Once again, we’re experiencing insane spikes in new visitors. And once again, the server is begging us for mercy. After careful consideration, we’ve decided to solve the problem once and for all. This weekend, we’re upgrading everything. And we’re not being conservative in our approach. Here’s a summary of our plan:
- We’re adding a second CPU to the server and doubling the RAM.
- We’re switching out our caching plug-in for a newer, cleaner solution.
- We’re having a professional MySQL developer rebuild our configuration.
- We’re completely re-engineering the way pages across the site load.
You shouldn’t notice any downtime, connection issues, or other oddities as a result of these changes. A good friend has graciously offered to host the site for us on his own server while we work through the upgrade. We’re making the hot-swap on Friday night. Once the work is complete, the site should be loading as quickly as it did the day we launched back in ’08.
All of this is made possible by VIP members. Thank you.
Praise Jesus. I was just going to ask what has been going on with the limping speeds. Also, wondering why took away ads on the free end? I block them anyway but i want you making the monies, especially with the huge increase in visitors.
Yeah, +2,000 new visitors week over week for the past two months has made it hard to keep the server running smoothly.
And we’re never bringing banner ads back. Ever. It was more of a pain in the ass than it was worth, to be honest. We make enough on VIP subscriptions to keep things on an even keel.
We’re also working on some new ideas to keep the site alive. More on that later this week, though.
Sounds good.
Noticing faster performance… Thanks for the awesome upgrade.
You haven’t seen anything, yet. All we’ve done so far is clean up the code in some of the plug-ins that were bogging down the site. The real upgrade is coming this weekend.