Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
Safety Goggles Recommended We have noticed that Humzoo has been kinda slow lately. So we did what any good friend would do - we took Humzoo in for his annual checkup. After a couple shots and a look under the hood (turn your head and cough please), our friend was as good as new.

You should notice that several pages load much faster than before, such as the community section (especially the comments page), user front pages, photo archive pages and the account page. These changes brought speed improvements of up to 800% faster page loads in some cases. That's faster than cupcakes disappear at a six-year-old's birthday party!

The main problem is not a bad one. Humzoo has gotten so big that our database is bursting at the seams. Some of our code has been around for a long time and just doesn't perform well with such a massive database. We had to learn some new ways to do things, which is best for us and best for Humzoo.

The main culprit of the slow-down was the comments database. While we were in there, some interesting data fell onto the floor. We scooped it up and brought it back to share with you. The graph above shows the most frequent commenters over the past couple of years. If you know one of these commenters, pat them on the back. Then kindly remove their internet access for a little while so everyone else can catch up.

But wait... there's more!
We're happy to have two new themes available now. Both themes are completely new for Humzoo and can be used as a full theme or as individual building blocks if you prefer to create your own style. You can find these in the Style Editor, which you can access by clicking Account at the top of the page (then select the Style tab).