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These downtimes

17,600
Posts
19
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen Jan 1, 2024
Are getting ridiculous.

Why do they keep happening so much lately? It seems like anytime I want to come on, there's a huge downtime that prevents me from getting on.
 

Her

11,467
Posts
15
Years
  • Age 30
  • Seen yesterday
uhhhhhhhh just dropping this here
This came up on the screen about 15 minutes ago and stayed around for about two minutes before I was allowed to go on PC, even though I was able to access it just fine a couple of minutes earlier.
Checking your browser before accessing www.pokecommunity.com.

This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.

Please allow up to 5 seconds...
DDoS protection by CloudFlare
I assume this isn't something I should worry about, but nevertheless...?
 

Oryx

CoquettishCat
13,184
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen Jan 30, 2015
That showed up for me too. After waiting for like 30 seconds I just refreshed and it let me through.
 

Her

11,467
Posts
15
Years
  • Age 30
  • Seen yesterday
Can someone explain to me exactly what CloudFare is? I've seen the name being thrown around and blamed for all of PC's woes, but I've never been quite sure as to what it is. Is it the server itself? The program used to run the server? RoboCop?
 

Rukario

Banned
7,597
Posts
21
Years
actually we were reaching (live) server capacity and things were slowing down. It seem there was some 1000+ visitors all trying to read threads at once. Cloudflare offloads a lot of the static page stuff like images, css files and javascript files to help PC with keeping server loads down and pages faster.

No CDN service can make the database or the apache webserver any faster especially when its hammered. Only time (or less traffic) can.

We upped the protection strength temporarily of cloudflare so as to help with this sudden increase in ACTIVE traffic. If you can't load the site on a thread URL, or are seeing this image http://i.imgur.com/eRsL4Vz.png it is your URL query string most likely triggering it (its looking for bad stuff that would tend to lock up the server). Try to clear cookies / cache and then try again with just the home page, then find your thread of interest.

We'll be monitoring this for the next few hours and into the week.
 

Nihilego

[color=#95b4d4]ユービーゼロイチ パラサイト[/color]
8,875
Posts
12
Years
Thanks for that, Steve. Although what can actually be done to improve the speeds, barring throwing money at the server to just get more power? Is there not some way of stopping that one guest that tips it over the limit from bringing down the site for everyone? It just seems kinda weird that PC'll be running okay one minute and then get totally killed the next, I guess. Is there nothing we can disable which is causing extra, unnecessary strain to help sort it out? I certainly feel like I noticed a speed drop when the "Users Viewing Thread" thing was re-enabled for members.

...although that said, unlike you guys I've not thought it's been particularly bad lately. Not like it was a couple of weeks ago, anyway. :/
 

Oryx

CoquettishCat
13,184
Posts
13
Years
  • Age 31
  • Seen Jan 30, 2015
I think "lately" encompasses a couple weeks ago, tbh.

I like the idea of monitoring how many people are online - if it's more than an amount that makes it dangerous, maybe just pull the site down for a second and put up a splash screen, like Reddit does. That way we wouldn't have to go through the site being knocked down and having to get PPN to fix it, the splash would just go away once the visitor count went down.

Bonus points if the splash only shows up for guests. "PC is under heavy load right now, so guests are temporarily barred from viewing threads. Register today to have 24/7 access!"
 
37,467
Posts
16
Years
  • Age 34
  • Seen Jan 2, 2024
I think "lately" encompasses a couple weeks ago, tbh.

I like the idea of monitoring how many people are online - if it's more than an amount that makes it dangerous, maybe just pull the site down for a second and put up a splash screen, like Reddit does. That way we wouldn't have to go through the site being knocked down and having to get PPN to fix it, the splash would just go away once the visitor count went down.

Bonus points if the splash only shows up for guests. "PC is under heavy load right now, so guests are temporarily barred from viewing threads. Register today to have 24/7 access!"

I like this post. Not much else to say, just want to shout my approval out there.
(the "like" feature still doesn't work for me, so xD)
 
8,279
Posts
15
Years
  • Age 27
  • Seen yesterday
kind of unrelated but was pc always this...slow?

i love this site but damn the time it takes to load... ;x;
It used to be much, much worse in the first few years when I joined. I noticed that PC has gotten faster over time, excluding these recent downtimes. Even so, I remember there being more downtimes back then.
 
50,218
Posts
13
Years
Happened again lol finally got back on. So many guests ruining the members' fun. Over 1,500!

No wonder the site has been crashing for me so much this week. But yeah I do admit that while I love this community, the downtimes may eventually make me be on less if they keep up.
 

Honest

Hi!
11,676
Posts
15
Years
It used to be much, much worse in the first few years when I joined. I noticed that PC has gotten faster over time, excluding these recent downtimes. Even so, I remember there being more downtimes back then.

This man speaks the truth. You think this is bad? It's not an exageration to say late 2008/early 2009 had by far the worst downtimes I've ever witnessed. What we're experiencing right now is pretty bad, but the incidence of downtimes was a lot more prevalent back then.

But yeah, that doesn't make now any less annoying. Damn guests jacking out fun. D;
 

derozio

[b][color=red][font=helvetica][i]door-kun best boi
5,521
Posts
14
Years
I wasn't here in the beginning of 2009 so I can't say anything about that. But I've run into "the server is down" far too much the past few days. Dunno how it could've been worse than what it's like right now. :(
 
37,467
Posts
16
Years
  • Age 34
  • Seen Jan 2, 2024
Ok actually, I don't experience more downtime than usual and PC is and has always been will always be? pretty slow to load for me. Maybe it's got to do with where I live (Scandinavia) though apparently you guys in America are complaining more, so maybe not :p If anything, it is as Wolflare says; it loads slightly faster now than some years ago.
 
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