I noticed for about a week the forum had slowed down at times tremendously. These times could have been spotty to sustained for hours. I suspected it might be possible the server was at max with connections, however this site was not extremely loaded with users.
I love traveling at light speed and beyond, but please warn me about those sudden stops, it hurts so bad.
Right now it is operating a lighting speed on my end - hit the key and bang it is done.
Maybe a real good garbage collection was needed.
It's lightning fast for me too, so I think you're right... I think the server hosting my site was dying a slow death. The reboot seems to have really helped speed things up.
With that said, I have decided to upgrade my hosting plan for the site. I will be moving the site from a VPS (Virtual Private Server) solution -- where one server is divided up into multiple "virtual" servers which share the CPU, disk, etc. -- to a dedicated server.
Moving to a dedicated server means we will be on our own server, not having to share any resources with other accounts. This means the site should behave lightning fast all the time.
The only down side is that a dedicated server is going to cost more... a lot more... $289/month (about 3x what I'm paying now). But, with the current donation levels and revenue from GoogleAds, I should be able to handle the additional expense. I think everyone here deserves the best.
So, with that said, I'll be posting an announcement soon regarding the cut-over to the new server. Hopefully it will be sometime this week and I'm sure it will involve some downtime.
