Quick brief is this: victim of its own success sums it up. When broadband users are having problems it gets our attention very quickly indeed and we've been working on this for a couple of months. Finance is the problem.
We're tweaking on the technical side - you may have found the search engine shut down to offload the server. We've also brought another server online to place the ads for the same reason.
The server is not an old 386 simmering gently in the bowels of the Towers. Twin processor, 1 gig of memory and raid disk set up linked to multiple T1 backbone. It runs entirely on unix, the web server software isn't some freeby like Apache but a full commercial package called Zeus and the forum itself is actually a high speed commercial database with a pretty pastel veneer. It's not a toy and nestles in a 24/7 server farm in the States.
The reason it's not coping is simply this - of 30 plus million websites worldwide PPRuNe comes in at number 12,000. You might want to play with the percentage function on your calculator after reading that. We are on a traffic par with major world corporations, governments and large software companies.
This is the longest we've ever gone without upgrading the server - April last year. The spec and cost of a significant and noticeable improvement for you the user is that of a very nice car. We're working on raising the finance but there is no PPruNe office, no staff, just a core of three us us flying the line and paddling like hell in our spare time. Without our superb mods offloading us the place would have gone under several years ago.
While you wait for us to get the extra capacity needed there's a couple of self help ideas I'd like to pass on. Try to avoid the 10 - 14 z period but much more importantly and especially those of you on dial up
stop using Internet Explorer
We get a very clear view of exactly how you're viewing the site and through which browser. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you switch to a lightweight, tabbed browser. While you're viewing a page you've got another couple loading on other tabs - simple and effective it also masks the speed problems as you've always got a page to read.
Apologies for the problems - we're working at it on several fronts and you're not being ignored. Believe me, I run the site while downroute, often from internet cafes, and experience every single frustration you do and then some.
Perhaps a few of you would like to chip in with some info for your fellow rotorheads regarding the modern, tabbed browsers. A huge improvment is out there just a free download away.
Regards
Rob Lloyd