For me anyway. Since we always only see "Site is slow" threads. I though I'd post a "Site is running fast" thread. This can be as helpful to the programmers as the "It's Slow" thread(s). If you have been doing some tweaking,it's working. Very fast here in NC USA. Tom

Good news. Its running pretty quick here at the office too so let's keep our fingers crossed that the speed will continue to be good. Thanks for posting Stacey

Nodda problem. In fact,it seems to have picked up after the "Delete" glitch was fixed. Musta unclogged a bottleneck somewhere along the line. Tom

Running good in the UK, has been for a few days thanks, whatever you did. Jack

The site was running pretty fast for a while today, but it's taking a long time for pages to change right now. That's usually how it works for me. Is it too many hits to the database at the same time?

That is usually the way it works for me too wyrwulf but it's been consistently fast for me. It's actually kinda scary. 8 )~ Tom

My theory is that if they turn off all the search functions, the site won't have those sporadic slowdowns.

I agree,the search functions is extremely slow. I'm not sure what is involved in "turning them off" but if it could be done just for testing purposes,it would be worth the downtime to see if it does in fact contribute the slowdown. Tom

They can use a program like BBEdit, which can go through the entire file hierarchy and "comment out" all search URLs. It's a little tricky, involving something called "GREP", but maybe their search engine person is up to the task.

For me, the site speed over the last few days has been the best that I've seen on Renderosity. Excellent. I hope that it keeps it up.

Still has it's moments for me. I find it runs okay but hangs whenever there's a sexy banner with a pair of titillating breasts, hmmmm, maybe this place has a mind of its' own? Must be a boy site! LOL!

"Site running pretty... " LOL Good one. Tom

.."document contains no data" errors. and no, it's not the ISP or my machine .. I checked ;)

When I tried to go to this forum earlier, it only got the first 2 threads, so it looks like they're trying a tweak where they cut down on loading of current messages. However, I don't think that loading the list of thread titles is the problem, although repetitive loading of message threads with alot of huge jpegs is likely part the problem.

But if that were the case, then you'd expect Product Showcase (where most of the threads have multiple images) to run significantly more slowly than Community or Writers or other places where there are few images at all. Carolly

Carol, it isn't the individual forum that runs slowly. It's the forum server that runs slowly, meaning if people try to search in any forum, or if people try to load a thread with alot of big jpegs in any forum, then loading of all forums may slow down.

Surely resources could be better allocated? On my old Mac under 9.2 I can tell it to use "this" much memory for each of my graphics-hogging programs (I haven't figured out how to set this on the new Mac under 10.3 yet). Wouldn't servers be more advanced than computers, so that different tasks get priority? Isn't a server something like a delegator, making assignments where needed? Also, if there is a "server farm", why would a slowdown in one machine cause the entire farm to drown? (My mental image is of a fen with a bunch of dikes and gates keeping the water flowing along desired routes.) Carolly

Carolly, actually, without having physical or admin access, ( to check ) I would say that when the forums sow down it's from a combined cause. 1) over 2 thousand people online. 2) multiple concurrent requests to the server for forum postings. if 'rosity broke the forums into smaller databases, on separate machines, this would speed it up. poser, with say all the slowest forums. ( posts per day rating ) match so that each machine is getting roughyl same level of traffic. maybe the poser forum needs it's own machine. but with the forums getting pounded for views, and galleries getting pounded for views, it will slow the db server response, causing the lags we see. I've seen it go from zipping along to a crawl and back to zipping, some of which has to be site traffic, but some could be intenet traffic.

Yes, "traffic" seems to be the most appropriate word in so many ways. If I was 30 years younger I might be studying non-linear dynamics just because it is so visceral. :deep sigh: I'd almost think that having the galleries, forums, freestuff, and store on separate servers would make sense, anyway... if some stupid hacker want to avenge himself (say for being banned, or having his art taken down by unappreciative philistines), or if he wanted to siphon info from the database, or simply leave his mark, he'd only get one section and not everything. And not just hackers... lightning, fire, hurricanes... it just makes more sense to split up the assets once something gets this big. Carolly

I'm pretty sure it is sectioned off, but the login and front dorr is always used. when you go to read a forum it checks for authorisation levels, when you go to reply it checks for authorisations. everything we do must be authenticated, and that's all on one machine, for entire site. that's what really slows it down. the forums really could be broken down into smaller batches on different machines. but if they don't break the authentication onto the separations already made, then it's not really gonna help. ( remember when they tested new script, and the forums were text only, as the graphics server was being worked on? [ a couple of years back ] )