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Well I finally managed to get an answer out of my hosting provider on why we are the mysterious "Server 500" errors. It comes down to concurrent connections. If there are a bunch of people on the website and they are all loading pages at the exact same moment, then this exceeds the number of concurrent connections at that one moment and you get the infamous "Server 500" error. They you try it again, and there are open connections available at that moment, and it works just fine.

So because my provider has a hard limit on the number of connections, then the website will probably make a move to a new provider in the next few weeks or so. Hopefully this move should be silent and except for a few down hours during the actual move, should not affect any of the content here on the website. Just trying to keep you all in the loop. I am trying to balance out the hosting costs with performance, and I think I have a provider in my crosshairs that will fit the bill nicely and keep the costs just about the same.

I guess this mean the website is for sure growing and we need to move to a provider with a little move legroom. So kudos to everyone for your continued support.

Just wanted to let you all know that I see the "500 Server" errors also, and I am working to elimnate them.

Thanks,

We're with you Kev, wherever you go we go! Thanks again for providing us with the infrastructure for such a great site.

I installed some server load tracking software in the background to get a view of what the actual server load is like while the website is running. I want to verify what my Host provider is telling before I pull the trigger on anything. Plus this will give me a better metric, and trend reporting so I can plan for capacity better.

While all this gibberish means something to me on the backend, it should not affect anything here on the website. It will just give me real-time traffic and status reporting so I can see what the server loads are when those "500 Errors" are occuring.

I'll keep you guys in the loop, but whatever I decide to do with my Hosting provider, it will not affect the quality of the content here, nor that fact the website will always remain free. Just a some growing pains, which is a good problem to have! Thanks to everyone for you continued support.

Great picture!


Well I have been monitoring the web traffic all day from a server log level had noticed that the website gets slammed with various unfriendly bots that are constantly walking the webpages looking for email addresses, site vulnerabilites, etc. So I installed a background module that works to detect and reject that traffic. So what this means is less connections used by that crap, and more connections/bandwidth available for you guys.

If anyone experiences and more of the those "Server 500" errors, then please send me an email or PM telling me what time you got it (ie 8:17pst), and also where you were in the website when it happened. I am hoping rejecting that "bad" traffic will cause these errors to go away. That "bad" traffic was consuming as much as 30% of the connections and website bandwidth. Most of that should now be blocked.

Thanks

BKev
Glad you know what you are doing keeping PInfo going.
I just appreeciate your monitoring of the website and the 'intruder' elements. Mining for emails I know is common, but all the junk-email is frustrating. Use all your tricks to keep us clean.

Thanks
DanL

I will do my best!

On another note, I will be upgrading the Chat Module this evening/morning, so I am pulling the Chat down for this upgrade. Just letting you guys know if you wondered why it diaspeared of the menu. It should be back up tomorrow.

Everything else (forums, articles, etc) will remain up and unaffected by this.

Thanks,

No chat tonight? I don't know if I can survive that long without it!!!!

Im lucky when I can find the On/Off button on my computer. I didn't notice a thing.

Kev,

The site seems considerably snappier than it has for some time.

Tom

Well the new version of the Chat software was horrible buggy. So rather than subject any of you to that, I put the previous version back online.

I will look about and see what other option are available for chat. The current one has a nice looking interface, but you can only put so much lipstick on the pig.

I hate how it randomly drops messages, and some user can never connect to it. I was hoping the new version would be better, but it was much...much worse. A search through their support forums showed that other people are having similar problems and the software is just not that well supported. So stay tuned. But the regular version is back online for now until I get something else lined up and tested.

Thanks,