Availability of OL?

[syrakusos]

Over the past month or so, I noticed that more often, when I try to point my browser to this URL, I get an error saying that the service is unavailable. Is it because there are so many people here at once, that more cannot be accommodated? It could just be my problem, but we just switched carriers from Comcast to ATT, so it is probably independent of that. And I use both a PC and a Mac. So, it's not that. It is growing pains, a sign of OL's success?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

I don't specifically know what the problem is.

As speculation, it might be IPB. I know this company has been having growing pains. We host with them in addition to licensing their software.

There are a few measures they have taken--unilaterally and without telling people--to save on bandwidth that have left me deeply unsatisfied. For example, they hard-coded the limit of searches on the forum software (when hosted on their servers) to the last year or two. This means if I want to change this, I need to jump through a bunch of coding hoops on the server side, then the next time the forum is updated, I have to do it all over again and pray that they did not change the location and/or name of the hidden php file or invent a new one. And so on. Which means, I am leaving it as it is until I migrate the forum to a new hosting service and software (hopefully next year sometime).

I imagine your access problem might be that, since IPB is so concerned about saving bandwidth at all costs, and it hosts a few humongous forums (that pay IPB far more than we do), there are periodic surges in traffic that come from these forums that affect all the other IPB customers. That is only speculation, though.

Michael