Site extremely slow since the Premium update?

[derekwillet]

I'm not sure if I'm alone here, but I've noticed that the site (not as much the message board, but the content pages) has been extremely slow since the Premium content started becoming available. I have had it completely lock up on me a few times and it times out quite often.

It kind of sucks because the Premium content (or any content for that matter) is almost impossible to get to pretty often.

[dresden]

I've been getting slow connections, occasional server errors and similar such issues. It's only been in the last week or so for me.

[dlf_jeffh]

We apologize for these issues you've been experiencing. It appears that our hosted server is like the most popular girl in high school right now ... too many requests for dates and not enough time.

We'll have a message out very soon about what's going on and our course of action but we are planning on having it resolved in very short order (knock on wood).

Keep checking back for an update, if you can (Bad latency joke).

Again, apologies for the issues.

[dlf_kenm]

Yes, we are working on it right now, and laying out a plan for upgrading our hosting services. Once the details are ironed out, we'll announce the plans here.

Just to be clear, the issues are result of our phenomenal growth over the last few years, but most particularly, in the last few months. It is not related to the premium service, but is merely a consequence of rapidly increasing levels of traffic to the site. The site performance issues have just come to a head in recent weeks as traffic has dramatically spiked in relation to our premium offering, as well as with the advent of the NFL Draft.

We are extremely sensitive to these performance issues, and want to ensure that the actions we take to correct the slowness are as effective as possible, while minimizing disruption as much as possible.

As soon as we have a plan of action solidified, we'll let you know. Thanks so much for hanging in there, I appreciate your patience while we endure these growing pains together.

KenM

[blacksheep]

I appreciate the response to my PM! Love you guys' dedication to the longevity and well-being to the site. Thanks!

[ekassor]

I was just about to send a PM to you guys about this. It seems to be be getting worse to be honest, worse than dial up even.

[Madtoker]

I can't even get on the home page.

[dlf_kenk]

We're working through it to find a permanent solution. We're attempting to do so without interrupting the site for any long extended period of time if we can help it. We have a really good idea of the challenges people are having - we've experienced them ourselves over the past few days.

It really has nothing to do with the premium content addition and everything to do with our rising popularity over the last couple of months. We've been halfway expecting something like this to happen at some point, just not so soon. The interest in DLF is off the charts. While that's a good problem for us to have, it's a problem nonetheless because of so many people wanting on to view the content and forum information. The sheer amount of visitors is causing challenges.

We're likely going to need a pretty significant upgrade to our hosting. It's a major investment, but this one of the major why we started offering the premium content in the first place. We told everyone one of the biggest drivers behind the idea was generating a way help to improve the site and this is one of the first necessary improvements we may have. Had we not, we'd be very limited in the options we could do financially and DLF as we know it, would be in a little bit of a pickle.

As I told "Highballers," the delays bothers us more than you. Trust is the most important thing for us and delays are unacceptable, especially now. Be patient as we find a fix that isn't a band aid.

Thanks!