Hi All,
Most of you will recall "The Great Crash" of January 2013, when unprecedented levels of traffic brought the site down late in the evening of the transfer window. Unfortunately, I rebooted the server to bring it back alive at the same time as our server team was resuscitating it, subsequently corrupting our entire database and causing a great deal of hassle and pain. Mick's fault to be fair.
Anyway - Everton are set up to be the windows greatest casualty again, and with that, we're anticipating a ridiculous amount of traffic to the forum over the next couple of days. It's always difficult to gauge, it's dependent on transfer activity and of course, we're not handling Everton only traffic - we get hammered with 'neutral' traffic too, that being fans of other Clubs. Clubs involved in transfer activity, and it never helps when another Club directly involved happens to be the biggest in the world...
All that said, we'll be making an effort to assist our server team to keep GrandOldTeam accessible.
This includes;
If we do 'crash' - please don't stay on the forum repeatedly hitting refresh, it doesn't help. Instead, keep an eye on our Twitter feed for updates and head over to our Facebook Page where we'll create a status update to allow Transfer Deadline comment and conversation.
Most of you will recall "The Great Crash" of January 2013, when unprecedented levels of traffic brought the site down late in the evening of the transfer window. Unfortunately, I rebooted the server to bring it back alive at the same time as our server team was resuscitating it, subsequently corrupting our entire database and causing a great deal of hassle and pain. Mick's fault to be fair.
Anyway - Everton are set up to be the windows greatest casualty again, and with that, we're anticipating a ridiculous amount of traffic to the forum over the next couple of days. It's always difficult to gauge, it's dependent on transfer activity and of course, we're not handling Everton only traffic - we get hammered with 'neutral' traffic too, that being fans of other Clubs. Clubs involved in transfer activity, and it never helps when another Club directly involved happens to be the biggest in the world...
All that said, we'll be making an effort to assist our server team to keep GrandOldTeam accessible.
This includes;
- We've been upgraded to the best server/package we can realistically be on. That, and we're hosted by the best in the business at hosting the forum we have.
- "Locking Down" The Everton, World Football, Feedback and New Signings Forums. No posts will be allowed in the these forums after 1st September 1500 GMT. Normal service resumes Tuesday 3rd Sept.
- The Creation of a new 'Transfer Deadline Forum' - All Everton discussion will be confined within this new forum. The Ale House and Upgraded Lounge will stay open - we'll likely need a few pints.
- Disabling images - Avatars and the like
- Disabling the search feature
- Priority Access - We'll be using *NIX Server Load Limit. This allows the forum to determine the load on the server and processor, and to turn away further users if the load becomes too high. Established Members (Registration date dependent) and upgraded members will have priority access. This allows us to keep the forum alive, and accessible to the majority, effectively issuing a "sorry, we're full" message to any neutral traffic.
If we do 'crash' - please don't stay on the forum repeatedly hitting refresh, it doesn't help. Instead, keep an eye on our Twitter feed for updates and head over to our Facebook Page where we'll create a status update to allow Transfer Deadline comment and conversation.
