Hello everyone! Since it's been some time, I wanted to update everyone on where we are with all of the server problems that have plagued the site for months.
We've determined that our current server is no longer adequate for our needs. In repeated attempts to fix the site performance, we're maxing out the hardware, leaving us in a position of restarting the server once performance starts to dip. We're currently looking at various different hosting options, and we can definitely get better hardware for the same price that we're currently paying for our dedicated server.
We hope to have the decision made on our eventual host by the end of the month, and for the transition to occur before the end of February. Please note that there will likely be downtime while we transition hosts and ensure that the site is functioning at that time, but we will attempt to communicate out this downtime once we decide on a date.
In the mean time, the first thing to start failing when the site gets into a bad state are database queries to the collection table. This is our biggest table on the site (for obvious reasons - it contains the data for everyone's collections!), and understandably it will strain the server the most. If you notice functions around your collection starting to fail or statistics taking a long time to update, please notify us in the Announcements and Feedback forum and we'll schedule a server restart. For now, our plans are to restart the server on an as-needed basis, though that may move to weekly if we notice issues starting to arise more often.
When I have more information, I'll put up another blog post with the exact details. Thanks .
