Forum creaking under the weight?

[Team Microdot]

For the past several days now I've been seeing lots of server timeouts when moving from post to post on here.

A browser refresh usually brings the requested page around second time - but sometimes it's 3/4/5 refreshes before the page is served.

Anybody else?

Could the webmaster please investigate?

[*geocass*]

It's not the best Web hosting. I've been on at the company a few times in the past. They did say they'd switched the site to better servers and it is a bit better, but not great. I'll get on at them again. It's not just the forum that hangs its the whole site. Perhaps when the opportunity comes around we could upgrade to a better host for more £££ ;-)

[The Tares Clan]

Cass,

Do we have any figures around disk space requirements and probably most importantly bandwidth requirements ?

I am more than happy to help look at alternatives (I do it for my own domain - admittedly it is a *lot* smaller than GAGB) but to allow proper evaluation we need to have some info to try to make apples vs apples.

I guess we also need to understand how much GAGB is willing to pay per month/year for hosting.

[*geocass*]

Ok, that's a good suggestion. :-) The Web hosting company we use now is a very good price, in my opinion. However, we are obviously getting a service that matches that. I'll pull together some figures of what we will need and the next committee could perhaps discuss it at the next meeting.

[Team Microdot]

It's worse today

Could we please get a support ticket in with the hosting provider?

Maybe even something as simple as a server reboot would at least offer a temporary improvement.

[sandvika]

Yes, even now at 2:20am it's spluttering. My last post at 2am resulted in "page contains no data" - it got added to the thread but the "Last Post" entry in the forum menu did not get updated, so nobody would know to look at it again.

I've got a £5 for 5 years hosting package off eBay from a reseller of Heart Internet and it has been great for 2 years. I had a similar package before that but that particular reseller quit and left his customers hanging in the wind: Heart tried to recruit us directly but not at a competitive price. I've no idea what GAGB's server requirements are like, however, the package has WordPress and Joomla amongst a myriad of tools, unlimited MySQL databases and SSH access if needed. It might just fit the bill....

If we need CPU gruntwork for new projects I've got a stack of hardware in my loft that is the remains of my ISP business which I packed up when I could no longer make any margin on it. I should have flogged them right away but now they are getting old and worthless despite being in immaculate condition. I'm happy to donate some to GAGB if they could be put to good use: definitely for CPU (eg. server-side script processing) rather than RAM or storage.

[keehotee]

The forum and site seem no worse (or better) at the moment than at any other time during the past year - which begs the question......do any of the committee candidates noting this as an issue actually frequent the site outside the election period??

[Team Microdot]

The forum and site seem no worse (or better) at the moment than at any other time during the past year - which begs the question......do any of the committee candidates noting this as an issue actually frequent the site outside the election period??

I'm comparatively new here and only lurked until I felt the need to speak up during the reviewer bashing over the KT series.

That being said, these forums always seemed much quieter in the recent past than they are at present.

[eusty]

Same here. I've lurked before but there never seemed to be much going on so didn't post.

Hopefully it will stay busy once the elections are over, but I feel it may return to being a ghost forum

I DO feel the forum needs a good update to attract more people though.

[Team Microdot]

Incidentally, the forum was comparatively busy during the KT debate if I recall correctly - and I don't recall seeing one failed server connection - which is what is happening frequently now.

The web server can't cope with the number of connections hitting it - so it's probably over subscribed or there's a hardware / software resource issue which, if it's a memory leak for example, might be temporarily removed by a server reboot - until of course the memory leak lowers the working memory back down to inadequate levels again.

So I'd say it's got worse.

[keehotee]

On the contrary, it's a good day if it doesn't happen at least once....throughout the year!

[Griff Grof]

I DO feel the forum needs a good update to attract more people though.

It sure does... Without a shadow of a doubt

[Team Microdot]

On the contrary, it's a good day if it doesn't happen at least once....throughout the year!

So six or seven page refreshes just to get on the site or move from page to page isn't worse

[Team Microdot]

It sure does... Without a shadow of a doubt

And of course plenty of posters with lots to say opcorn:

[keehotee]

So six or seven page refreshes just to get on the site or move from page to page isn't worse

No - that's par for the course for the past year or so

I usually use Tapatalk to read the forum nowadays - but half a dozen goes isn't unusual at all. The forum isn't noticeably any glitchier, sluggish, or harder to access at the moment than the 11 months prior to these elections

Which isn't to say it isn't bad - just that it's no worse than usual........

[Palujia]

Come on chaps and chapesses - Cass has been struggling (along with Richard) to try and streamline the site over the last year - There have been major changes - not all of them apparant to the casual user - and (according to lots of you)- the "majority" are now using the spawn of the devil - "U face" or twits or whatever the ever deepening tide of computer idiocy is currently fashionable
I admit to being a Grumpy old man and out of touch with the modern world
- having problems with the batteries in me sun dial when out caching !
Baaaaa

[Team Microdot]

Come on chaps and chapesses - Cass has been struggling (along with Richard) to try and streamline the site over the last year - There have been major changes - not all of them apparant to the casual user - and (according to lots of you)- the "majority" are now using the spawn of the devil - "U face" or twits or whatever the ever deepening tide of computer idiocy is currently fashionable
I admit to being a Grumpy old man and out of touch with the modern world
- having problems with the batteries in me sun dial when out caching !
Baaaaa

I don't think anyone is having a dig (microdot chuckles to himself realising what he's just said - in light of the Craghoppers video on UToob) at anyone else here - merely commenting that there is an issue.

Working in an IT support role as I do, one measure of our effectiveness is silence from our users - if everything is working as it should - we don't hear from them :lol:

When there is an issue, hearing from multiple users helps us to gauge the scope of it - so it's useful feedback.

I did PM Cass to see if I could help - but no response so far

[northking]

As an infrequent visitor to forums, and being a recent convert to having all of my personal thoughts and movements transferred into the open on FaceBook, I have found the forum here to be usable with a degree of patience and regular page reloads. Not something that I would 'report' though.

[Team Microdot]

As an infrequent visitor to forums, and being a recent convert to having all of my personal thoughts and movements transferred into the open on FaceBook, I have found the forum here to be usable with a degree of patience and regular page reloads. Not something that I would 'report' though.

I hold the opposite view to this.

Better to know about an issue so it can be addressed before it actually brings the entire system to its knees

[Team Microdot]

Just had a thought on what might be contributing to this.

Today's newest user - ls01LA3lu7t

This looks like the activity of a bot / script to me - just generating random strings - which it will be able to do with alarming speed.

The volume of such requests will be more than capable of dragging the server down to its knees - EDIT TO ADD - or causing the shared web server to throttle ALL page requests to this domain

Might be worth tackling this before reviewing the web hosting?

EDIT TO ADD - took me 9 attempts just to submit this post

[*geocass*]

Just had a thought on what might be contributing to this.

Today's newest user - ls01LA3lu7t

This looks like the activity of a bot / script to me - just generating random strings - which it will be able to do with alarming speed.

Agreed. That looks fishy to me too. Not sure how that got through the net. I've banned the account just in case.

[Team Microdot]

Agreed. That looks fishy to me too. Not sure how that got through the net. I've banned the account just in case.

In fairness that's probably just one application out of hundreds or even thousands, and there's a real chance that the speed and volume of those account applications that's either saturating the server or causing the hosting provider to throttle the connection.

[*geocass*]

In fairness that's probably just one application out of hundreds or even thousands...

The accounts are manually validated to ensure that they are real cachers, hence the comment that that one must have slipped through. Best to remove just in case.

[DrDick&Vick]

Logged in 3 times today to deal with new user apps, 48, 28 & 30 apps.
Approved = 2 the rest were rejected.
there were also 35 in the awaiting email confirmation list, IP's checked and all deleted.
Roll on the new 'New User' person after the Committee meeting so as myself and Paul can hand over. What was a once a day job to check 4 or 5 New Users is now a relative pain as if it is left to a once daily there is around 80 or 90 to do.
If there is indeed a 'Wizard' on the new committee who is able to compile a script that will beat these Spambots it will make life easier, trouble is the people behind the Spambots are even more devious and will find a way around most things.

[Team Microdot]

The accounts are manually validated to ensure that they are real cachers, hence the comment that that one must have slipped through. Best to remove just in case.

If the user names I'm seeing on a daily basis are anything to go by, more and more are slipping through the net.

[DrDick&Vick]

The user names you see have not actually slipped through but a combination of those awaiting Approval/Rejection and those on the Awaiting EMail Confirmation list.

[Team Microdot]

The user names you see have not actually slipped through but a combination of those awaiting Approval/Rejection and those on the Awaiting EMail Confirmation list.

OK - I stand corrected