I know you're busy, but from my technically curious side when you get the time can you explain in some detail what the difference was? What was the old setup vs the new? Was it hardware, XServe vs something else? ISP? Logistics of where the servers with the data was located?

Thx.

The end solution is that we moved the entire setup to Acquia. For a variety of reasons, this made things 2-2.5x faster. It took us a while to figure out what the issues/solution may be, but that's the long and short of it.

Yes... a huge improvement and a huge thanks!

You mean this? http://acquia.com/

Am I understanding this right? Someone else is managing the hardware so that you don't have to manage it anymore or worry about hardware failures, ISP games, etc? You just need to get the content to their servers and they shoot it out of a big pipe? They can host the UBB for the forums too I take it?

Partly.

For more than a year, the main MacTech web site (of which the forums get part of its content) have been hosted elsewhere. These have now been moved to Acquia.

The forums are on a completely different server, and they too for most of the last year have been hosted elsewhere [a different elsewhere] and are managed for MacTech by the creator of UBB.

There were differences to both moves. The difference you are seeing now is more noticeable because it removed the last of the issues ... which were the gating factor.

Because the needs of the main sites and UBB are so different, they are not likely to site on the same server ... ever. We tried that once early last year, and it didn't work well.

Gotta run.

Ruh-roh! "Waiting for www.MacTech.com...." for 1 - 2 minutes this evening.

Yeah -- go ahead and reload when this happens. Looks like a load balancer is periodically hiccuping. We're trying to gather more info on this to identify the issue and file a trouble ticket.

It's back to instant load now.

yeah, I'm seeing the same thing.