So. As you've all probably experienced, the site has been seeing quite a lot of downtime recently. I want make sure. First off. This has absolutely nothing to do with the recent update. This has nothing to with bbcodes. And while I'd rather avoid throwing the blame without evidence, but I'm not closing off the possibility that we are being targeted in some fashion by bots crawling and accessing our forum frequently. Which may be an intentional effort to close us, or could just as easily be by accident. We have evidence that bots have been frequenting our site. And we had hoped that we managed to quell them and block them off from accessing our site. But we have no evidence whether their presence is an intentional result from other unknown parties.I can say though, with 100% clarity that the main issue we have right now, is that we have somehow outgrown our host. The error, some of you may have been able to scrounge upon is the "max_users_connected" The hilarious thing is, that this number is a number our host has set upon our database, It's a number they required and we had no knowledge of, before I decided to straight ask their support line an x amount of time on what the hell it was. (not the meaning of it, but what that variable was set to for us)
Now, it's important to note the following things:
- We had no idea what this number was in the first place, googling and searching in their support area yielded no results.
- After having asked numerous support individuals, none of them ever answered, until this last one I talked to earlier today.
- We are a growing site, and we have been growing exponentially in the past few months.
The number I was told, that the maximum allowed users connected to the database (note: The Database, not the website itself.. is 40
So only 40 people can, at the same time request to look at a page, a post, a thread, the memberslist, anything that interacts with the database in some fashion. And as you try to think that through, realise that we have daily hundreds of visitors, looking around, plus bots accessing pages and posts trying to analyze our posts for search engines and the like.
What does all this boil down to?
Well, you see. This all means we have literally outgrown our host's capabilities. And while we are waiting on a ticket that was made to their technicians, whether or not this number is at all change-able for us, all of our administrators and helpers are scouring the web for potential new hosts we could use. The key important deal for us is that little variable there. We need at the very least more than 40. (perhaps a 100, or above would be nice!)
Why am I telling you all this?
You deserve to know what we're doing, and what's going on. Why we're having errors, what our thoughts are and what we're trying to do to fix it.
So I hope you understand, and that you are able to stay patient and stick with us, as I know a lot of you have been, through thick and thin.
And damn am I proud of you all for doing so, for so many years. And I am as well, oh so proud of calling myself an NC'er down to the core because of that.
So thank you all. Let's hope this transitionn, again.. Urgh.. goes as smooth as the last one..
Yoshi
Site owner and administrator