Server upgrades

[admin2]

Hi everyone -

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that I put through an order today for a new super-powerful server to help alleviate some of the issues we've been having lately with server errors and occasional latency issues. With any luck it will come online sometime this weekend.

Barring unforeseen problems, this site shouldn't experience any downtime or issues during this transition.

This upgrade is by far the biggest to date - which also means we're adding nearly $11,000 of new server equipment to our already expensive yearly hosting costs. If you ever asked yourself why there need to be ads on the site, or why anyone should upgrade to a paid ad-free premium account... this is it! Without that revenue upgrades likes these wouldn't be possible, and this site, and all Puzzle Baron sites, would quickly slow to a crawl.

Thanks as always!

Stephen

[wvwoman]

thanks, stephen--that's very exciting news!
i love subscribing to the premium account--not seeing distracting ads is such a relief, and my enjoyment on this site definitely makes it worthwhile.

[gryhnd51]

I second that WVWoman!! I always feel that it's a gift to myself, and when you break down the cost/year it really is a minimal expense. It makes solving so much easier for me without the distraction of the ads.

[admin2]

The server upgrade is now complete. I'd be very interested to hear from you guys over the next few days to see whether or not you notice any overall improvement - both in page load times and reduction of error notices ("Bad Gateway" errors primarily being the culprit of late).

Thanks everyone!

[gryhnd51]

It's only been a few hours, but so far the speed of pages loading reminds me of the "good ole days" Seems to be MUCH faster than before. Thanks for the upgrade, Stephen.

[imported_alina]

The speed is amazing so far, thank you!

[macmilh]

New server

Thank you, Stephen. So far, it seems to be working very well. I second previous comments about the value of a premium membership.

[macmilh]

Server upgrade

One more thing, Stephen. Is there any way the clock can be adjusted to GMT? It is really far off the mark, and I've noticed several complaints about this in the chat room. We realize this is only a game and not really time critical (or critical in any way!)l, and we do appreciate your hard work making it available to us.

[admin2]

Do you mean the time specifically in the chat room? That one seems to be off but everything else should be fairly close to Pacific time, which is what the server is set to...

I'll see if I can tweak the chat settings... thanks!

[wvwoman]

Pacific time would be even better--let's see how close it is: it's 7:41 PM, eastern time right now.

[admin2]

Forum says your post was 4:45pm pacific time, which is just 4 minutes off. Seems ok to me. Unless you're seeing something different?

[wvwoman]

the posted time i see above my post, left at 7:41 pm, is 12:45 pm., not 4:45--that's a 7 hour difference--am i missing something?!

[admin2]

Go to User CP > Options and set your time zone to "GMT - Western Europe". (Its stupid, but that's the only way that your forum time will align with the rest of the site. The forum software wasn't designed very well in this regard.)

[wvwoman]

alrighty--i did that, and now it shows two hours difference instead of the correct three...

[macmilh]

The clock seems to be working fine now, and a number of people have posted that they're happy with it.

Thanks!