Interview by: [email protected] Interviewee: Charles CappsUBBDev: Recently, we happened to catch Charles Capps on a coffee break and decided to ask him a few questions about himself and UBB™ v6.1. He was eager and gracious enough to spill the beans and give us the scoop on the newest version of the Ultimate Bulletin Board™ as well as share a bit about his background. So settle in, grab a cup of java... here's what he had to say:
UBBDev: Charles, would you share a little about your background with us?
Charles Capps: Well, where to start? I was born and raised in the Silicon Valley in California. I attended private schools (after my older siblings had rather unsatisfactory experiences, to say the least) and graduated from High School in 1999. I earned a Unix System Administrator certification though UC Santa Cruz Extension courses, and was pursuing a certification in Java programming when I heard that Infopop was looking for a Perl programmer...
UBBDev: That is great! We're glad to hear that all the pieces fell into place for you. What attracted you to the Ultimate Bulletin Board™ initially?
Charles Capps: Wow... this is a long story with many interconnected little substories and relationships and whatnot. I'll try and keep it short.
In 1996, I quite literally accidentally clicked the wrong link on a webpage and found myself in a webchat. I slipped into the community, and soon found myself a unsuspecting leader...
I remain in that position today, though the community has changed quite a bit!
Through that chat, I found links to a little Star Trek-related web page.. and I caught a major typo that lead to some ... well, misleading information. I emailed the page author, and before I knew it, I found myself volunteering to maintain a few of the pages there.
The author then opened up a new page on the site. It was a valiant attempt to create a history for some of the ships seen on screen. Of course, they required a message board for the community to discuss things.
It was originally a WWWBoard. About six months into use, we were having to archive it every other day.. the main page was over 100k long!
The page owner then stumbled across a copy of UBB 3.0, which was free back then. We shut down the WWWBoard after a number of impersonation and lame hack attempts, and opened up the UBB™.
The UBB™ served us well for many months. We built up a pretty large community, and things were generally going well.
Of course, that is when the server got hacked by a British political group.
We assumed that the entire thing was a total loss. I quickly put out my feelers and struck a deal with a web host.. he would host us, free of charge, if we could run a UBB™ on his site. Being a fellow Trekkie, he agreed.
That's when I first started my code hacking... I learned Perl entirely through UBB 4.84, 5.09, 5.20 and 5.38.
I quickly got involved in the UBB™ community, helping people out, etc.
In August of 1999, I was made a Moderator at Scriptkeeper. I've been one ever since, with the exception of a few months during the OpenTopic debacle... Ugh. I never want to go back to that time. There was so much hostility in the community!
The web page community has since continued to grow, though now in a completely different location. You can take a peek at my forums by visiting:
http://flare.solareclipse.net/ UBBDev: That's a first-rate looking forum with a good number of members and... being a Trekkie does have it's advantages apparently.
We are all very excited about the release of UBB™ v6.1. Can you tell us what you have done to address the I/O problems that have occurred?
Charles Capps: The UBB™ has always been an I/O intensive application. Those old 3.x versions, such as the one I mentioned above, were FAR worse than anything we have today.
UBB™6 SHOULD have been better than the 5.x series in I/O, but it didn't quite turn out that way. There were a few sections of code that were simply doing the wrong thing.
This isn't a totally complete list, but some of the things we've done to reduce the I/O load include:
- Cache optimizations
- -- Multiple page threads are now generated one page at a time (in 6.0x, all pages were generated at once). For optimal speed, set your UBB to only display 15 posts per page.
- -- In multiple page forums, the additional pages are properly cached.
- Reducing required I/O
- -- The forum_#.threads file is no longer deleted when maintenance actions are performed (requiring an expensive rebuild process)
-- Rather than the expensive process of opening each thread file when creating a forum page, UBB™ now reads a handful of metadata files instead (which saves between 75 and 90% of the I/O requests that 6.0x has to make!)
- -- Files that used to be opened 10-50 times per UBB instance now are opened only once, then cached.
- Internal code changes
- -- Very few routines in the UBB™ make raw I/O calls
- -- Centralized routines handle 98% of all I/O tasks
- -- Centralized routines to handle ALL manipulation of member and thread data (meaning that they can be easily replaced or supplemented)
- -- New file: ubb_lib_files.cgi
We have identified a few other areas that would benefit from some changing, but we've had to put those off to future releases in order to meet our own internal release schedule.
UBBDev: It is nice to hear that IP is making every effort to address and fix the I/O issues that have popped up. What, do you feel, is THE most important change in UBB™ v6.1?
Charles Capps: Good question. I think it's split right down the middle between the I/O reduction and the new member search routines.
UBBDev: In your opinion, what could be the most apparent visual addition in the new version?
Charles Capps: There are very few changes in 6.1.0 that actually show up for the end-user...
Definitely take a peek at your My Profile page after the upgrade though! Most of the visual differences are there.
UBBDev: We will make sure to check it out! From what I've read, it appears some very nice enhancements have been made on the Control Panel. What has changed? What was added?
Charles Capps: The control panel has been touched up quite a bit. The fonts and formatting are both more consistent.
We've added logging to most functions, reverse email and IP banning, and completely, totally redone the member search control panel.
The new member search is the shining star of the new features. It's almost everything that has been asked for over the past years. I'll leave the exact feature list undisclosed for now, but you'll LOVE it! For you code hackers, it's VERY extendable! (Hint: useregexes around line 980 of cp_users...)
We've added a handy tool that allows you to compare your Wordlet™ entries against ALL the Wordlet™ entries that we've added or changed, meaning that you will NEVER have to loose your Wordlet™ entries when upgrading!
We've added another handy tool with a plain and simple function -
it's the Upgrade button! Rather than having to go through a long and annoying upgrade process of having to submit screens and alter settings, you now just need to upload the UBB™ files, enter the control panel, and hit the Upgrade button! It does MOST of the work for you.
Oh, and custom Graemlins. Need I say more?
We've also enhanced the control panel entry page to give you a little more information and quick links to Infopop resources.
UBBDev: Wow, we can't wait to see all of these newest features! Graemlins, logging, member search, an Upgrade Button and more... I believe there will be some very happy users once they upgrade their boards.
Will users be able to upgrade from all previous versions of the Ultimate Bulletin Board™ easily or are there certain version limitations?
Charles Capps: As with all UBB™6 versions, you can not upgrade from the old Freeware releases without first upgrading to a 5.x release.
The upgrade touches all the files in the board, so upgrading a hacked board WILL overwrite the changes you've made. Using file comparison tools such as BeyondCompare won't do any good - the code LOOKS totally different, even if it functions in the same way.
UBBDev:Thanks for the upgrade information and the warning. Users, please remember that you will not be able to use a file comparison tool when you upgrade to this newest UBB™ release.
UBBDev:We would like to thank Charles Capps for taking the time to answer our questions as well as giving us a few details about the changes that have been made with v6.1. We are all looking forward to IPs release of UBB™ v6.1. Charles, good luck and best wishes to you and to
Infopop.
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