Downsizing GC in that way would help some, but there would be negatives which probably outweigh the benefit.

There's plenty of hard drive space, so that's not an issue. The hard drives do take quite a beating, running 24/7 for years, which might be related to the current server issue (running over 2 years now on non-enterprise drives).

Reducing the database size would likely make the database slightly faster. But at the same time, if old messages were purged there would be value lost (to whoever would have found that info to be useful) and there would be less people visiting GC by finding links to all the old messages in search engines, etc.

More people using GC is always a good thing, IMO, as that's what I really like to see. The site has served 3 million visitors in the past year and I would love to see GC serving that many or more each month. But at the same time it's more people using GC which has always generally necessitated server upgrades over the years. The number of people using GC is ultimately what it comes down to for the most part. Probably of most impact is the number of concurrent visitors using the site at the same time. That could easily result in things going smoothly most of the time and at other times site speed nearly screeching to a halt.

If things got really bad regarding server capacity (not considering any potential hardware issues) and the resources were not there to deal with it, I would probably make GC available only to those with accounts (not talking paid accounts there, just any account). If that wasn't enough I would then turn off new member account registrations for a while, until it could be dealt with. I'd rather do all that, if the circumstances necessitated it, rather than having GC be unusable/unresponsive due to overload. I think we're a relatively safe distance away from that kind of scenario, though.

Comparing that solution to purging the database of old messages, by just turning some access off it would be temporary and could be turned back on. Purging would be permanent and I think there are some good reasons to keep older messages around.

A good example with what GC is sort of facing would maybe be a highway that usually has a great traffic flow, except for rush hours. During peak times traffic would slow to a near standstill with it taking long periods of time to get anywhere. With the server, my last resort fix would be to close off the on ramps to anyone who is not a GCer. Far from an optimal solution, but it would work if there was no better way to quickly fix it. There's also an option have the site stop serving pages when the server is overloaded, over a specific load average, but that would apply to everyone and not just those without site accounts.

Back in the day I remember only a few thousand visitors daily with another forum software system resulted in a rather miserable summer in terms of GC site speed. Upgrading the server & software helped a lot, but I've had to upgrade a few times since then. The upgraded hardware in 2007 was enough up until around late summer 2009 and now the server hardware upgraded to 2009 has been running ok for just over 2 years as well. The capacity of the first 4 or 5 servers GC has run on, combined, probably could not handle the site traffic of today.

Maybe some time from now, depending completely on how everything goes, I can envision having a setup where I just build a new server & add it to the cluster when GC needs another capacity boost.

Anyhow, I've probably turned this into much too long of a message so I'll cut it here. Hopefully I didn't complicate the issues with all that.

I'm not a fan of Avatars and hate cluttered private message boxes so those wouldn't appeal to me personally. However, I would probably do periodic donations if there was a link.

I think it was a screwed up ad trying to load that day that I was having issues.

I would like to say thank you John for everything you've put into GC over the years. It is definitely appreciated by the users.

Thanks for the update, John.

I don't know if it's possible, but I'd happily pay a membership fee if it included a mobile version of GC. I'm on another vBulletin board (www.hfboards.com) that has at least four different browser options including a "Lite" and "Mobile" choice. Very user-friendly and so nice when using an iPhone/iPad/Blackberry/etc.

There would be an option to turn avatars off for anyone who does not want to see them. Other fringe benefits would be worked on as well. Basically I think I would just ask for suggestions/requests from GC supporters and implement what I can. Ability to turn off ads might be another idea..

Maybe what I'll do with a donations link is make it available in addition to the premium GC memberships. Seems there might be enough interest in that.

That's another good idea for GC supporting member fringe benefits. Definitely something I would consider spending some time working on.

The mobile thing, now that would be awesome since I can't GC from work except from my phone :)