Severe A2K Performance Problems

Although the problems seem to have gotten worse lately, I had been noticing them for a long time.

Interesting, though. I am not usually on A2K at this hour (11 pm est), and now the site apparently is moving along merrily.

You won't have to wait long before they pop up again.

It's moving at warp speed at the moment.

Shockwave has some great jigsaw puzzles. I've been doing the daily one for (when did things really start slowing down?) a while.

i'm quite sure that 'time-of-day' has somthing to do with access speed -
wouldn't it simply be a competition for access ports ?
i have noticed at other web-sites that they are slow to access at certain times - access to financial sites(stock market quotes) is often slow bewteen 3 and 5 pm , i find .
hbg

Poor hamster!

Someone must have oiled up that wheel...that was mean!

For starters:

http://www.jigzone.com/

http://www.dottysvirtualjigsaws.com/

http://fell2earth.com/content.php?cid=1002

http://www.puzzlehouse.com/_onlinepuzzles/onlinepuzzlesmain.htm

Oh, be nice it is not that slow. If it were sex no one would be complaining (that is what I heard anyway).

maybe i should give the hamsters some crack..

Anyone else experiencing this problem?

I just posted a comment to a thread. It seemed to be "stuck in transit" for quite some time after I clicked submit. So I checked New Posts, just in case. No, not there. Not in Your Posts, either.

So I went back to the thread to try to post again. And there was my post, already there! However still no record of it in either New Posts or Your Posts lists.

It's getting rather confusing as you can't tell for certain whether you've actually posted or not.

10 minutes later:

I got a "critical error" response when I just tried to post this!

THEN went back to the tread I'd been trying to post to (Still no mention of my post in New Posts) & discovered my message there, in triplicate!

THEN (trying to do the right thing) I tried to remove 2 of the repeat posts with the X button.

NO GO!

"You cannot remove a post that has already been responded to" (It hadn't)

Tried again, 3 times. The same "You cannot remove a post .... etc " message three times!

So sorry to clutter up your thread, nimh, but I can't remove them. Hell, I was just bookmarking!

OK, all this does not auger well!
I can tell when I've been beaten & this is one of those times.

I'll try, just one more time to post this message, then I'm outa here for now!

A girl could lose her marbles ...

Okay, hopefully now all is solved :wink:

Time will tell...

In the long-term A2K's viability is tied to the next version I've been developing (admittedly, the development hasn't moved in 2 months).

In the short term performance can probably best be solved with a huge chunk of RAM.

If the server can load the whole database into RAM then there will likely be a LOT less in way of sluggishness and "cannot connect to the database" issues.

I've not added more RAM primarily because of the cost. Right now my discretionary spending is going toward the next version of A2K in the form of development. Moving to Costa Rica has also added a lot of costs (I have bought a car here for e.g.) and I was banking on doing it all with the next version of A2K (which will be less resource intensive as well as more efficiently monetized).

But it seems it's a pretty bothersome issue for end users so I'm going to put it to the users. The RAM to make the site run more smoothly will cost about 200 dollars a month. I don't want to run this site as contribution ware (i.e. accepting donations) but if the members want the ram I will do so.

P.S. - It may hit rough patches and even decline a bit, but I'm not going to let A2K die for lack of interest (mine) nor am I going to ever desist in my dreams of making it much better. And the rough patches are a simple matter of resources so I figure this is the easiest way to solve it.

Sounds good to me.

And I'm in for a contribution.

Where can I send my contribution?

Craven, my small contribution wouldn't be charity. We have two more months of Official Winter in the mountains and my small contribution would be an investment in my magnificent mental health.

Thanks for all your effords, Craven, and for explaining it!



I could imagine that most of the old subscribers will re-join and with a couple of new ones added ...

Good man, Craven.

Valuable stuff.

McTag

I know you won't let it go, CdK.

It might be better to add the ram cushion, re keeping the core community together in the meantime, but then again maybe not as we're a stubborn group. For those with dialup, it must've been like waltzing through taffy lately, as it's been sluggish with dsl.

I don't get to vote, as I can't donate this go-round. Not sure though if I still am, re subscribing; in my memory, that was curtailed, wasn't it? (You can tell I don't stare at my bills with a magnifying glass - hard to when I put them at the opposite end of the room in the avoid corner.)

Absolutely.

On the other hand, if it's just resubscribing, I can work that out.