Any way to identify what is causing my forum to be really slow? We've not added anything and all of a sudden I'm getting members say that it either completely locks up on them or it's so slow that they give up trying to make a post or reply.

I've personally not noticed the slow down, the only thing I have noticed on my end is that when jumping from post to post or forum to forum that there is a "lag" between the page loading and the calendar seems to appear full screen for a split second. Any of this making sense to anyone? Thanks in advance.

FWIW, I've had periodic problems with slowness also, even when not many people are on the site. For me restarting the SQL server seems to fix it. Seems sometimes something in the SQL queries hangs and slows everything down. I've been trying for sometime to pinpoint what it is, but so far have not been able to. I even tried configuring MySQL to log slow queries, but that didn't show anything either. Last night for example, my users were complaining of a very slow forum, but this AM it's fast as lightening!

Are they using Cox Internet Services?

Not sure what ISP they are using. I can ask of course. Like I said though, I have noticed that between refreshes from page to page, the calendar appears full screen for a split second, sometimes a little longer. The forum is lightning fast as of right now though. I did a repair on the databases at the request of my host provider. Not sure if that did anything useful or not.

If you are on a shared server, the issue might be related to other traffic on the server. Perhaps at a time when your host is running a backup etc.

Try and get a log of times to give to your host and find out the load at those times.

Was the issue with IE and the Shout Box Resolved?
Wasn't it a IE7 issue for those users?

Appears that most users that were complaining used IE. I don't use the shout box on the site anymore because I know for a fact that it was causing the site to lag. Anyhow, I'm thinking that most of these issues are coming from my host and not something that I can fix.

I see your using Bluehost. I know for a fact that other message boards running on their service has had problems in the past. They limit CPU usage severely as well as other resources.

I understand they are amongst the cheapest of the hosting places but in turn if your paying bottom dollar I wouldn't expect to much in that case.

you get what you pay for

Exactly why I own my own place and host my self. I use to be hosted by another place but you couldn't even talk to them as they were always right even when they were wrong and wanted to charge you for their problems.

If there server was down it was your fault and they wanted to charge every customer that called to fix their own stuff.

I paid alot for my Chevrolet and it's a piece of.....well.....nevermind.

I have been experiencing slow downs at my forums as well. I contacted our web hosting provider to try and figure out what was up.

He was get very fast load times. Which I suspected are because he is a guest and is not being logged in automatically.

So I logged out, closed my browser, reopened it and whet back to the main forums page. It loaded far faster than it was before.

I then logged back in and selected to have me logged back in automatically. Now when I close the browser, open it and come back to the forums it loads very fast.

Is if possible that something was cleared by my logging out and back in?

Looks like I spoke too soon. It is back up to the 16+ seconds to perform the SQL queries. However it does make a difference as to whether I am logged in or not. If not logged in and connecting as a guest it loads much faster than if I am being automatically logged in.

If you have a lot of unread posts and have full post tracking turned on where it displays the unread numbers in red, then this is probably contributing. If there are many of those then it really adds up in execution time.

What you can try do to see if that's part of the issue is Mark all Read while logged in and see how it goes then.

Could be a lot of things causing the slowdown.
Such as connection,Server issues
try searching here in advanced search.
Keyword slow
User Rick
In the date range jut blank out both of the fields.

There are lots of tips and clues for different issues that can cause the problem

Marking all topics as read did the trick. I just wanted to make sure our members where not experiencing the same slow down.

Thanks much.