I'm beginning to wonder if I am welcome here anymore!!??!!

I've been getting some weird error messages, that disappear too quickly to capture, when I've been trying to post replys to messages!!

Have you put in some lie detecting software??!! You know the stuff that catches the BS when somebody writes "In my experience..." and the software knows right off it should be "The one time I tried..."

Seriously are we experiencing growing pains???

I have been experiencing similar problems as well.
The site is just too popular I guess,
Andrew

it has happened to me also

Chris Pig no.1

It's because the changes the server has made to it's programming. It is doing it to everybody, including me. Jim is trying to tweak the site to get it to quit, but has been unsuccessful so far. I think he might be considering a new server.

Rob

Yep, here also
it happens more then once that I cannot enter the site for a few houres, and I hate that

It's been happening to me as well. I was beginning to think that it was my puter acting up....

me too with slow loading times too. In fact I'm getting P1$$ed off because it's happening most times to me now

Cliff.

It seems to have started when the site was last "fixed". Everyting started loading faster and all was well! Now when I click on a link it comes up....... page cant be shown or not available quite often. I have to click on the link maybe 2 to 5 times to get in. Now i dont post as often either as it can take too long and drives me up the wall when I write something and then lose it!. I suppose we will just have to put up with it until its fixed.
I guess we have been spoiled for the last few months!

We are indeed experiencing growing pains. Too many queries accessing the database I think. I will have to make a hosting provider change if things don't start working more like the old days (before Interland made some nasty updates to the software).

I guess I will see how well this post goes through.

Jim

Hmmm...I hate to say it but I think pages like the Latest Posts page may be contributing to this. It's likely getting hit A LOT. And it's a very server heavy load. I need to figure out a way to cache the page so it's only refreshed every 10 minutes or so.

Jim

Needless to say, same here. Must be many others along with myself to always hit the Latest Posts button only...
That´s just the fastest and best way to see what´s happening!
Hope you´ll find some solution to this Uncle Jimbo!


Toni

Yes, I only hit the latest posts button. I've also been having problems accessing my PMs. When I see the envelope blinking and then click on it, it will sometimes take numerous tries to access the messages.

Same here.
I mostly have problems when I try the 'latest post" pages, when I hit the envelope and when I try "post reply".
But clicking the "refresh" button solves the problem most of the time.
Jan

Well I guess all has been said before.....but....here it's ...the same...

Ditto me too!

Gunnie

Jim,

I know that it is not your fault, but I must say that I am losing the joy of visiting this website :-(

I understand that the site has some growing pains, but frankly it is getting out of control.
I don’t go thru the last post page anymore and view each forum separate, but it dos not help, in fact it is getting worse!
I have moments that I can enter the site very quick, but when I select a topic I can go for a walk. Or that I cant get in to the site at all.
Whatever page I try to see, reference, features, forums you name it, there is a 90% chance that I encounter a problem.
It dos not mater if there are 3 or 30 persons online, it just screws up.
I don’t like to say it, but I almost hit the logout button because the fun of visiting went away.
I really don’t understand the provider, are they that lazy or just don’t care?

Sorry, just my feeling at this moment

Danny,
What you are seeing happen seems to be the extreme. Occasionally I see the site completely down and I have to attempt to restart the server (or sometimes it restarts itself) but I am not having as many problems accessing pages since I changed the settings back to where they had been (or more closely) before.

You may want to clear your cache to make sure your machine isn't keeping some of the bad page result data and spitting it back at you.

As to the long term health of the site rest assured that I will make it a priority to improve the performance of everyones visits. I would have to say though that too much of a good thing can always be a problem. If people are coming back to the Latest Posts page every few minutes to see if there are new posts, then that is going to have a dramatic effect on ANY server I use for the site. The fact of this situation is that Interland (our host) set all the accounts (of the type I use) so that they can only use up to 512mb of ram each. We obviously were using a lot more than that before the change. For me to upgrade our account to a server with say 1000mb (1gb) of ram would run about twice the amount ($500) that I pay now for hosting. This is just not something the site can afford at the moment. I have found some less expensive dedicated hosting (meaning Armorama would be the only site on the server) but the setup fees would be very high starting out (about $800).

So...my options at this point are to attempt to cache the Latest Posts page and elements on the homepage so that the drain on the server's resources/memory are not so high.

I will keep everyone posted. Keep in mind I just went back to working full-time so I don't have the luxury of all the time I use to spend on Armorama. This job is exactly that, a job. It's a job I still enjoy doing but in all honesty running this site could easily be a full-time job.

Now if I could just earn enough from our sponsors to make it my full-time job.

Cheers,
Jim

I have problems with the site when I'm at work. I think the server is trying to tell me something...

You guys should check out the site stats page. You'll see that the heaviest usage is during normal business hours. This is the time when the most outages occur for me, so I insinuate that heavier usage causes the outages.

Rob