Forum Server Overloaded?

[garygid]

Forum Server Overloaded?

Is this forum's server quite overloaded or "broken" in some way?
About 60% to 85% of the time I get long delays and then
"cannot display page" error messages in Internet Explorer.

Occasionally it is still responsive, as it should be, but with
only 20 users on-line, it should be working a LOT better.

Do others have this problem?
Please investigate.

[Dubito]

Had the same problem w/ safari yesterday afternoon. Seems to be working fine now.

[MegaAutoBit]

I'm having issue too Gary.

[3-4-me]

I couldn't log on last night either.
I have noticed sluggish response off and on.

[Matthijs]

Same here, with firefox you get the option to download empty php scripts. Maybe Brian can take a look at his hosting.

[A1phaGeek]

I've run into the same issue.

With Safari and Firefox, on a Mac

And Firefox and IE on Windows.

[garygid]

I am convinced it is not anything with my browser or my
high speed Internet connection, but something happening
to the server.

There are some periods where the server works quite well.
But at other times, it takes me 5 to 15 minutes of trying
again and again to finally get a new page.

It seems to me that something could be swamping the server
with requests, and then many of our "normal" requests for
new pages cannot be serviced, and our browsers eventually
time out waiting for the expected response from the server.

[Dubito]

It's molasses again this morning, with only 20 users. Who hosts this forum?

[Dolphyn]

See the bottom of the page: "Hosting for ApteraForum donated by Brian Krassenstein Of Green Energy and Assoc"

Hmm, I could donate more reliable hosting for this site since I run a hosting company. Admins, please contact me if interested. :)

[Dubito]

Now I’m getting this:

There seems to have been a problem with the database.
Please try again by clicking the Refresh button in your web browser.
An E-Mail has been dispatched to our Technical Staff, whom you can also contact if the problem persists.
We apologise for any inconvenience.

Or this:

Safari can’t open the page “http://www.apteraforum.com/” because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection, which sometimes occurs when the server is busy. You might be able to open the page later.

[admin]

Guys, this is a shared server. If the site gets much larger I'll have to find a solution (perhaps a dedicated server) but it'll cost some money. I'll have to come up with something. Maybe some ads in the future. I upgraded the server a little bit today, but I'm not too sure how much it will help. Let's wait and see.

Brian

[garygid]

Dolphyn said that he would be willing to donate space on his servers.

Maybe it would be good to take him up on the offer and at least
copy the system over and try it out. If it works, we would have
a ready backup, where one would only have to copy the latest
database and re-point the DNS to the other IP.

After tonight's NBC News, this forum is likely to see an increase in traffic.

However, this evening, the forum seems to be working quite well.

[garygid]

Whatever "upgrade" you did appears to have helped substantially,
because the forum seems to be working much better today.

Thanks!

[garygid]

Only 19 users on, and the response time this morning is terrible.
Many seconds from a click to any response,
like waiting in a queue for only one cashier.

Do we need an upgrade?

[admin]

I noticed the slowdowns today too. This server though has handled much much more traffic then this, so it has to be a setting. I am having techs check it out.

[garygid]

Thanks for your kind attention.
Seems like it cannot handle several parallel accesses very well.

Also, it seems to not assemble a whole "page" and send it out all at once,
but rather require many requests to get the full page completed.
I view mine with the most recent post first, and have cut down
to only 5 posts per page to try to get faster page-rendering.

[garygid]

Only 4 members and 16 guests but the page fetching is slow and choppy.

[garygid]

The last couple of days the server response seemed very, very slow.
This morning it seems back to "normal".
What happened, does anybody know?