SITE MOVED! Apologies for lost posts.

by **Elentari** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:48 pm

I've had real problems opening topics on the Forum - it is taking multiple clicks. Really annoying - and sometimes I just have to give up. :evil:

by **hazel** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 10:59 am

Same here, Elentari!

I've also just given up trying to get in to the Fan Fic forum - after 3 minutes, the progress bar was still below 50%

by **Marion** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 11:10 am

They were both very slow last night and not much better this morning. I find it hard to believe it is always down to sheer volume of traffic on the sites...

by **chrisbishop** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 2:33 pm

A new message has arrived from the host last evening, and so I thought it wise to keep all of you updated on the most recent developments...

Hello,

Thank you for your patience.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We are aware about intermittent slowness while accessing the MySQL driven sites. The main reason for this slowness is due to load on the MySQL servers. In order to avoid this slowness, we have plans to add more hardware to our MySQL farm. We have tested this in our test server, and have seen very good result. We expect this hardware upgrade to be completed in a couple of weeks. We appreciate your patience while we resolve this issue. I once again apologize for the inconvenience.

I'm baffled... STILL a couple of weeks to make 'repairs'?!

It is fortunate that this website is not a money-making company... Of course, I do believe they are some of those who are hosting their websites on this host... They must be even less happy than I am.

by **Marion** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:09 pm

Strikes me they can't have much common sense if they didn't know
a. the amount of traffic on their websites
b. the amount of traffic the new server would accomodate.
I mean, I am a technological nitwit, but even I can see that you ought to consider those points before upping sticks and moving everything...
But then, what do I know? :wink:

by **Serena Lewis** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 9:20 pm

It seems a bit quicker now. When you click on things, it still takes a while to go through, but is quicker really. I also refreshed the page, and it went through and reloaded instantly...it's sort of strange...
Incase it matters, I've got broadband...

xx

by **Skybase Girl** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 3:29 pm

It does seem better today ! While the fan fic forum was a bit slow, the main site opened instantly, and so did the forum. Let's hope it continues !

by **chrisbishop** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:15 am

I have received in my e-mail box a message that might be of interest for this forum:

MySQL Maintenance Scheduled for Tonight
As part of our ongoing efforts to improve MySQL performance, we will be adding new hardware and re-allocating the load on our MySQL servers between 12:00am and 5:00am EDT on Thursday, April 3, 2008. During this five-hour maintenance window, there may be periods of time when your database is temporarily inaccessible, making the database-driven pieces of your Web site temporarily unavailable to your visitors. (You should be able to connect to your database(s) as normal for most of this maintenance window, but you may experience intermittent connectivity issues between midnight and 5:00am EDT.)

We have scheduled this maintenance for a time when traffic to most customers' sites is typically at its lowest. Still, we apologize for any inconvenience, and we expect that the work we're doing will help improve your site's performance.

The servers are supposed to be in California, U.S., for those who are wondering if this maintenance will affect your visits to this forum.

The forum database does use MySQL, and I was informed - some time last week - that the slowness problem was due to 'loads on MySQL servers' (see message already posted in this thread). Maybe this will help improve/correct the problem we are experiencing here?

We will wait and see what hte results will be (and will be crossing our fingers!)

by **Serena Lewis** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 8:23 pm

Seems really quick for me today, even quicker than it was before the...err...platform(?) change. Same for the other forum. I hope it lasts!

xx

by **Mary** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:52 pm

Working fine on this side of the pond so far today, though I hesitated to post this so as not to jinx us...

Now to tackle the almost 100 "new users"... :roll:

by **chrisbishop** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 11:19 am

Day two after the My SQL maintenance and everything seems to be working well still... Can I have some confirmation from members that it is the case everywhere, please?

If all continues to go well, I'll have a mass e-mail sent to all members of this forum - many seemed to have gone away, probably due to the slowness of the last weeks, to inform them of the situation and to invite them back.

Crossing fingers!

by **hazel** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 2:24 pm

Sporadic, for me.

For instance, the forum itself opened OK, but to open this topic, I had to click on the topic title, wait 3 minutes while the status bar told me that things were loading (no sign of them onscreen, though), kill the process via Task Manager when it hung, reload the forum and open the topc again.

To post this reponse, I clicked the Reply button, waited 2 minutes while the status bar told me that the graphics were loading (no sign of them, though - the screen was blank), waited a further 2 minutes after the status bar "Done" but the screen was still blank, then clicked Refresh. This Reply page then took a further 15 seconds to load.

Third attempt - all OK, each page opened quickly.

(Why yes, I did used to work as a website/software tester. Why do you ask? :wink:

)

by **Marion** » Fri Apr 04, 2008 3:37 pm

Sporadic, yes, I think that sums it up for me as well. There was a dearth of avatars on the first thread I looked at, but they seem to be back now.
The Forum homepage loaded quickly, but the topics didn't. :roll:

At least the forum is still here :-D