Forum Issues

[RBTKraisee]

If it helps @Tank or @NGFTech - the sections that are still showing BEFORE you have to login are as follows:

General Category
 N Gauge Discussion
 General Discussion

Notices, Help With Problems and Your Forum Ideas...
 Notices
 Computer Help
 Forum Ideas and Problems

Classifieds
 NGF and 3DR 3D Printed Products

Cheers,

Ross.

[Browning 9mm]

forum really fast so far this morning.

[Firstone18]

To all involved in recent change to the forum - very well done! I find the forum a wonderful resource, and a way I can pass on what little knowledge I have to all other N Gauge enthusiasts. I must also say I find the default text font easier to read, it reminds me of one of the early fonts when there was not so many to choose from!
Thank you for all your effort running this forum.
Cheers

[Browning 9mm]

seems to be slowing down again, but with 887 'guests' and only 50 users logged on, that is no surprise.

is there any problem with, as I and others have suggested, getting 'guests' to log in ?
it seems that 'guests' seem to have far more access than before the upgrade, is this the problem, or is it that 'bots' are looking at / slowing down the forum.?

[Tank]

Morning all,

Sorry, I haven't been on much the last week.  I've been needed at home a lot.

So, there are some errors on the forum that are slowing the forum down.  This seems to be at certain periods of the day and not all of the time.  Trying pinpoint these is quite hard.  I'll work with NGF Tech and our hosting company to figure out what they are.

Thanks for your continued support.

[Browning 9mm]

yet again

Temporarily Unavailable
Due to high stress on the server the forum is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

I do not ever remember this on the old forum.

did something in the 'upgrade' open the door to problems ?

more 'guests' and to my mind less members seems to suggest members can't log in, for what ever reason.

I sincerely hope this is being investigated / addressed by those IT professionals, otherwise I can see members getting seriously upset, and not bothering to even try to log in.

was this not foreseen, or was the upgrade just gone ahead with willy nilly ?

with22 pages of forum issues, it seems that this upgrade has not been a great success.

[dannyboy]

There has certainly been some problems over the last couple of hours - 'server stress' appearing often and pages taking minutes to load, if at all. I suppose we just have to be patient and hope the problems can be sorted out.

[Trainfish]

I tried replying to this 5 minutes ago (using post reply rather than quick reply) and got the same message. Now that I have returned it took around 30 seconds to actually bring up this reply box. I'm sure @Tank will soon get fed up hearing about this so I apologise in advance. Also when I just tagged Tank, hopefully I did anyway, I didn't get any member name suggestions whilst typing his name. I thought this was an issue before and had been addressed. I'm sure Mick won't mind so I'll try tagging him too now and see what happens. Here you go @Newportnobby Again, no options offered, did you receive a notification Mick?

As far as the number of guests go and the bots, I'm pretty sure these are linked as in the bots could be showing up as guests. As much as it would be good to allow guests to view the forum and possibly join I do think a log-in should be required now even if it is a temporary fix to give the guys some time to look into the issue.

Just trying to be constructive here.

[Browning 9mm]

for the last 10 minutes the site has, as so often, been under stress and unavailable.

having finally be able to get in, I am stressed, and will now be unavailable.
logging out, while I can possibly still do so.

[Ed]

for the last 10 minutes the site has, as so often, been under stress and unavailable.

having finally be able to get in, I am stressed, and will now be unavailable.
logging out, while I can possibly still do so.

See post #322

[Newportnobby]

@Trainfish No notification received but if you used "Quick Reply" then tags don't work.
If a mandatory login is what is necessary to maintain the sanity (?) of actual forum members then so be it - make it so as Jean-Luc would say. At present any enjoyment in the forum is negated by what's happening
I've tried 3 times to reply but each time I hit 'Post' up comes the stressed out forum bit

[PLD]

The only times I'm seeing the "Server under Stress" message is with either "Updated Posts" or "Unread Posts" lists. i.e. when It's having to do a search through all threads.
That potentially points towards the database not being optimised for that type of search - maybe an indexing issue??

[Nbodger]

The only times I'm seeing the "Server under Stress" message is with either "Updated Posts" or "Unread Posts" lists. i.e. when It's having to do a search through all threads.
That potentially points towards the database not being optimised for that type of search - maybe an indexing issue??

I agree it is a frequent situation but not the only one, I have also encounted when logging in, moving from page to page in a thread and when accessing posts from the unread lists.

there are frequent times when it takes 30 plus seconds between actions, which make it virtually unusable, then other times it is very quick.
 

[Malc-c]

I get the "Temporarily Unavailable
Due to high stress on the server the forum is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."  page when simply accessing the site via a bookmark in Chrome.  Happens three out of four visits a day.

I've also lost posts... either after spending 20 minutes to write the post and include images (via the old clunky method of providing a description and location in the pop up window) and then when I hit post I get the "stress message" above, or it just simply displays the same edit screen as if a new post was posted whilst I was writing, or it just vanishes.

Whilst migrating servers isn't easy (trust me I've been there and have the tee shirt) - the number of faults mentioned here, and the time elapsed since the migration gives me some concerns.  The idea of any upgrade is to make things easier for those maintaining it, and a better experience for the user, neither of these seem to be the case here (Sorry Tank).

The high number of "guests" are more likely bots and not true guests.  If that is the cause for the server struggling then changing access to make the forum available to members only via the login may be the best way forward, at least until the support form the hosting company can figure out an alternative.

Or it could be that the traffic is just too much for the Sinclair Spectrum, and a 64K ram pack is needed 

[Malc-c]

Moments after posting that post I clicked "reply" to add a further post to inform you that the post above took almost 2 minutes to actually post as it sat there "waiting for ngaugeforum.co.uk" before doing so.  When I hit the reply button I got the "temporary unavailable"message again...

I'm now resorting to copying my post before hitting the post button so that if it does fall over I can paste the reply in again - just to be on the safe side !