was bad this morning for me, but fine now. it might have been a substantial period of time, but i dont seem to recall that level of lag happening very often at all..

The board is running fine for me now as well after being incredibly slow just a little while ago.

It would seem, according to some error messages, that the overall slowness was due to some database corruption. Thankfully, the problem has been solved and FT seems to be breezing.

I tried that. After 26 minutes of waiting for it to open in another window my flight was called.

Unfortunate but true.

The good news is that it seems to be at least marginally
better right now than it was this morning.

John,

Thanks for letting us know it's a system-wise problem, in one single post. Speaking for myself, I don't mind this "growing pains" once in a while if I know it's coming and what to expect. I would have known not to "complain" during those scheduled updates (I might have mourned though. ).

However, this unresponsive "time- out" starting yesterday just came out of the blue. I would say most the FT frequents are not happy. I don't know how it works between IB and FT tech support but I recall seeing sticky annoucements, warning us FT junkies the system would be off-line at certain time or something. I am sure there are a lot of IT efforts in the background that not only goes beyond my conprehension but us general FTers don't have to know about as well.

It seems this problem will be on and off throughout the day, and last for more than one day, almost like forever in FT junkie calendar. I am suggesting again, please make an official announcement and let us know what to expect in the next day or two or more (with details such as between Thursday 10-12 am and 2-3 pm would be slowest or something), saving us from more panic attacks and duplicate posts that might burden the system further. I guess it will only take minutes to make this announcement happen.

I am sure FTers are patient enough to give you guys some grace periods during those transitional upgrades. Thanks!

ps. FWIW, the site is back to the normal speed at this point.

I'm only a semi-techie (the first computer i worked on was one we walked into,) but I recall at a meet of some kind it was mentioned FT is one of the larger using the VBulletin software - now, part of the Internet Brands house, but there have been growth pains on and off for some time. I don't think, personally, it's a blame issue - IB is putting their money where their moth is by implementing several systems that will allow FlyerTalk continued growth. It's really in their best interest to keep FT working smoothly, and they continue to put tangible and human resources into FT. I am sure Randy wouldn't allow anyone to jam a stick into the spokes of the wheels of progress here.

I'm not posting any of this in an official capacity, but rather from what I do know and opine about the situation. And, it's working much better this afternoon. ^

www.big-boards.com has some interesting stats by software (and may be incomplete judging from the site submission process).

Earlier we were advised on the search problems thread that the larger VBulletin boards have different (non-standard) search functions.

Without the official announcement, it's getting messy this morning already.

Here's an example. The poster posted a long response: post #344. This post got repeated for 12 times within 20 minutes (from post #344 thru #355, I guess he hit the "submit" repeatedly.). This chaos took over about two full-page of this thread, which is making following the thread difficult and burdens the mod to do the post-post-deleting work. (BTW, I just RBP the mod.)

I would think regular FTers really need guidelines as what to do when all these slowness and non-responsiveness is happening.

yes, report those post padders!

It's working now but the last 2 days I just had to give up.

FWIW, from what I know, MM isn't one of those post padders. (You are welcome to read his follow-up reply in that thread. )

OT: I have no problem reporting post padders when I see them.

When I RBPed the above referenced post, my intention is to let the forum mod knew there's a system time-out going on so he can remove those 11 "innocent" but duplicate LONG posts.

I highlighted that incident in THIS thread, so the IB/Tech Team be aware of the "ripple effects" and see how bad the situation can be. I hope I had provided the perfect example. I am sure the same thing is happening in other fora that I haven't visited as well. Just trying to be helpful and bring IB folks up to speed in my non-techie way.

oh gosh, I didn't mean to infer MM was a real post-padder. just trying to make light of the tensions around here between the OMNI counts and the crazy instability of FT with the time out's etc.

If anything, I should be accused (again) of post padding for even writing this post!

Your wish is my command... you post-padder, you!

Agonizingly slow again, to the point of not being useful. Took 20+ minutes to go from "My FT" to this forum to this thread to reply.

Looks like powerful/useful search may have been sacrificed with no perceivable gain.