What is up with this website??? About This Page:

[BostonTeaParty]

I made four little posts tonight and it took me an hour!! I keep getting timed out. It's extremely frustrating. Is anyone else having this problem?

[DisneyM5]

<font color="purple"> I have been having the same problem all week. It seems to start around 11 for some reason.
</font>

[DCLFANATiC]

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="purple"> I have been having the same problem all week. It seems to start around 11 for some reason.
</font>

[/ QUOTE ]
ME TOO !!!!!

[Jaya]

Me three... at night, I can NEVER get on here. If I manage to get the site to come up, I can get to the entrance page or my home page to review my favorite posts, or on the entrance page the new posts - but if I try to actually see the forums, it just won't load.

[poohbear.u.k.]

I've been having problems too.

Lisa.

[Colexis Mom]

I'm having the problems, but usually during the day, and only at work, not at home. If I just go to www.passporter.com and go into the message board that way, instead of using my message board bookmark, it always works much better for me Not sure why though!

[Bert & Sully]

Add me to the list Nancy. Regardless of which way I attempt I have problems.

[tammyr]

[ QUOTE ]
Add me to the list Nancy. Regardless of which way I attempt I have problems.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can add me to that list also.

[luvnwdwgal]

Me too. I've been timing out with my replies, but I found that if I go back, then click on Forum Index, then click the forum I was in, sometimes my post is there, if not I can click back and submit it again and it goes right through.

[Chrissi]

Hey, gang! Sorry to hear you're all having trouble. It seems to be happening to everyone. We're aware of the problem and our top computer geek is working on it. I've been having trouble all week myself. If you could, would you copy and paste the error messages you're getting and post them in The Garage technical support forum? If they're all in one place, it'll be easier to keep up with what's happening and also easier for you to check to see what's going on and how the fix is coming along.



Thanks for your understanding and cooperation everyone!

[Jennifer Marx]

So sorry, everyone! I think the real problem here is that we're outgrowing our current web server and it's time to move to a dedicated server. I'd been doing research into moving before Alexander arrived, but it'll be a few months before we actually make the move -- not only is it time consuming, but also quite expensive. So while we figure out what we're going to do and implement it, I really appreciate your patience. We'll see if we can't improve things in the interim, too! I know how frustrating it is to get time-outs.

Thanks,

[Shell_of_the_South]

I'm going to move this thread into the Garage forum so the problems experienced with the boards can be better documented.

[JoshPet]

OK - I took a few measures to reduce the load here - until we can get moved. Basically the more "features" there are the more load there is on the server. If there's too much load, at peak times, you will get timeout errors or the site will be slow.



One thing I've just done is set the default thread view age for everyone to 2 weeks. This was the default on most forums, but many people have overriddent this with their display prefs.



So when you're viewing a forum, at first glance you'll only see topics that were active in the last two weeks. Since theres an index on the date posted of all the posts - limiting vastly reduces the amount of posts that it needs to deal with and sort when displaying the postlist page. If you need to see further back, simply use the pull down at the bottom of the forum to select a larger date range.



Another thing I've done is switch to "partial" new post tracking. This will no longer display the number of new posts on the main index anymore. But the lightbulbs will still indicate which forums have new posts in them.



The main index was the page that timed out most frequently. Running this page with "full" new post tracking (showing the number of new posts in each forum) uses 47 queries. (A query is a call to the database). Switching this so that the number of new posts no longer displays reduces it down to only 18 queries.

Since this was the page that timed out the most (there are a lot of forums to list) I'm thinking this should help a great deal until we can arrange to get the site moved to a dedicated server.



I know many people will miss the number of new posts shown - but hopefully, if it helps the site work better and not time out on you, then it'll be worth it. Just watch the light bulbs on the left for forums which have new posts. Once you click inside the forum, it'll behave normally.



Edit: I've also restricted the search feature to users who are logged in.

[Nick and Ryans Mom]

Here I thought it was just me!!!

[KathyL]

Thank you for explaining about the "new number of posts" missing. I thought it was something with my computer.

KathyL