I've had several reports today about very slow forum performance and some intermittent issues with connecting to the database (which usually manifest as either a totally blank page or an error to the effect of "the database could not be accessed"). I'm still trying to find a fix short of moving FTM onto a new server; I'll be talking to GoDaddy's tech support staff tomorrow, and I hope to have an update some time this weekend.

In the meantime, if you experience severe slowdown, failure to load, or error messages, please post in this thread. If you see any sort of database errors and you can post the exact error you see in this thread when you're able to get back on, that'd be really helpful.

I am working on the problem and hope to get these growing pains fixed.

> In the meantime, if you experience severe slowdown, failure to load, or error messages, please post in this thread.

I ran into an "Unable to connect with server" message around 5:40AM EDT (8-15).

It was very slow, and timed out several times on me around noon central time on the 14th. Seems snappy now.

It was excruciating around 9:30 AM EDT, August 15. The pages took forever to load and, because I had to go somewhere, I gave up on waiting after several minutes. I never got an error message, however.

Annoyingly slow on August 17, both on a Mac platform and a Windows platform.

Some forums do load faster than others, and it does not seem to relate to the number of postings displayed once the page loads.

I'm finding it intermittently slow right now too, although judging by the activity lights on my router and modem, the problem is rarely if ever one of slow data transmission; it's slow server response I'm seeing.

Actually loading of pages is very quick once the server is heard from.

Yep, it's definitely a server-side issue. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

I'm actually on the phone with tech support right now about getting the problem resolved or the forum moved to a different server. I'll keep you posted on what goes on.

It may be necessary to take the forum offline for a couple of hours some time this week if it does need to be migrated to another server. I'm really hoping that won't be necessary; fingers crossed!

In my most resent migrations to different hosts I found the down time to be negligible using Backup Wizard in cpanel. I'm not sure you have cpanel in the new hosting arrangement at godaddy. They do make it available in some of their offerings but not on the smaller accounts. If you do have it, give it a try at say 4am EST when activity is low, I think you'll only see a shorter transformation period.

It was intermittently slow earlier in the week but seems to have sped up a bit now.

Edit: it was so slow this evening that I gave up and did something else.

Slower than I'd expect it to be at 4:00 AM EDT on a Sat. (8-22)

From Forums Index to here:

Generated in 21.026 seconds in which 20.806 seconds were spent on a total of 13 queries.

The board is back to being intermittent in speed again. I'm talking to support about the problem and about migrating to a different server. I've been pulling my hair out all week dealing with the speed issue, and I'm getting a bit frustrated, but I still have a few things in the pipe I'm working on.

Thanks for the update; I'm certain I speak for all when I say that your dedication and patience are truly appreciated.

Tacit have a look at this option.

60 GB on Linux, cPanel for $6 a month. 2 year contract $144
http://www.eleven2.com/hosting/
plenty of room for growth!!

They have a good rep as well.
Give um a call maybe they'll let you test drive a server?

I've always had good luck with www.globat.com

Roger I don't think that Globat uses cPanel or has access to IMAP email...am i mistaken?

I believe you are right about IMAP, and I'm not familiar with cPanel. are either of those necessary to run UBBThreads, or did I miss something about what tacit is hoping to eventually do with FTM?

Neither of them is necessary. IMAP is a server-side email system; cPanel is a common and easy-to-use Web hosting configuration control panel. They're nice, but not necessary, to have.

The baseline requirements for UBB are PHP and MySQL, which almost any Web hot provides these days. I'm currently looking into the cost for spinning off FM onto a Web host that is going to be more reliable, and also offers the kind of expansion we may need in the future.

I just got this at 11pm UK time.

Failed to Connect

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.finetunedmac.com.

Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection.

* Could the site be temporarily unavailable? Try again later.

thanks for the clarification. in that case, I think that globat is worth a look.

FWIW, I've been experiencing the odd 'Failed to Connect' message for the last month including the last few days. Those hang-ups tend to last for a few minutes, after which the requested page(s) load normally again.

The response time today has been terrible.

It's not me. I've got 5 bands up on the wireless signal and a solid green light on the broadband router.

Several times I got a completely blank screen with "done" after several minutes - so long that I went away and did something else. Time after time I got "attempting to find finetunedmac.com"

Even when I do manage to get in to post something, I then - after several minutes, just get a blank screen with "done" instead of returning me to this site.

New users might find this offputting, to put it mildly.

I daren't click "preview" in case I lose it all, so here goes for submit.

Argh! I had really hoped the problem was resolved for good.

At this point it's definitely not the front-end server, so the problem must be with the database server or the connection between them. Back to work for me, I guess.

Having been bitten a time or two over the many years of whimsical server performance at MFIF, I make it a practice to copy and paste the text in the post-composition text box into a blank TextEdit document whenever things seem funky (or, indeed, whenever my post represents a fair amount of hard-to-recreate effort).

FWIW, I do it the other way around by composing everything I post in a TextEdit file and then copying it over.

I take advantage of Butler's multiple pasteboards functionality and periodically (any time I click away from the reply page, at the least) save what I've been composing...a poor man's auto-save.

I open the reply in a new tab. Then, I can simply switch tabs to get to a previous page rather than having to hit the back button.

Good idea, Jon!

I'll keep it in mind.

Roger, no you don't NEED either IMAP or cPanel but if your going to spend alot of time on servers, they're nice to have.

Tacit I have my share of server space and i wouldn't steer you wrong. Any host with cPanel and access to Web Host Manager will pay for the site and save you a lot of time. I'm not promoting a host per say, just the tools that making hosting easy. An IMAP account on your own domain is a gold standard. You can have your own certificate and security as I'm sure you already know.

Some would ask why? I would ask why not.

I too use clipboard saving utils on Mac & PC, so will just copy periodically when it's a long post, to keep a revision history just in case.