Growl!!!! Ads Blocking Access to Podcast Details

[owyn]

Has anything changed in the forum software?

Clicking on the Details link is frequently being blocked by never ending ads.

Hmmm. I just tested this again to get the details correct and noticed that the Daily Source Code link always causes this problem, but, Coverville got through ok.

Grouch. Grumble.

[theFerf]

Owyn:

A couple things I have noticed recently, and it has nothing to do with the ads... First off you should know that the current system pulls the xml feed of a podcaster everytime that someone accesses that page (in progress creating cache script).

the problems you mention have to do with the following (IMO):
A. curry server is way overloaded right now
B. other podcasts hosted with feedburner have had some issues recently. I approve 50 to 100 podcasts a day and see a lot of feedburner links. today, off and on in spurts, feedburner has been down. this means, if podcast alley cant get the xml feed...it will leave a hanging page displaying only the ad, because thats where it pauses while trying to parse the feed xml file. it has been worse today than any other i have seen to date.

make sense?

[owyn]

Yep. I understand how the problem happens.

Caching should help a lot in performance. As long as the time to live is not to long.

[seek3r]

I have added a caching system so that we no longer need to pull from the RSS each time. We are now collecting the RSS items into our database which allows us to just get the data from there. So now the details page should be pretty snappy.
Also this allows us to track the various podcasts alot better and expect more exciting features to come based off this new data collection.

[owyn]

:D
Tx for the update Dan.
Good to see Chris has got some tech support.

[theFerf]

yes it is. there will be a more formal announcement sometime soon, but the backend help has been excellent!