Server busy messages

[Steve Pavlina]

A few visitors this morning reported getting the "server busy" message when trying to access the forums.

I just upgraded the server yesterday, but I may need to upgrade again sooner rather than later. Forums tax a web server more than just about anything else.

The forums are running fine now, but I'll need to look into this further. The forum software will automatically turn new visitors away with the "server busy" message when the server load gets too high, so as to avoid bringing down the whole site. Right now the server load is unusually high for the number of visitors viewing the forums, about 4x normal levels, so the spike may be occurring elsewhere on the site.

If this isn't just a temporary spike, I'll need to do another upgrade to stabilize the server load. The last upgrade I did was seamless and only required a few minutes of downtime. But the next upgrade requires moving to a different type of server and involves a more complex migration. Cost is not an issue, but the upgrade will require more time and planning.

You might find this interesting -- take a look at what happened to this site's web traffic after launching the forums:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...evepavlina.com

So there may be some growing pains, but eventually we'll get the kinks worked out.

[TechnoGuyRob]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...evepavlina.com

That is mindblowing! A three-time increase in pageviews in the span of three days. It makes sense, I guess, but it is so significant it's propagating you into the top 1000 websites on Alexa!

EDIT: Also, take a look at this:



We love you, Steve.

[Steve Pavlina]

I contacted my host, and it turns out the problem was caused by a runaway spam filtering process that was hogging system resources -- this could have been caused by a spammer attack on the site. It's fixed now, but I'll keep an eye out to make sure it doesn't recur.

The forums are still so young that it may take a while to get a feel for their baseline affect on the server load under various traffic conditions. Another upgrade may or may not be necessary, but let's see how the next week goes.

If anyone does get a "server busy" message, please let me know about it -- you should still be able to access the contact form on the main site under such conditions.

And thanks for the love. It's unfortunate that web servers respond differently to love than people.