Server Problem?

[The Legendary Saviour]

Yesterday while I was trying to have a look at the forum it took ages to load then I got an error message that the site is currently not availbable.

I've had that quite often in the last weeks, is there maybe a problem with the server?
Anybody else having the same problem?

 

[Xemnas]

The forums seem to be working fine for me - what's your login time and timezone?

 

[The Legendary Saviour]

It often happens to me in the evening (GMT time).

 

[Xemnas]

Have you PMed any members who are usually on when you are? I can come on at 6 pm GMT (4 am my time) tomorrow (I'm going on a field trip to MovieWorld soon) and check it out.

 

[The Legendary Saviour]

Well it doesnt happen every day.

 

[Nitz]

yeah.. it has been happening here and there..

The problem is with the forum and server. There are MANY sites/forums hosted on the server and with the hacks new skins here on GP, it has slowly lagged the server and is putting a HIGHER CPU load on it.

There are 2 ways to fix it, one that will work for sure. If we GET a new server and at the moment. I can't do that. So unless we can raise around 100 bucks mabye.. we can get our own server.

2nd option is 1 I've talked to the admin staff about and it's on creating a new skin. A light colored skin, so it has a FF/KH look and it will have hardly any images to load and some of the non needed hacks will not be installed on that skin.

 

[Serenity]

Yeah it happens a few times a day for me as well. So really it's happening to everyone. About the skin I think it is an excellent idea for the loading of the forum, the speed and the connection so the server does not have to load soo much.

BTW Nitz, if you could catch me on my lap top i would love to start messing around with graphics for the skin. =P

 

[Fusion-X]

ya, everytime i'm postin a long message it crashes -_-

but the light skin is loading fast for me, just plain looks good (not saying it can't be modified lol)

 

[Nitz]

Well we will modify it.. but I'm going to use as less of the images I can.. do instead of a EDIT button, we might make it a link/text.. things like that.. just cutting down on the loading as much as we can.

 

[The Legendary Saviour]

Alright, good to know that Im not the only one *is relived*
And I totally love the current skins Nitz, dont ever change them!

 

[Nitz]

Well I don't know if I'll have time to fix the light skin to make it less server intensive.. due to college work this weekend. But I'll see what I can do.

 

[Dr. Tendou]

Just to give you peeps a heads up. I had a "server/database error" around 10-10:15 pm eastern time zone.

 

[Nitz]

yeah and one happen't just recently..

it's sucks that we have to have these issues NOW.. for the past yr, it's been pretty good and steady...

I'm not sure what we can do..

 

[Fusion-X]

well it usally just crashes for like 15 mins, so it's not THAT bad, it could be worse, like 2-3 days 0_o

 

[Nitz]

the problem is the server is packed with sites.. and the guy that owns the servers is just packing them on with people.. he doesn't want to buy another server to equal out the amount of sites etc..

So the server has to do so many jobs and actions.. it can't handle it all at once and slows down.

 

[Serenity]

the problem is the server is packed with sites.. and the guy that owns the servers is just packing them on with people.. he doesn't want to buy another server to equal out the amount of sites etc..

So the server has to do so many jobs and actions.. it can't handle it all at once and slows down.

Oh gosh.. well not much we can really do about that at all...and if he'd buy another server that might help solve some problems, but i dunno im not sure...Its hard when you dont have the proper money.

 

[Dr. Tendou]

I'm not sure if this would help or not. But I remember on a site I use to hang in, had a shoutbox. The Owner would daily wipe the Shoutbox.......it would be worth a try to wipe all existing shouts. I think someone said there were like 1235 pages of shouts.

 

[Nitz]

yeah, I'm thinking of modifying the new shoutbox when it comes out, so that say mabye ever 24 or 42 or 72 hrs it will delete all the shouts.

 

[The Legendary Saviour]

Might be seriously a good idea, who knows.

 

[Nitz]

Well the thing is, with the merger our database is HUGE now.. we went from like 50-60MB before the merger to around 100-110 with the merger.. so 100MB is a HUGE forum database.. not SUPER huge like some where they are 1GB lol.. but 100mb is the hugest forum databse I've ever worked with.. it's good in terms of members and posts..

It might not be good to have on a shared server like now, because everyone is using much of the resources, where as a dedicated server or another one, might be better due to less resources being used by other sites or just having GP as the only site on it.

But that is costly and at the moment, I don't have that kind of money for one. Unless we can get a VERY good sponsored package or a big donation.. we might be stuck ehre for a bit.