Site Slowness Issues -- Please Read

[TGO David]

As you may be aware, the site was offline for the past 12 hours so that we could perform some work to address the slowness issues that were affecting the site.  I am not convinced that we are out of the woods just yet.  This problem may reoccur.

At present, I cannot tell you whether the problem was the result of something wrong with a software upgrade, or with the forum database, or merely a lack of sufficient resources to meet demand, or something more sinister.  We have dealt with Denial of Service attacks in the past and this looked very similar to them in quite a few ways, however our hosting provider did not confirm that anything like a DoS was happening.

I am speaking with the hosting provider today to evaluate the cost and benefit of adding more resources to our server.  Anything we add will carry a monthly cost.  It is times like this that I am extremely appreciative of the Benefactor members who support the site financially, and of the Vendors who advertise with us.  It is times like this that I also urge you to support the shops who support TGO and spend your money elsewhere when considering the shops that don't.  "Vote" with your wallets and ask shops that don't support TGO to do so.  Let them know that this community is important to you and that it should be important to them also.  It takes money to run TGO.

So... one last thought:

If the site starts slowing down again today, please don't pile traffic onto the problem just to post and tell us "The site is slow".  We'll know it is before you do, most likely.  Posting about it just adds more burden to the server and doesn't help me get it fixed any faster.

While I appreciate the frustration you guys are feeling as members of TGO trying to access the site you enjoy so much, I am feeling a lot of frustration behind the scenes while I am working and trying to stabilize things.

 

Sorry for the problems, folks.

[Grand Torino]

Thanks for everything boss and I hope you find the true root of the problem so this can be avoided in the future.

[Raoul]

No worries David.

[TGO David]

We've been seeing a lot of "Guest" browsing.  That's folks who aren't logged in or aren't registered as members, reading content.  This is different than Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engine spiders combing the threads.  Those show up entirely differently.  No, these are actual people reading threads anonymously.

In order to preserve resources for folks who are actually members and who are logged in, I have set the forum to show thread titles but not thread content to guests.  This won't affect search engines like Google, but it will affect the lookie-loo's who are putting a load on the server without contributing anything in return.

More to come.  The hosting company just hit me with a recommendation that would almost double my monthly expenses with them.  I'm sure it would be a bad-ass server, but the cost is hard to swallow.

[glowdotGlock]

I wonder why the sudden increase..?

[crossfire]

24 minutes ago, glowdotGlock said:

I wonder why the sudden increase..?

[TGO David]

37 minutes ago, glowdotGlock said:

I wonder why the sudden increase..?

As do I.  Which is why we have been looking at this as potentially a DoS attack.  That type of attack can look like legitimate web traffic.

[KKing]

Thanks for all you do David


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DWARREN123]

It's government active with aliens I tell you!   

[Grand Torino]

4 hours ago, TGO David said:

We've been seeing a lot of "Guest" browsing.  That's folks who aren't logged in or aren't registered as members, reading content.  This is different than Google, Yahoo, Bing or other search engine spiders combing the threads.  Those show up entirely differently.  No, these are actual people reading threads anonymously.

In order to preserve resources for folks who are actually members and who are logged in, I have set the forum to show thread titles but not thread content to guests.  This won't affect search engines like Google, but it will affect the lookie-loo's who are putting a load on the server without contributing anything in return.

More to come.  The hosting company just hit me with a recommendation that would almost double my monthly expenses with them.  I'm sure it would be a bad-ass server, but the cost is hard to swallow.

While I'm pretty much a cheapskate I would be willing to pay more for my Benefactor status to keep things protected and going smooth.....just sayin'.

[Monkeyman2500]

David, thanks for all you and our mods do. It's the best forum on the web. I hope there was not a hacking attempt. Recently cummins diesel forum had a huge breech and it caused a lot of havoc to member accounts.  Keep up the good work!

[TGO David]

6 minutes ago, Monkeyman2500 said:

David, thanks for all you and our mods do. It's the best forum on the web. I hope there was not a hacking attempt. Recently cummins diesel forum had a huge breech and it caused a lot of havoc to member accounts.  Keep up the good work!

Thanks.  Yeah, I am a member over there also.  The new password requirements they put into place are absurd.

 

[Fourtyfive]

4 hours ago, Monkeyman2500 said:

David, thanks for all you and our mods do. It's the best forum on the web. I hope there was not a hacking attempt. Recently cummins diesel forum had a huge breech and it caused a lot of havoc to member accounts.  Keep up the good work!

Wow , haven't logged in there in a while but my son lives on there .....

[TripleGGG]

6 hours ago, Grand Torino said:

While I'm pretty much a cheapskate I would be willing to pay more for my Benefactor status to keep things protected and going smooth.....just sayin'.

This

[TGO David]

Thanks folks.  I am optimistic for the moment -- the work I did overnight to address what I feared were software issues may have put us back in the green for the immediate term.  A server upgrade is inevitable, it seems, but I am weighing my options.  Doubling the monthly hosting cost is still a hard pill to swallow.

 

[No_0ne]

Let me guess - you tripped over the cord to the dial-up modem again, except this time you managed to break the cable jack too ...

[TGO David]

3 minutes ago, No_0ne said:

Let me guess - you tripped over the cord to the dial-up modem again, except this time you managed to break the cable jack too ...

There are days lately I'd like to have my dial-up modems back!

This... This was "the business" right here, just before I went broadband back in 1997.

 

 

[No_0ne]

I knew it. After all, I'm something of a tech guru.  I know how to set the date and time on my VCR ...