... we have more server firepower coming in tomorrow (details to follow), so I'm optimistic that we can handle this now.

Success

Well, we've recoded the main ratings list / weblist template for every RateItAll ratings list.

And so far, it seems to be screamingly fast to open a ratings list page. Here's an example.

Be on the look-out for bugs, as this was a significant code change.

We'll now be going through one by one the critical pages of the site and doing the same thing...

Code Upgrade Being Deployed....

Site may be unstable for the next few minutes.

College Football Players

With College Football season kicking into full gear, we've finally gotten around to updating our current College Football Players list.

If you don't see your favorite player, you can add him yourself.

Anyone ever been to Athens?

If so, check out our new list of Athens Tourist Attractions. Each item on the list has pictures and descriptions - here's a good opportunity to get that first review in on some high profile listings.

We're working on blowing out these sections for each of the major tourist cities in the world.

Here are some others to check out - if you don't see your favorite spot in any of these cities, make sure to add it by clicking on the light bulb icon:

Amsterdam Tourist Attractions

Barcelona Tourist Attractions

Buenos Aires Tourist Attractions

London Tourist Attractions

Madrid Tourist Attractions

Melbourne Tourist Attractions

Mexico City Tourist Attractions

Montevideo Tourist Attractions

Paris Tourist Attractions

Rio Tourist Attractions

Rome Tourist Attractions

Santiago, Chile Tourist Attractions

Sydney Tourist Attractions

New iTunes Phone Out

Anyone have the 100 song iTunes phone yet? Apparently it's also known as the Motorola Rokr.

I think I like "iTunes phone" better.

Gilligan Has Died

Click through to remember Gilligan, AKA Bob Denver.

People Who Creep Me Out...

The Weblist, "People who creep me out" has been removed.

As I've hinted for several months now, RIA is making a conscious effort towards moving away from these sorts of lists. Specifically, lists that are entirely personal in nature, have no theme, and are made up entirely of listings that can be found in other sections may not be long for the site.

I'm not planning any widescale purge of these sorts of lists, but you may start to see them dropping off one by one.

Oktoberfest

If you have ever considered making the trip to Germany for Oktoberfest, make sure to check out this must read post from earthbound.

More Katrina Fall-out

Two more Weblists touch on the subject of Katrina:

#1JohnDoeFan looks at some of the consequences of the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, and Magellan starts pointing fingers and assigning blame for Katrina's poor preparation and slow response.

Rehnquist

Chief Justice William Rehnquist died last night. Comment HERE.

Speculation as to replacements on the bench is going on HERE.

Sprocket Data

Here's sort of a neat story about how the guy who runs Sprocket Data, RateItAll's hosting provider, has responded to Katrina.

DB Upgrade Unsuccessful

We'll try again tomorrow, once we speak to the good folks at Tyan.

RateItAll Will Be Down For Maintenance....

... tonight, starting at 1AM EST until roughly 4AM.

As mentioned in earlier posts, we decided to shell out the $$ and invest in a high powered database server. The new database will be powered by four, high-end, super fast processors (compared to two, high-end, super fast processors currently). And yes, that means we are doubling our processing power.

RateItAll's traffic grew by about 25% in August over July, and we're scrambling to keep up. I'm very hopeful that this upgrade will result in a noticeable difference in site speed...

The RateItAll Community Reacts....

....to Katrina.