Downtime Earlier Today

June 12, 2015

I was getting the iPhone problem that we had recently (wouldn't let me log in as me) yesterday, but a clear cache/cookies fixed that, so it was me, not you guys.

I had been noticing the general sluggishness of the FPN, but I mentioned in another thread that at work we give the treadmill hamsters a little 'V' (same as RedBull) with their feed. That results in overclocked hamsters and it is amazing the performance increase you get.

Anyway, seems to be behaving itself now.

Thanks a million (or should that be Thanks a Mega - 1,048,576)

June 12, 2015

Seems to be zipping along now nice and fast. Muuuuuuuch better.

Thanks!!!!!!

June 13, 2015

Had a look at it regardless, and my suspicions were confirmed.

I think it is fixed now, at least for a first pass. I'll do some more checks this weekend.
Warm regards, Wim

Would you be willing to share the technical details? As someone who dabbles in server administration these things are interesting to me.

June 14, 2015

No problem . We set up a separate domain in our advertising trials recently, as an ad server, with the idea to get better and easier control over them and to be able to integrate sell advertising space directly and using ad agencies. Essentially, we are self-hosting an ad server, after going through well over 60 externally hosted and self hosted options. In the end we were left with a shortlist of 8, 5 externally hosted and 3 self hosted, and after extensive testing we were left with one of each, obviously the self hosting version being the cheapest option by far. In addition, that also has a few options no other software had, but that was where the downfall was after all .

One by one we transferred all of our running advert campaigns to the ad server, and implemented the required callbacks. We did a few per day, to make sure we didn't disturb the functioning of FPN. The last three were these multiple ads, essentially the slideshow type ads we were running in the sidebar. This was the one functionality only this particular self hosted software provided as well. lt seemed to work fine immediately after installing these ads. And next I was away for 2 days for business, with no time for logging onto the internet. Upon my return, actually just before I arrived back home, I heard about the speed problems on FPN, and because of the way we had implemented the ad server here, my suspicion was that it was caused by running those slideshow ads via the ad server.

So late last night, when I had returned, after unpacking and having a cup of tea, I had a look, and undid the changes for those slideshow ads, to revert back to the old mechanism, which essentially is hosted directly on FPN, but with no real smart and easy control mechanisms. My suspicion was confirmed, as that seems to have solved the issue. I reckon the code for this part is still suboptimal, as probably not many people use it. I'll speak with the developer about it, when I feel rested again. He is quite good and reacts quite fast when it comes to support. We'll just see how it goes - it is probably not an absolute necessity anyway.

Warm regards, Wim

June 14, 2015

Thanks so much for all of the work y'all do to keep FPN up and running. I work with, and help keep organized, the IT infrastructure team for a mid-sized company. Just about everything they do is unnoticed unless it doesn't work.

So, just wanted to say again that what you do is appreciated, even when it's all working correctly.

June 14, 2015

Thanks for the explanation, Wim! Not much in the way of technical details but interesting nonetheless. Unsure how it was affecting my load times on mobile while logged in, but it's resolved now so it must have been related somehow. Such is the way of code.