Laura, Walt, Andy, Anne, What's Wrong with the Boards?

[gkm]

I think I speak for most of Cruise Critic members, when I say that the boards are getting really bad. I'm getting to the point where I don't even try to post or read threads in the evening and they slow down so much as the day progresses that over half of the time I give up.

 

Is there anything on the table to get this problem fixed? I think all of us would appreciate it if you would keep us up-to-date on what's going on. It's really frustrating!:(

 

Garry

[gkm]

All right, now even starting a thread gets a hiccup! That's another problem. I submitted it and it came back saying I had an invalid link so I submitted again. Wonder of wonders, now there are 2!!!:eek:

 

Garry

[tadjr]

I thought you were running a test to see if one could be read quicker than the other. Nope, both as slow as ever. ;)

[CaribbeanBound]

I couldn't even get on the site on Monday night.

Hung forever and then a typical MS IE error "page cannot be found".

[katiebeth]

I love these boards and am so appreciative that they are available. It is wonderful sharing cruise information with fellow cruisers. I can't tell you how much valuable information I have gathered.

 

However, I must agree that these boards are trying my patience. In fact, at times, they drive me CRAZY!! They are So So So slow at times.

 

Would love to know what's going on??

 

Nancy

[Host Anne]

Hey guys ~ I have to admit that I have been in the process of a move (North to South) over the past five days and have experienced all types of challenges so my board time has been very limited and when I've been on (usually late at night) I haven't had a problem with slow boards. I'm going to ask Laura to stop by and give us an update. I'd also encourage you to send any of us an email as we will possibly see it more quickly than a post here.

[Spf12]

The boards are a disgrace .took me all afternoon to link to the forum and believe me it's not my computer or my hook up. Last month the excuse given was soft ware then a hardware problem both of which were supposedly fixed.Maybe the technical staff needds to be replaced.Why would advertisers pay for these boards that don't allow access.

[safein]

The boards have been really awful. Besides the slowness and the double, triple, postings, the worse was yesterday when I signed onto the boards and everything was in gibberish! I could see posters names, dates, but the actual thread topics and posts were gibberish!

 

I hope that the boards could be fixed soon.

 

Anita

[TheGardener]

Hi folks

I am a new member to this forum and I must say we have found it very good for planning our next cruise to the Galapagos 5th March. As I live in the UK it is great as long as I get on the board before noon however once you people the other side of the pond start to wake up and log on we might as well not bother the download time is impossible. I hope this is of interest.

 

regards to all Michael

[Lois R]

Hi Michael:) doesn't really matter what side of the pond anyone is on...

when noon time and beyond comes......the boards are SLOW....east

side, west side, anyside:eek: they just get to be impossible sometimes.

 

By the way, welcome to Cruisecritic:D

[RodPat]

I have had nothing but trouble with these boards this week. I agree most times I just leave frustrated. I love this forum and hope this problem can be resolved. there is so much info here to be had and the people so nice that a day without it and I am really bummed. Please fix the board problems. Pat

[LauraS]

Here's an update.

 

As you know we tried a few times to upgrade our HARDWARE (new database server). We were finally successful. We now have this huge server!

 

Before that, we did upgrade to the newest version of our message board software as well.

 

Now -- we're at the point where we are trying to get our hardware to work perfectly with our software. We know it is very frustrating for you....and believe me we are experiencing the same frustrations.

 

Not only are we trying to get this right, our staff who volunteers here (as well as I) need access to maintain the focus of the forums. It is a trying situation.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we feel your frustration, we're definitely working on it -- all day long. It is first and foremost in our minds.

 

Finally, we do thank those of you who have expressed your appreciation and are patient with us as we work through these tremendous growing pains.

 

Laura

[templed]

Working in IT... I can definately sympathize with the board's (and your) plight...

 

Tweaking, testing, temper-tantrums... (the 3 T's... well maybe it's the 4 T's)

 

 

Thanks for your time and hard work... this board keeps me awake during my long boring work day...

[bob278]

Laura,

 

Thank you twice.

 

First, for all you do to keep this great place up at all.

 

And second, thanks for letting us know you are working on the problem. While we may assume you are hard at work, not knowing that for a fact just adds to the frustration.

 

As someone who has dealt in computer service for a long time, I can assure you taking a small amount of time away from working on the problem simply to say "Hey folks, I'm still working on it" goes a long way. Especially if it goes on for a long time.

[98Charlie]

I appreciate your update, Laura.

 

If it helps any, the very fact that members get so frustrated when boards are down or acting slow is a big compliment to Cruise Critic. If we weren't so devoted to these boards, glitches wouldn't matter to us so much.:)

 

Dianne

[Arwenmark]

Thank you so much for finally letting us know at least what is going on, However it should be posted on each board so everyone will know.

 

It has been driving me Nuts for the past two weeks, and my emails mostly went unanswered about it.

 

all that said I appreciate the fact the board is here at all. Here it is technical problems and on another board it is people having a Tizzy over staff changes.

 

Ah, well such is life I guess.

[LauraS]

I will post an announcement. Truthfully, each time I tried yesterday the boards were down!

 

Re: not receiving an answer to your e-mail.....for two weeks. One of those weeks I was cruising...and the other---wait until you hear this one -- our own mail server was treating mail to me as SPAM. Yeah, we laughed a bit about that...but could anything ELSE happen????!@!!?@?#?$??@?

 

So , I apologize for the seemingly nonresponsiveness but I didn't get your e-mail.

 

Laura

[TechSupport]

Like Templed, I work in IT as well (see username ;-) ), and I totally sympathize with the problems you've had. I've been lurking around the Celebrity board for a couple of weeks now, since my wife and I started planning our next cruise, and had been on the CruiseCritic boards a couple of years ago for our first cruise (before the upgrade to the new message board software), and it's been really helpful to us to have the wealth of information contained here available to us. I greatly appreciate your most-likely heroic efforts in getting things running smoothly once again.

 

So, THANK YOU!!!!!!

[gkm]

Thank you Laura and Walt and Andy and Anne. We do appreciate all you do and I guess we don't (and can't) tell you enough how much your dedication means. These boards mean a great deal to all of us, not only for the wonderful information we receive but for the friendships formed.

 

Thanks for the update.

 

Garry

[BSeaBob]

3:16 PM Pacific and things are peachy keen for now anyway. fast as ever.