Badmovies.org Forum

Over the last several days, I've been experiencing extremely slow speeds here on the forum.
When I click on a link here on the board, it'll sometimes hang.
Other times, it'll act as if it's going to go to the next screen but it'll hang on a black page.  I'll back up, click the link again and it still hangs.

This happens even when trying to log in or out.  I'll type my name and password in and click LOG IN and it just hangs.
When I want to log out, I click LOG OUT and it hangs.
It'll eventually log me in and out but it takes an eternity. (several minutes...and I have a fast broadband cable connection)

It's intermittent.  Sometimes all of the pages load quickly and other times they don't.

The rest of Badmovies.org, like the main page, reviews and reader reviews etc... all seem to load quickly with no problems at all.  And some pages here on this forum seem to load fast while others do not.
All other websites load fast as well.

Have any of you had problems with hanging and slow speeds here on this board lately?

I had this problem a few days ago, but it might have just been my computer...

I've had the forum to hang when I clicked on a link on several occasions; and no, it was not my browser as other sites where loading fine.

A few days ago, I even get a white page with a message that said something along the lines that the database was not available.

That happens to me every now and then, it's only one or two links though when it happens.

I've seen us take some performance hits lately, and quite honestly they are being caused by the forum growing.  The database continues to grow, meaning anything it does (especially searches) starts taking up more power to execute.

Some sites (not many these days) solve this by either pruning or archiving threads.  I'd rather not go that way, because you are either deleting information, or else making it harder to access.  The real solution is going to be setting up a server (well, VPS) for just the forum.  Until I can make that happen, I've been trying a few things to see if they help.  Each tweak takes a few days to evaluate. 

Thanks to Andrew for Badmovies.org; my most frequently visited site.  There's been a few slow moments; but who of us doesn't appreciate this site enough to be patient? 

Good point.

I'm having trouble with the board taking a long time to load...when I first come here as well as when I click on something to read. I thought it was just something at home but now at work I have the same issue. It seems to be after installing the newest update to FireFox but that could just be coincidence.

Anyone else having issues?

I've been noticing the forum is slow too.  Sometimes it'll be fine, other times it can take 20 seconds or so for a page to load.  Been going on for a week or so now.  No biggie I guess, I'll just flip over to another site and read some stuff while I wait.

Yes it has been lagging a little lately, I figure it's something Andrew is working on. But I've noticed it too, it can take as much as a 30 or more seconds for a page to change.

The main site is moving fine, reviews etc. Seem to be unique to the forum only.

I thought the problem was just on my computer, but yeah, it's a wee bit slow.

I've been moving these last two days; still in the process.  All the normal moving nightmares - U-Haul truck breaking down, etc.

The forum is just plain overloaded.  At this point, I might have to remove guest posting to fix the issue.  I cannot devote any more server resources to it, and I've tried every performance tweak I could.  The real problem is literally thousands of spambots trying to post.  Each one takes up some resources.  Even though the server firewalls the IP after too many spambot tries, they come back from a new IP.

Can you firewall by geo location?  All of Russia, all of China, etc...that sort of thing?

Unfortunately, doing DNS lookups on every host requesting from the server is also a bunch of overhead.  I have a plan that might help, but I've no time to actually do it for weeks due to work and what it requires.  I'm going to turn off guest posting.

First of all, sorry about the moving experience...I moved a lot back before I became a parent. I once moved five times in a year, each time out of state. Moving is never fun. It may be better where you are going; but the process is always hell.

As far as turning off the guest posting; I can understand why. I just really hate that for Menard; hopefully he will register so we won't miss him.

Yeah, I'll bet moving sucks.  Still, I hope that this problem is easier to fix than it sounds.  Menard if you're reading this, please register, we need some more dirty jokes and you're the only one who can supply them in that quantity.

Wanna bet?

On which, that moving sucks, because the process is obviously very difficult and confusing.  Or did you misread my saying that I hope it's easier to fix.  Or is it my mentioning of Menard's dirty joke usage.  I'm seriously confused now.  :question:

Sorry about the move...I know first hand how much that sucks.

As for the issue...thank you for taking the time to post that. It isn't really a big problem overall and I was mainly posting to see if it was happening with anyone else.

I've noticed that the forum seems to slow down during the late evening hours between 9 pm and midnight.
Lately, the slowdown has been so severe that I give up in frustration and go to another site for a while and then come back here later hoping that it'll be faster.
Most times it is.

Those cursed spambots!   :hatred:

I find it's lagging between 9am-12pm (UK time) and then also late in the evening, mid-afternoon I have no problems. It  is usually just a black screen for about 30secs, which is nothing really when you think about it. I also, just click on another tab until the page has changed.

My connection might possibly be retarded aswell.

Yeah, it's been kinda jerky lately.

For the last few days the site has been pretty popular on StumbleUpon, which led to a big increase in traffic.  I believe that is also part of what everyone has been seeing.  When that peaks, it is quite a number of viewers - and for some reason they hit all at once.

I'm still working on anything I can do to keep her level.  Just wish this wasn't happening in the middle of the move and Katie's injury.

Shoot, Andrew, I say take care of your personal business and forget about the forum performance issues.  It's not like lives are depending on badmovies.org having fast page loads.

 :thumbup:

Correct family first, my sister just had a emergency appendectomy ... good thing she was already at the hospital when it hit, then again she is a ARNP so where else would she be?

She was up and around in a couple of days and back to work within a week. Hope the Mrs. is doing well we'll survive with a slow forum.

I also wanted to mention that several times today a forum page will quit loading and I'll get, "Internet Explorer Cannot Display The Page" screen. (that doesn't happen on other sites)

It's never done that before.

Yeah, Andrew, take care of family and other business first, we'll survive.

Ash,

That's just your browser timing out.  If it does not get a response from the web site you have requested, that's the page IE displays.

Andrew explained that the server is being overloaded, so when you do a page request, it cannot respond within IE's timeout window.  Seeing that page is the same as the 'lag' you are seeing other times that just happen to be less than IE's timeout window (so you get the page eventually).

Hope this helps.

Yep, I've got the Firefox equivalent of that page a few time, it's just the server being overloaded.

That happened to me yesterday as I was dealing out some karma.

its done the same to me