SMF slow for anyone else.

[trench]

This week SMF Forums have been really slow for me.  I looked at the users and there is close to 1000 almost constantly. Anyone else getting his lag?  Im using Cable, and dont have problems with other webpages

[eldacar]

Yes there are a few server issues with it. They are trying to get it fixed, or else get it replaced soon.

[ontap]

gota agree, there site is very slow lately and very annoying 2!

[TwinsX2Dad]

Very slow and up/down.

I hope they weren't promised 99.9% uptime.   :laugh:

[G6Cad]

As Bloc and IchBin said in another post, The Staff at SMF forum are well aware of the bw on the forum.
I think it was slow and off/on cause of major rebuilding of the scripts, forum and database.
So i guess it's ok and not an error from the host or uptime issues.

I cant find the thread here where they pointed out why and the reasons, just know it doesent have anything to do with the host though 

[TwinsX2Dad]

Oh no - they broke their own service?   

Say it isn't so!

I thought they might be above doing what every other site owner has done! 

Actually, I think what eldacar said has some merit - the rebuilding wouldn't cause what we've been seeing, unless it was being done by novices. It is definitely being caused primarily by server and load issues. But I'd not rule out some scripting and database stumbles.

Then again, all any of us are doing is speculating.

[eldacar]

From what the staff have been saying, something is being backed up badly and is draining resources.

[TwinsX2Dad]

I am not privy to what they've been saying - to be fair, I look over there only to see if there is anything which might pertain to my installation.

What I'd be curious to find out is what is causing the bad backups. Are they doing it through SMF, through the host or through a cron job?

I do all of mine through a cron job - then the backups are downloaded to my local network servers. I've never been one to trust the backup functions of any message board, primarily because I've always done it from the root and get these really nice little tarballs.

[iowamf]

That site is often frustrating to use - especially the search.

Improving the Advanced Search would be a win:win to all - the search process is painfully slow.

It is a shame, but too often searching via google is better than SMF's own search.

Its even worse when people flame others to "do a search" - but then the search is disabled or returns pages and pages of poorly sorted results.

For starters I'd suggest changing the Advance Search option defaults from:

  * 9999 days old (~27 years ago) to release dates or at least not so huge

and

  * perhaps in addition to searching by "user:" to be able to search by &/! groups.

Example, I'd much rather a find a post about functionality from someone in the "staff" group than someone in the "newbie" group and would prefer posts NOT from the Apple II era. 

A poor search function can frustrate both the users and the support community who are sincerely trying to help - and it can kill a server's performance as well.

[eldacar]

Although searching does take resources, it isn't the main source of slowness.