Reoccuring "time out" problem on my forum?

[wakelover]

Please can you help.....

My website/forum is hosted by Yahoo - I have no problems with speed or access to the website - however I have a constant problem for members getting timed out either when trying to access the forum or posting/loading pages etc. It varies.

They have all emptied their cache!....changed browsers, turned off and rebooted, and save hitting their PCs with a hammer...done everything they can think of to avert these problems. And yet they still happen.

I have repaired and optimised I cant tell you how many times.
2 days ago I re-ran the upgrade (3.6.10) and was convinced it showed the upgrade in the admincp panel - but when I next logged on it was back to showing 3.6.9 (Patch level 2).

Please can you help....as I dont know what it is that is causing this but it really is stopping my site from growing "user" wise as folks are understandably getting fed up.

Any ideas....? (and this was happening before the 3.6.10 upgrade)

I don't have any error messages to show you I'm afraid but we'll try anything to get this improved...well..almost anything!

Many thanks

wakelover
www.wakelovercruisereviews.com

[wakelover]

Perfect timing - I just received this email from a disgruntled member:

Hi Wakie, I did try the site at least 20 times last week and was very rarely able to get through.

Sorry, but I can't keep wasting my time trying to post.

Kind regards

Please note - I did search the vbulletin site for answers and have followed all the instructions about what to turn on/off to optimise performance. That has all been done except the bit which shows members online which I would like to keep.

Thanks

[Trevor Hannant]

Have you got any modifications/add-ons installed on your forums? Do you have anything like Google AdSense or any other affiliate advertising code in your header or near the top of the body of each page?

[wakelover]

Hi Trevster - no I dont have anything like that.

[Trevor Hannant]

Strange, I've just spent around 5 minutes rummaging around your forum and it's been going at a good speed - even with all those ads in the signatures!

Are they finding this happening at particular times of day?

[wakelover]

Strange, I've just spent around 5 minutes rummaging around your forum and it's been going at a good speed - even with all those ads in the signatures!

Are they finding this happening at particular times of day?

Hi Trevster - lol....hope you enjoyed yourself Do you think those countdowns in the sigs could make a difference? ...I had forgotten about those. Sorry!

Re times of day ...not really. It varies....sometimes it does whizz...other times it may as well be shut. Folks just sometimes cant get in.....

Even if you could give advice that I can give to them that would help but they seem to have tried everything...its most annoying.

[Trevor Hannant]

Hi Trevster - lol....hope you enjoyed yourself Do you think those countdowns in the sigs could make a difference? ...I had forgotten about those. Sorry!

Re times of day ...not really. It varies....sometimes it does whizz...other times it may as well be shut. Folks just sometimes cant get in.....

Even if you could give advice that I can give to them that would help but they seem to have tried everything...its most annoying.

LOL - cruising ain't my scene so wasnt' really taking much of the post content in - hate boats! (Sacrilege!!!! )

Depends on where those images are held. If they're links to external sites then they shouldn't affect the loading speed. If they're attachments then they possibly could (not sure how vB processes these though).

Hard to say what the problem could be without seeing it in action. If you get a page hanging yourself, check the source code as the page is loading as you'll see where it's stopped/going slow and can possibly figure something out from that. Other possibility is the connection to your database - if that's not particularly healthy then it could slow down from time to time causing page load problems.

Do you get any Database errors around the time of these slowdowns/hangs? If you haven't enabled notifications for errors then I'd do so - again, these could point you in a specific direction if it's database related.

[wakelover]

Hello - sorry for delay but I'm battling with a troll that wont die at the moment!

Anyway - I have had errors in the past (see below quote)..I emailed my host about this 3 weeks ago...and then 2 weeks ago...and then today a nice snotty letter as I hadnt had any response from their "24 HOUR TEAM"...
Here was the error report...

Database error in vBulletin :

mysql_connect(): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'mysql' (13)

class_core.php on line 274

Its all Greek to me as I am a newbie at this lark...think I might take up knitting or learn Chinese..anything has got to be easy than this

[Trevor Hannant]

That's a problem at Yahoo's end with the link between the file server and database servers you're using.

Need to push them on that one or look for another host I'm afraid!

[wakelover]

I first emailed them about this last year and they said it was nothing to do with them and to speak to VBulletin ...and now they just havent responded to my email of 3 weeks ago...I am really angry about it...

[Trevor Hannant]

vBulletin software (or ANY software) can only use the resources that are available. If the link to the database server is down, that's their problem - not the software running on their servers.

Can't tell you or recommend what to do but personally I'd go host shopping....

[Steve Machol]

There are no support tickets that have gone without a response for 3 weeks. What is the ticketid?

[wakelover]

There are no support tickets that have gone without a response for 3 weeks. What is the ticketid?

Hi Steve....NO! we were talking about Yahoo support.......not Vbulletin.

Support from you guys has always been top notch....thanks for checking though

[wakelover]

vBulletin software (or ANY software) can only use the resources that are available. If the link to the database server is down, that's their problem - not the software running on their servers.

Can't tell you or recommend what to do but personally I'd go host shopping....

I think I might...I even emailedYahoo back (last year) and said it was nothing to do with Vbulletin....what annoys me is that I'm sure if I lived in the US they'd be doing more to help me....they are just passing the buck that I'm paying them

Anyway - thanks for the help and advice.

[Wayne Luke]

Error 13 means Permission Denied. Only Yahoo can resolve this issue unfortunately.