Ladies,
I think we found out where our issues originate. In the next few days hopefully we will eliminate them.
The past week my colleagues and I have been monitoring the site on a near 24 hour period trying to identify the problem and eliminate it. We found out that one of the modifications/features recently added (we don't know which one yet) is causing the extra load on the database server hence rendering the site inaccessible.
There is a new announcement at the top of each forum, please read it.
Dark&Lovely: You have every reason to vent along with other ladies and I can understand your frustration since I am in the same boat. The message you get regarding the not posting is a friendly reminder to share your views with the rest; some people just need a bit of encouragement.
You all keep forgetting that in the past year we had a near 99.5% uptime on the site - including scheduled maintenance. I really don't know any site with that many posts (1.5 million approximately) that has so much traffic and the same uptime.
I have spent peronally the last week more than 48 hours working on the site and monitoring it - some in 6-7 hour stretches. The same applies to one of my colleagues and to a database technician we brought in to investigate. Roughly that makes total worked time around 150 hours which are payable. Get the normal rate for payments per hour on consultants and do the math.
I understand that all of you are happy that the site is here and it is up and you are only venting because the site is not working as you expect it to. All I am asking is to be a bit patient. We are on top of things and we will resolve this as soon as possible.
Thanks