Not a tasting note ... a forum note :)

I got in with no problem at all this morning. I'll see what happens now.

[Jenise]

Got in right away just now. But yesterday was a total loss.

From Jeff Grossman last night:

Hi.
I am in France: I also cannot get in. When I go to the board I see "too many connections" and when I go to the home page of the site I get "cannot connect to the database".
Sounds like a site problem.

Jeff

I got in with no issues today. Yesterday I had the odd experience of getting in, going to one of the fora and although it told me that I was on the newest page, the posts showed a date of 2008 and it wouldn't let me open any of them! Weird!

[Robin Garr]

This just in from John at CNIWeb.

Ok, I tweaked a few things. Please verify that services are all online as expected, and if so, let me know if you see any improvement, or even further degradation.

Hammer on it for a while, gang, and let me know if everythings to be okay - or, if it's not, what you see.

[Jenise]

Got in a second time no problem but reaction times are VERY slow. Opening a thread takes 30-60 seconds. Posting a response takes 15 to 30. Switching from Kitchen to Wine area took a minute and a half.

[Robin Garr]

“I can’t replicate that.”



Seriously, it’s quick and snappy for me. I’ll report to them in the morning, though.

[David M. Bueker]

After nearly two hours of slow or no access, it’s working OK.

[Robin Garr]

After nearly two hours of slow or no access, it’s working OK.

I’ll give them that specific report so they can check the logs.

[Robin Garr]

How's it seem to be this morning, gang? Any problems with slows or blackouts? It's looking good to me right now.

It's fine this morning - just like the olden days a week or so ago.

[Robin Garr]

It's fine this morning - just like the olden days a week or so ago.

[David M. Bueker]

"Site not found" error has cropped back up this afternoon.

[Jenise]

Got it twice today myself.

[Robin Garr]

I’ll yell up the techs.

[Robin Garr]

Hey, gang! I just wanted to let everyone know that I am aware the forum is back to being randomly painfully slow again, and now it seems to be that way more often than not.

I've asked them not to overlook nuclear options like disabling access to the forum to all advertising bots, which would probably make a big difference but at the sacrifice of Google AdSence income from forum traffic. A real dilemma for me, but we can't keep up like this.

Anyway, keeping you notified that the maintenance ticket is in.

[Robin Garr]

Cross your fingers, hold your breath! IRiffing off a chat with the techs, I just un-stuck two huge threads in FLDG and replaced them with new, empty homes for new threads in What's For Dinner and What I Learned Today. It could be my imagination, but the forum seems a little more zippy already. Let me know!

[David M. Bueker]

I’m back in but it’s like walking through beach sand with molasses.

[Robin Garr]

Better now. From molasses to maple syrup?

The techs are looking at it and we’re updating some large threads that may be causing slow response because of indexing time. The techs are looking under the hood. It’s kind of mysterious, though. Stay tuned!

Very slow, and I had to logon.

So slow that I go and do things on another window

What web spiders (indexing bots) scan WLDG? Google and Bing have been at it a long time and are very efficient and non-intrusive with their indexing. It could be that recently we've started being scanned by a new bot that is sloppy and inefficient about how it walks the web links. It might be worthwhile to look at the list of bots accessing the site before and after the performance problems started.

Maybe WLDG is now being scraped as input for some AI system?

-Paul W.

[Robin Garr]

Sorry, Peter. The techs are working on it, but they're puzzled too. I'm afraid that a big part of the problem is that the forum and the site have grown to vast size, but none of us in management are really techies, so the software is both overloaded and seriously out of date ... but can't be updated because it's been tinkered with so much that running an update would basically destroy our data. It's a dilemma, and I just hope the techs at CNIWeb, our connection to the Internet, can come up with some tricks that will help.

Paul, I just saw your note, but see above: The bots were suspicious because a lot of them visit - apparently innocuous but annying corporate traffic. The more serious problem is basically just that we've driven this car into the ground and have a hard time keeping it running.

Arghh - just spent 20 minutes composing a post and when I went to post it the site dumped it by disconnecting me saying that the site wasn't available.

Someone let me know when one can reliably post again please.

[Robin Garr]

Bill, for the time being it would be prudent to write posts in Notes and copy and paste them to the forum cheap insurance.