Hosting Elsewhere Take 2

[chocadmin]

OK, after the mild disaster that was Pipex's hosting service I've got another potential provider on-line.

Rather than just switch over and then have the pain of some bits (mostly this rather old forum) going super slow I've got it mounted on another URL for testing.

Please check out http://www.choctest.fast2host.com/ it's a straight copy of the site and database. Anything you do in there will be overwritten once I re-copy the live site (assuming it performs ok). Let me know if you find any speed issues in there (particularly with reading and posting to the forum).

If it all goes ok then I'll recopy the database and switch the addresses around - if not, then I guess I'll move to the next hosting provider on my list.

Thanks for all your help.

[Cherry_Ripe]

OK I tried this out this morning around 9am. On average each page took 8 or 9 seconds to load which is OK for reading but longer than the current forum. I couldn't make a post, I kept getting the 500 error (internal server error) and when I tried to refresh I got the 'this post doesn't contain a valid header' error  I hope everyone else had better luck than me!

I've just tried it and found it slower than this site.    Also, I couldn't post messages.

[kermie]

no i can't post either

[chocadmin]

Ah perhaps a configuration problem. I'll have a look into it now and see what I can find. I found once I'd browsed a page or two the site speeded up, but I know Pipex's problems really started in the afternoons so I'll check it out now.

[chocadmin]

OK it's really slooooow now. I'll do some more tests.

[chocadmin]

OK I've fixed the posting problem.

All seems OK at the moment (support from these people is much better than pipex was).

I'm going to test out scenario's for updating to the latest version of this forum too (although it'll produce slightly annoying banner ad's it's supposed to be a lot quicker).

Please continue to feedback your experiences with the copy site.

Thanks.

[Forth Bridges]

can;t you slip the operation of this forum?

[Cherry_Ripe]

Tried this at lunchtime and although the front page was relatively slow to load (6 seconds) opening the forum, viewing a post and replying to a post were just as fast as the current forum, all under 1 second each page

[chocadmin]

Yes, I think when it's not been used for a little while it drops some kind of cache. Once you've browsed through a couple of pages the database is re-cached and everything moves along fine.

Much better than yesterday, but I'm still going to try upgrading to the new version of the forum and see what it looks like (assuming I can remember all the changes I made to the current version...)

[Velvet Darkness]

I would love to try and help but thanks to Tiscali and their pitiful excuse for internet service I am back on dial up at the moment, and everything is running like it's wading through treacle.

Hopefully I'll be back on broadband soon with a new provider.

[chocadmin]

Hi,

Can I urge you all to give this a go again please and feedback via this posting.

I've updated the forum to the latest version of the software (sadly that means some adverts - I could pay 60quid to get rid of them but I intend to move to a different forum system when I next do a major update of the site). There are a few new features and the forum behaves slightly differently (some pages run a lot quicker than the current version).

Thanks.

[Cherry_Ripe]

I can't get in to the forum, it says :

Error

The Username or Password entered is incorrect. Please try again.

[goldencup]

It wouldn't let me in either - I only tried twice and it told me more than three attempts had been made!

I got the same as Ripe Cherries and when I tried to login it gave me the same message.