Problem loading page

[mike_d]

Mike, I have been having a problem loading pages on the site today; I hope we haven't maxed out the system:(. Has anyone else had this problem today?

Below is a copy of the error.

Unable to connect

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.eastvaleresidents.com.


* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.

* If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.

* If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

[Mike]

I thought I'd let everyone kow I have been working on this issue for the last 3 or so days. Didn't want to announce tothe world that there may be an issue until I had a better handle on it. Here is what is hapenning, to the best of my assessment:

Looks like most times when we have lots of users on at once (about 20 or so) SOME, not all, people have a page not found or other error. Refreshing the page (pressing F5) will usually bring the page back up.

I have noticed this and monday contacted support to make sure things were ok on their end. They did some maintenance this weekend, but we were not affected.

I have a system monitor through the Forum Admin Panel that gives us readings on memory, disk space, etc. I have noticed during high useage, our free memory dips to 20 MB. EEK. That is low for a PC and very low for a server. It'll dip to 10 or 20 free, then jump to 100, then dip to 40 and jump to 180 depending on what searches are going on at the time. I made a few adjustments, like the inactive cookie setting, and an hour later with a load of about 15 users, we had 300mb-500mb free of memory fairly consistant.

There are other things I can do, like disable some plugins and scale back a few features, but I may do this one at a time and see if it has much of an impact. I will be doing that this week. If you ever see "admin" logged in, that's me probably doing some monitoring and tuning, as I can only do it under the admin user.

So now it becomes the question, what to do when we have 100 users on at a time? I have some options:

1. Switch to a dedicated server.
This gives us our own Server. Currently, we are on a shared host which means if one of our neighbors get's linked from the Drudge Report one day, then, more than likely, we go down too! Switching to a dedicated server means there are no other factors that influence our bandwith or performance but ours.

The cost of the dedicated server runs about $350 per month. Currently, my service for web hosting is $4.95 per month. See the issue here?

2. I will keep monitoring and trying to fine tune this thing to see if we can handle larger loads with no issues, as well as work with my admin team here as well as my host to see where we can optimize. I like what I see so far with the few little thing I have done. Ideally, I think we should be able to handle 100 users on at the same time throughout most of the day with no problems. Currently, the average is about 10-15.

Thanks for your patience. This is the kind of stuff I simply could not test, even with my small test group of 30 users for a month.

Yes, yes, I always knew we'd need a dedicated server. It's not like I did not plan ahead. I eventually see 3,000 users on this board with average of 100-200 at a time and have plans in place for that already with our current host provider. They host boards with 30,000 users, so we are in good hands for the future.

[mike_d]

I noticed you mentioned searches, I don't know how much that takes up but one of the other boards I am on you are restricted to 1 search every 30 seconds.

[Karie S.]

I was having same troubles earlier today...but all seems OK right now :)

[lupe]

I noticed you mentioned searches, I don't know how much that takes up but one of the other boards I am on you are restricted to 1 search every 30 seconds.

i think when you click on the "unread posts" at the top right and when you click on the "get posts" menue - those are considered searches as well. So, given that a lot of us are clicking on those buttons to get only the latest posts, there's might be a lot of searching going on even if each user holds off 30 secs.

So what do you do while you wait to search? count alligators? never heard of that rule before.

[Mike]

Well, lupe you are right. The 30 second search rule is for searching using the search forum tool. I think I have it set to 20 seconds.

The Get Posts button is a "query" basically the same as a search. Think if it, like an Excel Spreadsheet. Sometimes you will do a search, other times you are doing a sort. Kind of like that. About the same impact on performance though.

[mike_d]

So what do you do while you wait to search? count alligators? never heard of that rule before.

Pretty much, count to 30. I hate using it when my search doesn't retrieve the expected results, but I could never figure out why they had it set-up that way, maybe it was for this reason? Clicking on the Unread Posts button is the most frequent function I use; I even use it instead of the back button.

[Mike]

Well, I want everyone to continue to use it they way the want. Do not change the way you use this site because you think it is hindering performance.

My explination above was my best guess at the moment. I could be wrong, it could be as easy as a template issue too, but I'll stick with my hunch above unless I learn otherwise. Unfortunately I have to wait and keep trying things.

Maybe there is a maintenance procesure the board is doing on a set scdedule that is not going off at 3am like they should. Stuff like that. There are about 5 different possibilities.

Use the site, have fun. Let me deal with whatever issues come up, and just know I am on it!

[klawrence]

And to top it all off, it may not even be a problem with the boards. It could have been something on the user side. If they have charter cable, it could have been a charter cable problem. Or if they have a common path linking to the boards that was down, Computers, and the internet are a funny thing.

Take the phrase insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Apparently the person who thought this up never dealt with computers.

(not to hijack the thread, but . . .) My external moniter on my 5-6 year old Dell work laptop started to not come on when I turn my computer on in the morning. So, I turn it off, turn it back on, and it comes on. The next morning, same thing, exept it takes 2 cycles of turning it off and turning it on. - hey it works.

[Mike]

I tend to think it now a user issue. I get it from work, home (I remote in), and a few others have gotten it. So far, it has mainly been the hours of 6am-10 am. I am watching it close. Believe me.

AAAHHh, "Hijacking a Thread" I wish I had a ding for every time we used some forum lingo for those that are new. Threads, Posts, Bumps, someone should put together a little forum glossary people can follow. If I have time, I'll look, but if anyone is bored enough, I think that'll be cute. There has to be something out there somewhere with nothing to do, I mean they are reading this forum, right.