Just to reply to some of your comments if I may.
The reason that we had some issues lately was because we moved the forum to a new dedicated server. Downtime was inevitable since the move was not as smooth as it should have been. This is mainly due to the fact that our database contains more than 700000 posts. Usually this is not a problem but restoring the database took more than 2 hours simply because the box was being hammered by requests for the forum.
The server itself is a computer. It has its limits and while it is capable of coping with even the peak demand that we have recorded so far on a daily basis, it cannot handle excessive demands. Let me explain - and this has happened a lot in the past so I am compelled to say this.
The forum works. Everyone is happy. When something goes wrong - and it does at times - then we have three kinds of users:
User A looks that there is a problem. Acknowledges the problem and decides to visit the site 5 minutes later.
User B looks that there is a problem. Ignores it and hits the F5 button so that the page refreshes. Nothing (of course) comes up and the user hits the F5 again and again and again until the user acknowledges that there is a problem so the user decides to visit 5 minutes later.
User C looks that there is a problem. Ignores it and hits the F5 button so that the page refreshes. Nothing (of course) comes up and the user hits the F5 again and again and again and again and again and again... while at the same time calls their ISP to look if there is a problem with their line, sends emails to the admin team of the forum and continues to hit the F5 button again and again and again....
Now I don't know which user you are and frankly I don't care. You can be anyone or none. My point however is that if you don't acknowledge the fact that sometimes problems do exist and do happen (Murphy's law) and that we have to wait them out, then you are making things even worse.
To put this into perspective. While the restore of the database was in place - yesterday that was - I noticed that the server was getting an increased load of requests. So I checked and saw that the restore was being delayed since the server had to allocate resources to serve those requests. A bit of investigation revealed approximately 150 dead requests for the long hair care forum, which the web server had started to serve but the user cancelled it by sending another request. Particularly interesting was one IP address which had 75 of those requests in a matter of minutes. And before you ask it was not an office. I wonder what that keyboard must have suffered with all that F5 hitting going on.
Today I woke up (and yes it is 04:22 in the morning now) because there was a server alert. I went and looked and it is the same thing. The server was loading the forum at 105 seconds which is ridiculous. Usually it loads at 2-4 seconds. Looking at the server the same thing happened. And guess what: the same IP appeared not at the top spot (there was another one with 81 requests) but still high up.
If the board misbehaves or slows down or whatever you want to call it, it is maily by abuse and nothing more. I would hate to have to ban IPs and subsequently members due to abuse so that I can preserve this community - but trust me I will do it if I have to.
I read all the emails that are sent to the admin emails. I also read all my PMs. I do not reply because I would have to copy and paste the same stuff over and over again and that would be a waste of my time and of course more downtime for LHCF since I would be replying to emails and not attending to problems.
Just some comments so that you all know what the score is. I don't know if I pissed someone off but I'd rather do that and be blunt than say bull.