Forums are slow this afternoon (1 Viewer)

[Qui-Gon John]

Hi guys, once again the forums are running very slow this afternoon. Just thought I'd report it this time, but I have been seeing this for the past couple of weeks, both from home and from work.

 

[Parker Clack]

John:

Yep, we continue to have problems in the late afternoons with the increased traffic that this site has been having. We are in the process of trying to recitify this situation but it has taken longer than we hoped.

Parker

 

[Qui-Gon John]

Parker, thanks and I'll echo Todd. I know you guys work hard and I appreciate this site. It's just the extremely slow response time is like a junkie going through withdrawal. Here's hoping things get better and thanks again.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

We will not lie to any of you....

HTF is again going through some major growth problems.

The first problem we are facing is the fact that
our ISP company (QWK.NET) will be shutting down.
This means that we don't have a ISP company lined
up for us, and are faced with having to spend more
money than we can afford to go with another company.

In addition, we are faced with having to once again
upgrade our servers to handle the influx of new
members signing up to this board.

We will probably do a donation drive in January
to cover the costs of the new server, but we are
greatly concerned about who our next ISP company
will be and if we can afford it.

I'd like to deeply apologize for the problems
many of you have had with loading times. This problem
will continue on an almost daily basis until we
can upgrade our server. Rest assured the problem is
being dealt with.

Thanks

 

[Jack Briggs]

To illustrate what Ron's saying, just look at the number of users online at any given moment (especially on weekdays). More people are browsing our boards every hour of the day than any other home theater-related Internet site.

It used to be that when I logged on from home at night, there would typically be about 350-450 users online at around 7 p.m. Pacific Time. In just the past three or four months that number has skyrocketed. It's not at all unusual for me to see more than a thousand users online when I log on from home.

Given how strict our sign-up process is (real first names only), HTF's growth is almost scary. I agree with Parker that if we didn't have such strict membership requirements (real first names, closely followed posting guidelines, etc.), HTF's membership would easily be in the 100,000 range (or higher).

It's amazing. But the price we pay is server overload and the continual need to upgrade.

Thank you for your patience.