With broadband cable access, most websites shoot by almost instantly, as do new links, etc. The SDMB, now and then, seems to move with the speed of a glacier.
Most often when I click on Submit New Thread. Usually it instantly submits, but other times it just hangs there for what seems like an eternity.
No other site does this. Is it just a penality of its popularity, with too much traffic? Or is it just cold out there? 
It must be rush hour. It just took 10 minutes for me to get here.
I am very frustrated by a similar experience as the OP.
I have stopped asking, as there is never any real explanation offered.
That it sometimes works really well doesn’t do it for me anymore as more and more often I find, it’s too painfully slow to bear and I head off somewhere else.
I’ve been a member a long time, and I’ve really enjoyed it but I’m not sure I’ll reup as it’s a coin toss, it seems to me, whether it will be pleasant reading or a source of frustration. Sometimes I don’t stop by because I don’t want to be annoyed with poor board performance.
Yeah, I’ve read all the enquiries and responses, they all really amount to not much for me. It’s all about performance for me, and more and more often the performance is poor.
You have to ask yourself, “How can they not be aware?”, this topic is hardly rare in this forum. They are aware, but do not feel compelled to offer any real answers. To me, that speaks volumes.
Me too.
I like SD but many times it is just not worth the effort.
So now you charge $14 a year for a mostly pitiful discussion forum as far as reliability.
I have nothing against the lousy $14--------but could you make it half as reliable as all the freebie discussion forums out there?
What the hell are you doing with all those $14 times so many thousands of members?
Invest in upgrades for Gawd’s sake!!
There are three things that affect download speeds: your connection speed, how fast your computer can receive incoming data, and how fast the computer on the other end can send outgoing data. Any one of those three is slow, you got a bottleneck.
The SDMB servers have been upgraded multiple times in the past. Like clockwork, the traffic rises to the point where they’re just as slow as before. To be honest, outside of the east coast US lunch time, I really don’t notice any particular slowness. Granted, that’s at least in part because I’ve been around long enough to remember when things were really bad, but most of my thread loads are near instantaneous these days.
What he said.
When the board slows down, it’s because the demand on the server is more than it can fulfill. This does happen at peak usage times of the day. Other times, it’s not so bad, in fact, most people get everything they want pretty much when they want it. Just not when a zillion other people want the same thing.
We apologize if you feel your experience is not as good as could be; we’re doing our best with the resources available. Most of our users understand the limitations we have to work under and figure out better times when the demand is not so high.
TubaDiva
I will admit that this forum is 100% better than it used to be.
Keep up the good work and I may actually pay that $14 annually.
I do like the forum. I just hate hassles.