cached website
by Jules · in Site Feedback · 01/29/2011 (2:57 am) · 8 replies
When the site goes down you are presented with a cached version. It allows you to add forum and blog entries, however when the live site comes back, whatever you have submitted is no longer shown. Is there a sync in place to cover this?
#2
01/29/2011 (8:46 am)
If I understand this properly, the live cached version is unable to access the database files of this forum. I'm fairly certain that Cloudflare, the company that provides that strange service, has no intention of providing reverse sync as that is not their product. It seems to me that their primary product is security and analytic capability with a cached version as an aside. 
#3
They help make sites with a mix of static and dynamic content respond faster (fewer requests for unchanging data = more processing power for dynamic data). Of course, this relies on the backend webservers working in the first place for the occasional refresh, and the frontend actually responding with a cached version fast enough.
01/29/2011 (9:50 am)
The cache is simply a static webcache, and it's not a strange service at all. More websites than you think actually use these sort of services ;)They help make sites with a mix of static and dynamic content respond faster (fewer requests for unchanging data = more processing power for dynamic data). Of course, this relies on the backend webservers working in the first place for the occasional refresh, and the frontend actually responding with a cached version fast enough.
#4
edit: I did noticed that the Survey blog at the time of posting a message was about 37 posts, but the non cached version before the website went down was at about 60 posts. So the cached versions snapshot is out of sync (depends how frequent the snapshot is)
01/29/2011 (10:10 am)
well I managed to post to a blog, it then refreshed the page and I could see my post there (on the cached version), whether or not it should sync back is unknown (GG) may know this. But thought I should bring it up as the site was down for a while. Otherwise several people could post and then when the site goes back up, their posts no longer exist. edit: I did noticed that the Survey blog at the time of posting a message was about 37 posts, but the non cached version before the website went down was at about 60 posts. So the cached versions snapshot is out of sync (depends how frequent the snapshot is)
#5
01/29/2011 (10:14 am)
It may be that the database server is on a seperate server than that from the website, behind a DMZ on the firewall. Maybe GG also have two clustered load balanced servers, or just use the Cloudfare service as a DNS round robin failover service to save some money for now and add DOS prevention. If the database server is still up then if it uses the same connect scripts data still gets written to them, it may be that the pointers showing the last record then duplicate itself but only showing the first record of 2. So the post probably would not get seen when the site comes back up anyway. 
#6
01/29/2011 (1:39 pm)
The cached site that is displayed is part of the system that prevents the site from being corrupted when something goes wrong. Its supposed to be read-only, in fact you shouldn't have been able to log in at all. That prevents posts from being made during that time, as well as purchases.
#7
01/29/2011 (2:18 pm)
yeah, strange that.. I posted in Derek's Survey blog. Might be worth asking your web guy to check the database on that blog around entry 30.. see if there is a multiple record. Text was do with the site being cached and out of sync. Bit of a worry if you get a database full of dead postings.
#8
01/29/2011 (5:35 pm)
@Ronny: The caching of sites is not what I consider to be the strange aspect of their service. 
Torque Owner Jules
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