Stormtrack Board Speed

[David Drummond]

Almost unsuable right now. Several minutes for a response after clicking.
[/b]

I am getting this same thing currently.

 

[Dan Cook]

Still crappy for me.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Unusable for several hours today.

 

[fplowman]

it been so slow i stop lookin and posting : (

 

[Dan Cook]

Pretty horrible for me right now. Took 10 minutes to load the main page.

 

[Scott Olson]

Tim is aware of the problem and the host is working to fix it. Most of the issues are directly releated to a power outage that happend in California a couple weeks back ago.

We appreciate your patience with the boards dismal performance lately.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Here is the response I got:

Hello,

We apologize for the inconvenience that you have encountered. However, I
have been on the browser and www.stormtrack.org is loading in about 2
seconds. I suspect that there may have been be an intermittent high load
issue on your server. Normally the system admins correct high load issues
as they occur, but you may experience a slow load or even the site going
down for a few moments. We address all server problems the second that
we become aware of them, so that could account for your site going down
for a small periods here and there.

Feel free to contact us if you are still unable to view your site on the
browser.

Thanks!
Kacy[/b]

Indeed I tested it out and this forum thread loads in only 3 seconds. We are below the CPU and mysql limits, so I don't know what the deal is. I'm investigating whether Invision is known for having this type of trouble.

Tim

 

[Dan Robinson]

The host isn't StartLogic by any chance? I have personally heard from other users of this host that they have been having problems for weeks, and nothing much is being done for them either. They've been giving the same type of answers (we don't see a problem, must be on your end, etc.) so I was curious.

 

[David Drummond]

Indeed I tested it out and this forum thread loads in only 3 seconds. We are below the CPU and mysql limits, so I don't know what the deal is. I'm investigating whether Invision is known for having this type of trouble.

Tim
[/b]

It's not Invision Tim, it's DreamHost....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&saf...cks&btnG=Search

"dreamhost sucks" returns 373,000 hits. They have had ongoing issues for a long, long, long time..

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Part of the problem is we're consuming almost an hour of CPU resources per day... which is extremely high. Our database is huge and this has contributed greatly to the slowdown.

I have a few other sites, such as the Weather Graphics forum on the same servers, and it's not having any trouble at all.

Though certainly I don't dispute that Dreamhost is overselling itself with its well-known lack of usage caps.

Tim

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Regarding the move to a brand new phpBB installation advertised above.... I'll give it a day or two and monitor performance and resource consumption. If there is no improvement then we'll roll back the old board.

Tim

 

[B Ozanne]

Regarding the move to a brand new phpBB installation advertised above.... I'll give it a day or two and monitor performance and resource consumption. If there is no improvement then we'll roll back the old board.

Tim
[/b]

Reinstalling everything seems pretty extreme. Especially if we have to create new accounts.

I may not be understanding the problem properly, but couldn't we start with dumping some of the archives. The old breaking news stuff, chaser bar & grill, etc?

 

[Jeff Snyder]

The few users online at a time, browsing a largely text product(the forum) is creating a bandwidth problem with st? I can't hardly see the database size being an issue. I could see if there were a thousand users on here all the time, but the mostly very small amount doesn't seem to add up to much to me.
[/b]

I agree, it's not like during Katrina or a big spring outbreak when there are tons of users online. This new board software makes moderating MUCH easier, so it'd be a shame to revert back to the old software (e.g. we couldn't even "move" posts from one thread to another using the old software, which means that we deleted many more posts previously). What about instating others practices, like making all forums visible to only registered members? Some folks got all up-in-arms about this last year, but there seems to be a very large incentive to do this now. If we usually have lots of guests viewing this board, it could be adding unnecessary load (unnecessary in regard to not entirely benefiting our members). Otherwise, it's not too often that I see more than 10-15 members viewing this board (barring the active wx days), including days during which we have seen these long delays.

I'd suggest switching hosts too, since the Dreamhost support forums indicate that ST is certainly not the only site hosted by Dreamhost experiencing these delays. How much are the ads bringing in? Enough to support a $80/mo dedicated or semi-dedicated server? Could always ask for a $5/yr subscription fee if necessary... I can't imagine any of our current members getting too upset over that. Not sure how much ST's monthly bandwidth tends to be, though this seems unrelated to bandwidth consumption.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Overselling is a big problem with the bargain hosts offering huge bandwidth plans, that is, if you actually come close to using the bandwidth or disk space you purchased. This seems to be a pattern with them, that is, throttling your site's bandwidth/CPU if you're actually on course to use most of the resources you paid for. You'll never hear that from them, only smoke and mirrors about power outages, problems with the network on your end, etc.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if ST is using quite a bit of bandwidth/CPU, simply based on the amount of referrer traffic that my site gets whenever I post a photo on a thread. While the forums are text, they are database-driven, which takes more horsepower per pageview than just pulling a static HTML file. I wouldn't trust the 'users viewing' stats at the bottom of the page all that much.

In web hosting, you get what you pay for, and if you have a high-traffic site, it is often difficult to find a host that is affordable and doesn't pull these tactics.

 

[David Drummond]

EDIT: COMMENTS RETRACTED