Is it just me, or is the board really fucking slow today?
I’ve been away from the SDMB for a few months. I left it because it was slow, I’m afraid. Now that I’m back, it seems that it’s even slower. Quite often I get “time-outs”.
Most of the time, if it takes more than 30 seconds for a “reply” screen to pop up when I click on “Reply to Post”, I don’t even try.
I’d like to know if there are any plans to deal with the performance problem, because this is my second-favorite system on the web. I’m always disappointed when I have to bail out because response time is so poor.
Incidentally, the last post I just wrote (before this one) gotted “Connection Timed Out”. I’ve noticed that when I get that warning, the message generally DOES get posted, after a minute or two of being in limbo.
By the way, I have an ADSL modem, and response time for most sites is usually very good. Just about all sites have brief outages from time to time, lasting a couple of minutes. But SDMB seems to be slow pretty much all the time.
As I said, I really like this system! I’m just reporting the situation here. Please don’t shoot the messenger.
I thought it was just my computer. I’m glad to know others have noticed. I didn’t want to say anything because I’m so new, but I too was thinking today that I might not return because of the slowness.
Peace,
Tracy
So you’re slowing down the site! Maybe it’s time to get your reflexes checked. You might have the DT’s. One jittery mouse finger can drive the software crazy. Great on a “heavy date” tho.
I’m sorry you had a disappointing experience with the board.
We had a problem with the system yesterday and it’s still in the process of being repaired, we ain’t back to perfection yet. The system will be down for a short time tomorrow morning while we do further work on the system.
Let me also remind you when thing are slow it’s not always our fault, internet traffic also plays a part. There’s all kinds of bottlenecks between our server and your computer and we have zero control over any of it.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The Straight Dope
You should note that the performance of the message board runs in cycles. First it’s relatively fast and then it’s relatively slow. Ok, some of you will say it’s always slow for you but I can’t help you much there. I’m talking about the performance of the web server which I happen to have a fast connection to and not the performance of the internet out to your remote computer. I see response times of 1 second and I see response times of 3 minutes. It varies throughout the day depending on current load. The performance problems are self correcting however since they tend to clean themselves up after 30 to 60 minutes. We’ve been aware of this problem of cyclic performance for about the last 6 weeks but don’t have the resources at the moment to do much about it.
Since the end of April, when we switched from the UBB software to the vBulletin software, we’ve seen over 150% growth in our pageview output. We are now doing over 2.5 times the volume we were doing then. That level of growth rate is obviously unsustainable and so we once again find ourselves up against some limits in the server’s resources. The end result is slow performance at times. The server is working as hard as it can and additional demands on it just make things worse. At some point you just run out of capacity and we are approaching that point.
Would it speed things up to default to 1 day (or 1 week or 1 month) instead of “any date”?
I always just hit enter without being too specific, and then when it’s slow wonder if specifying a shorter period or specific board would speed things up.
:eek:
Noooooooooooooooooo!
::beginning to sweat and shake::
What happens then Jerry ?
If it’s bad please break it to us gently.
Those over 1000 posts will be asked to please refrain.
That’s when we reach the “need to buy bigger/faster/more powerful servers” place.
And for that to happen, it’s gonna take big bucks.
I dunno, maybe we’ll have a bake sale. 
Seriously, we don’t know yet know what the Reader is going to do, but that’s the situation we’re facing.
It would be a different story if the Reader was raking in the money on this site, but you know we’re not.
Stay tuned for further developments.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Would it cost more than $9,000? If not we could have each registered user send in a dollar. (And the BANNED people have to send in 2! Yeah, THAT’s the ticket!) 
I think we should have pledge drives like PBS, but then we’d have to buy tote bags.
For the poster that asked if we could change the default settings, we’re already at “one day” for most forums.
And I will note searches take the most juice, you might try to be more judicious in your use of it, certainly anything you do to keep the system from having to access the entire database is going to be a help, even in a tiny way.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
TubaDiva said:
I’m going to ask the question outright–do we need to start finding other things to do with our spare time, to prepare for the End?
Very good question . 
Prepare for “The End?” Haven’t you guys been paying attention over in GD? If you had, it’d be obvious you need to head over to the Left Behind site and get yourselves “saved.”
VogueVixen: You wrote: “Would it cost more than $9,000? If not we could have each registered user send in a dollar.”
As somebody who has run an online system of one sort or another since the 70’s, let me assure you that you can’t get everybody to mail in a thank-you note, much less a dollar. However, there’s always a hard core of users who will pitch in.
I, for one, would gladly toss $22.25 into the pot. Why $22.25?
Well, there are 9562 registered members. Assume that only 5% participate regularly – that’s a tad over 450 people. $22.25 each brings in a cool $10,000. And since only 450 people are involved, the paperwork won’t be insurmountable.
Just a suggestion: let only those who contribute $22.25 use signatures on their posts.
In all seriousness…I was recently considering asking where I could send some money to help offset the cost of this. Lord knows I’ve enjoyed this place a lot over the past year, and I’d kinda like to help ensure it stays going. So Tuba, Jerry, Ed…where could a Doper like myself send a check?
I’m with Falcon. I would be more than happy to spare a few bucks to this message board.