There's a parallel thread to this running over on the private flying forum which gives more detail and all the background to the problems we're all undeniably facing.
Here at the Towers tonight we're very pleased indeed that we've found a flexible and totally scaleable solution for the long term. This will be a blessed relief from our annual crisis as yet another server shows the strain.
We are absolutely indebted to PPRuNers in the IT industry who responded to my description of the problems we face - an amateur operation with corporate levels of traffic. Their advice and offers of help have given us an entirely new roadmap. This isn't glib praise. Every time we approached the big providers with what we needed they flattened us with quotes which, while competitive in their context, were lottery numbers for us.
Changing tack and going for the huge number of IT specialists who are aviation orientated has totally transformed the situation. If things work out it may well be that IT folks, such as those always available to offer help on this forum, will have utterly transformed this site's performance in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile we cannot strongly enough encourage you to stop browsing with Internet Explorer. If you aren't using a tabbed browser you are wasting most of your time on the site - it's as simple as that.
Please, please heed the excellent advice being offered by others on this thread.
Regards
Rob Lloyd