Issue: Site keeps going offline?

I have just joined Poke Community last night, and I couldn't help but notice the site keeps going offline every few minutes and coming back on. I'm not sure if it's just me, but here are some screen shots of the two pages I get every few minutes of using this site.

http*://*i40.tinypic.*com/bfmclg.*png
http*://*i39.tinypic.*com/1elw1t.*png

(remove the * between the url. I'm a new member so unable to post links)

I'm not sure if anyone else is getting this or not or if it's just me. I browsed through the first page of topics and I didn't see anyone else who's posted about this. Is it just server overload? Anyway, thought I'd give a heads up.
P.S. I'm not using a proxy server.

The community runs its backup every 1^st and 15^st of the month between 0100 and 0300 GMT. We usually monitor this and shut down the site during this process.

Once in a while we're away or forget and the backup runs with the site still active.. this does 2 things.. it locks up most DB queries making you wait for the page to load. and second, it overloads both Apache (the web server) and MySQL (database server) with too many connections (both have max limits it can handle) eventually it will crash and restart..

BUT it will not recover cause too many people all want on at the same time and many constantly refresh the page thinking its gonna make it load faster (it won't. in fact it will increase the time it takes tPC to work again) building up another max connections error and crash, rinse repeat.

That's what happened last night.

P.S. On the 1^st and 15^st don't hammer, refresh, and so on, the site to get on. It'll be up in a few hours (less if people let it recover and get stabilized) waiting for you.
In the meantime visit the Oekaki, the chatroom, or our twitter / facebook page.

Oh alright :) thanks for the info. I figured it was from the server being overloaded or something along the lines xD. Pokemon forums sure are popular!
But anyway, I'll keep that in mind for next time. ^^

That explanation makes too much sense, it was probably sorcery and this is a big coverup.

Yuoaman said:

That explanation makes too much sense, it was probably sorcery and this is a big coverup.

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This is obviously the logical response, silly truffles.

I think it's about time that PCC upgrades to the new vBulletin. In addition to better features, the new vBulletin servers are faster and able to handle more traffic.

pikalax said:

I think it's about time that PCC upgrades to the new vBulletin. In addition to better features, the new vBulletin servers are faster and able to handle more traffic.

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better? It's terrible and ugly, and when I've asked if we're going to upgrade/switch forum software the staff have said no. ;)

Just thought I'd update this. Mac of York helped me find a solution to my problem. The site crashes happened literally every 5 minutes or less which made using the site at all almost impossible. Now I can't use it at all with the main link. What seemed to fix the problem though was using an alternative link which is http*://direct-connect*.pokecommunity.*com (remove the stars in the link. I still can't post them without the stars yet) and now it works perfectly :) I never get the page errors. So it must be something on my end rather than the server.

Hope that helps anyone who has this problem in the future.

DO NOT USE the direct links.. it defeats the whole purpose of using the CloudFlare CDN.

Also when were having issues and you use direct or the IP, you ADD to the problem, making it harder to fix due to you wanting pages and that keeps tPC down longer.

Best thing to do if we're down or showing errors, is to go offline, take a short walk, do something else for an hour or so.. and when you get back we _should_ be back up and all normal again.

Rukario said:

DO NOT USE the direct links.. it defeats the whole purpose of using the CloudFlare CDN.

Also when were having issues and you use direct or the IP, you ADD to the problem, making it harder to fix due to you wanting pages and that keeps tPC down longer.

Best thing to do if we're down or showing errors, is to go offline, take a short walk, do something else for an hour or so.. and when you get back we _should_ be back up and all normal again.

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I don't mean to seem rude in any way.. but with my case, the site was down constantly. I would do that, I was off actually most of the day yesterday and when I would try to come back, the site still wouldn't work.. that's pretty bad if it isn't under maintenance.

I know you guys don't want to upgrade the server, but taking into consideration how popular the site is and how much it isn't accessible by its users, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm sure if a donation post was set up specifically for the upgrade, a lot of members would probably donate towards it.

Meganium90 said:

If you're talking about the time the site went down earlier, then yeah. Sometimes the direct.pokecommunity.com link is accessible. It's normal to see Cloudflare errors popping up once in a while. Those go away quick as long as you stay put. :P

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I wasn't referring to today actually.. all yesterday except for early afternoon, the site was not working for me as well as all of today. The only way it works for me is if I use the direct connect link. Other than that, it's very rare I can get on using the main link. When I do get on, the site crashes for me again within 5 minutes or less of use. After a few minutes, it will come back on again but crash again in another couple minutes. It makes it very difficult to make and reply to posts or do anything really :/.. I've started to copy my messages and paste them into note pad for the sake of not losing everything I type. It's not good.

emilie777: you may be blocked for other reasons.. or your ISP may be having issues reaching the CDN.. there could be a lot of reasons why its not working all the time.

Can you PM me a tracert to both www.pokecommunity.com and the direct link (Google for how to do a tracert on your machine as well as how to copy/paste it) Thanks.

Point is, when we're down or having a high traffic overload, the ONLY way to fix it is for people to not load the page and especially not continually refresh because its not loading. this just adds to the load we're trying to lower and adds much more time to the eventual fix.

as for a new server, its the monthly costs that prevent us from getting any thing bigger.. and we're at a pretty high price point now, the next step up is pretty expensive.

pikalax said:

I think it's about time that PCC upgrades to the new vBulletin. In addition to better features, the new vBulletin servers are faster and able to handle more traffic.

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Er, no. vB4 sucks so much it makes phpBB look like heaven. That being said, check out BGF or Serebii, they both upgraded(more like downgraded) to vB4.x...

Also, vB Servers?