reside on a slow server. This is one of my favorite sites but I seldom visit because it takes forever for the next page to load. Based on my limited knowledge of the internet, I would think that, despite its relatively large size, it doesn’t use a tremendous amount of bandwidth since there isn’t a lot of exchanging of data. There seems to be a significantly large amount of traffic here, but is that enough to slow a site down that much? BTW, I run on a cable modem that will hang with any T3. Will someone take the time to educate me in this intriguing matter?
Yes, it does. There’s tons of threads about it, too. Most of them are in “About This Message Board”. This question fits there as well. I’ll move it there for you. If the server lets me. 
Next time, try our search engine first. And welcome aboard!
Yes, sometimes it is very slow here. The site is well-known and has more than ten thousand registered members and probably a fair few lurkers. Lots of clever and funny people read and post here despite its steam-driven nature. Given that site access is free, the inadequacy of the server is itself an endorsement of this view. The only way out of this – short of a sugar daddy – is if the Chicago Reader finds a way to sell us stuff.
I still don’t think that the reason its slow on some days is all because of the server here. I think there are other reasons which I have already listed before.
Look at my ISP they have ten thousand accts on their server, there web site is never slow.
Steam-driven? It was more like a hamster in a cage.
It’s running like it’s powered by plutonium now, though! Wha’ hoppen?
handy, not all servers are created equal.
handy: as with any belief, you’re entitled to it, and we won’t try to convert you anymore. We’re very sorry.
I would try to gently disagree with Coldfire but I don’t want to get a coldburn.
Your ISP gets money to buy a better server. The SDMB does not.
Your ISP is reliant on the best servers in order to stay in business. The Chicago Reader is not. Ergo, the SDMB is low-priority, expenditure-wise.
The comparison is very flawed, handy.
I doubt the site is slow because of bandwidth issues. The real problem is those 3 pretty letters in the URL that says “php”. That means every single page you look at has to be processed as a little program. Add up the few bajillion runs like that that we require around here, and you’re looking at some serious cpu cycles you’re using. Plus all that data is probably in a SQL database somewhere, so getting at it adds overhead and delays to the whole process.
Throwing more servers at a problem like this is a tricky thing, and costs money. Much harder than just paying for more bandwidth.
All the data is, in fact, in an SQL database. The vBulletin software, which I have used for my own projects quite extensively, is not very efficient. MySQL is a temendously fast database for simple selects and joins. but it can choke very quickly with many simultaneous queries because it does not have row-level locking and other nifty features that “real” databases have.