^^I gave up on the reload thing a long time ago. Now, after about 10 seconds, I just quit the browser and try again. Still take a minute or two for me to connect to the forums again.
I suppose we can regroup at the board that must not be named. Tubadiva, are there any plans to contact the survivors by email if (gasp) the board (gasp) goes under for good?
I would suspect it’s the time it takes to do that which resolves the situation, not what you are doing. It’s the tapping the soda cans of the Internet.
I never restart my browser for connection issues, and yet I always get back in. The downtime is generally less than 5 minutes, and my assumption before had been that the server got overloaded and had to restart.
I actually wonder about the metrics. Is it that this board is getting hit harder than I would expect, or is the bandwidth or software struggling at expected workloads?
Could cleaning up the database or even moving old posts to a read-only archive help with matters? You know, just give the database less to do. It’s something I’ve seen other long-running boards do.
^^Oh, you’re right–it’s not what I’m doing that is resolving anything for me.
But I figure, what the heck.
Coincidence that we’re getting all kinds of conspiracy theorists and sock puppets – I mean new posters – at the same time that we’re getting all kinds of server problems.
Well, we’ll show them. We’ve been through more lunatics and nutjobs than all of eastern Europe can produce, the owners won’t pay ransom, and the users are too used to the site’s ordinary problems to be bothered by hack attacks!
It’s just another day in the life of the SDMB 
**502 Server Error
Error: Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 seconds.**
**502 Server Error
Error: Server Error
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 seconds.**
Still… just now…
504 Gateway Time-out
shield
If I didn’t report this before, this happens on Safari/iPad & iPhone, and on Windows laptop.
I just today learned that I am using Sultantheme instead of Version 3.7.3. I had no idea that Sultantheme may not have been the most current or efficient choice.
I was going to ask the question, “is it possible there may be some relationship between people using Sultanthem and peopld getting a lot of timeouts?”
However before posting that I checked to see if there was any discussion of using Sultantheme in this thread and I found that you had indeed been discussing that.
But TubaDiva indicated that using Sultantheme seemed to work better for some people. I just want to say that I get an awful lot of timeouts using Sultantheme.
I should also say that I don’t experience that kind of problem on any other site that I visit.
I’m not asking any question. I just wanted to report my experience to you.
Thank you.
I would think that communication over the net wouldn’t involve the style setting.
Not sure of others’ experience … but for me, the 504 errors have vanished over the past two days.
This is both on an iPhone 6 running Safari (no idea what version), and on an old Dell Latitude E6410 running Windows 7 Professional (SP1). 40-50 page loads, maybe more – all error free since yesterday morning.
I have only ever used “Straight Dope v3.7.3” as the display style, never Sultantheme. So far as I’m aware.
I came here to say the same thing. Yeah! 
Better but not gone in the last couple days. Got a 50x yesterday.
Gone for me the last couple days ------- knock wood.
Hey bordelond I just noticed your avatar. Good luck in the playoffs, but not too much good luck because I just gotta say, GO NINERS!!!
It’s rare to see three teams at 13-3 in the same conference.
Of course being a life-long Vikings fan I would say -------- different.
I can’t help it; not only am I Lutheran but I’ve actually taught some classes at St Olaf College.)
You just had to throw that in here, dintcha?
Actually the Vikings are my 2nd NFC hope/choice in these playoffs. Let’s see, Joe Kapp and Fran Tarkenton… and then Randall but he didn’t make it even though he should have.
And, still no 50x errors in the past couple of days. Looking good so far.
Thank you Jenny / Tuba Diva!
I haven’t seen any errors lately on either mobile devices or my desktop. Whatever you did seems to have worked!