There is more to the eye when managing a dnn server, as I read on forums and experience first hand, the horror of the memory exception errors... they are annoying, frustrating and sometimes hard to pinpoint, and often the culprit could be simply an oversized xml file in the _default/Logs directory - with one today being picked up by client as being over 8mb.. to have that in an xml file is not good.. because it uses up far too much memory and affects sites that are being viewed at the time, by running out of memory.  These large log files can be caused by modules that are causing problems, eg. on my site, I have a particular module that I noticed really does throw some errors, so in the next site will remove it.. but often we don't know about that unless we regularly check the log files.  And log files if you're not a coder, can be hard to understand sometimes...

And after talking with another knowledgable person (so this is third hand OK) - he mentioned about the caching on ISP's and the problems they can cause if you are working on your site, and the ISP does cache clearing and you're in the middle of updating- you get memory errors because the site is timing out.  Which does make one think about should we be working offline and updating our sites locally then just upload the changes...  It's not something I do, I prefer to work live, and zip and backup and download, rather than work local and update.  It's just a preference I guess.  But it does make you think that in a changing environment of working online, other issues that were not problems becuuse they were not known or problems until the dynamics of how we manage sites has changed..

Let's look at some things that could be happening at the same time.. -  you're online, logged in to make changes, you've got a session happening, you get sidetracked for a while on the phone, or client or whatever, or perhaps involved in doing something which takes a while and might not register on the server as activity, so the server might time out, or if not, you might get a slight hiccup in your connection - if server is based in another country, or your adsl connection just drops a bit, or someone starts to download a file in the office, or you're uploading and bandwidth is throttled slightly, or the server is doing a backup of some sort, or there is a spike in server traffic, or your ISP does decide to clear their cache which you have no control over... all or some of these happening at some time... we're becoming so much more reliant on technology.

I had a few except errors today - looked at my log files expecting lots and lots and lots.. and there were only 3 - which were probably the result of some other site on the server, but which one?

The point I'm trying to make here is that DNN hosting is generally pretty good, but when things go bad, they get ugly and it's only after certain things happen on a regular basis, that you can see patterns to it., so the checkbox of possible things just keeps getting larger, but at the same time, you can start quickly isolating and finding the problems. 

And today- finally after 2 WEEKS sorted out the issue with the XDChat module - boy was I happy - it was the application pooling in IIS that was set to 2 that caused logouts consistently - with the ability to log in completely disappearing.. The chat pack is being repackaged and checked again, to make sure it's good to go.

I'm tired tonight - mentally challenging day - doing core team work too. It doesn't take up all my day- but the element of thinking about solutions and the best way to go about things is very taxing... I just feel like I have to push through a few things and tomorrow.. *sigh*.. computer / network is getting some attention - to hopefull rectify some things that have been giving me unnecessary headaches  - (that does sound ambiguous - when was a headache necessary??)

But as the week winds up and I see things with DNN getting closely tied up, and the impact of this next lot of work I'm doing for the core team makes me realise how much momentum DotNetNuke will gather in the coming months - and I'm glad I found such a good thing to work with because I'm more excited today (even though I get really annoyed some days) than ever before.  Sometimes I think I'll miss out on some opportunities, burn a few along the way, but those who have been understanding will see the rewards in the future.. because I remember my friends and those who understand that it's really hard to make everyone happy.

So another day another blog - another big thanks for those who listen to me carry on because I hate things being out of kilter... unless I pushed it there..

Cheers from Nina