I know a few users have reported problems accessing the forums on occasions. I have had the same issue myself - you get a blank page telling you have experienced an “Internal server error”. I’m sorry if you have been having problems. I finally contacted my domain hosts today and this is the live chat we had:
So, now I know the problem - uh, except I haven’t got a clue what he’s talking about, and it was one of those situations (like when you walk into a record shop - think High Fidelity) where you feel like you’ve got to bluff it out. “Oh yeah, of course - simultaneous PHP processes and 30 seconds max execution time - like, duh, shoulda know that, right?”
If anybody has a clue how to fix this, or knows of any PHPBB sites or hint pages that can help, please do let me know…
I did a quick google around to see if I could spot anything, but I couldn’t find anything that I recognized as potentially useful. Since I don’t know phpBB at all, I’m afraid I couldn’t refine my search at all. From what I was able to glean from the pages I visited, phpBB either doesn’t have a configuration file, or doesn’t want people to touch it.
At any rate, I can try to translate what they said
The simultaneous connections and execution time are actually related. Every time a visitor loads a page, that’s a connection, and it takes a certain amount of time to gather the posts, format them, and send them to the visitor. The host has a maximum on this execution time - if something is taking longer than 30 seconds to send, you may have a problem (such as an endless loop) and cutting it off is a reasonable response. As the host said, that isn’t likely to be your problem.
If a second visitor loads a page before the first one has finished, you now have a simultaneous connection. Apparently your host has limited you to four simultaneous connections, and that is the problem - so you have to somehow tell phpBB that it is also limited so it can fail a little more gracefully. (That, unfortunately, I don’t know how to do.)
I run a small discussion board. The 4 connection limit does seem very restrictive based on my prior experience with shared hosting. These forums aren’t that busy (relatively speaking), and if we’re seeing issues with this level of loading, it’s only gonna get worse…eventually resulting in the forums being unusable. I’d suggest looking for a new hosting provider.
I think that connexions are even compounded in some cases. In response mode, I have had the reply interface load, but the quick reference comment area below fails. Since the reply portion must have a database connexion for part of its content (message notification, login status, and breadcrumb trail), that must mean that whenever a user clicks reply, two connexions are registered where one can fail independently from the other.
Eek. Thanks for the info. This doesn’t sound brilliant. My hosts are brilliant in nearly every other way, too… Cheap with great service and numerous features. Oh well, guess I’ll have to look into this when my contract runs out with them in August again…
Thanks again,
Keith
i used to run a phpbb forum and one thing that i used to do to improve performance was manually dump the cache table via phpmyadmin or the host interface…might remedy a few issues, not sure…
there’s some amazing support on the phpbb forums as well, certainly worth a look.
I continue to get frequent “Internal Server Errors”, when visiting this forum. especially around ten or eleven o’clock in the evening. It looks like ten or at most fifteen simultaneous visitors are the absolute maximum the server and / or the host can handle. And especially late in the evening the simultaneous visitors frequently are more than fifteen.
I get these all the time, even when I’m the only one on the site. I’ve written Keith (as have others, most likely) and he is aware of the issue. It can be so bad I give up entirely and just check back later.
Okay, I’m not sure how relevant this is but while the four processes sounds like an awfully low number I think half of that statement has somehow been lost. What the original reply said was:
So, if you are happy with your host in every other way, you may want to look into that more carefully before panicking… just a thought.
I suspect that “per user” is from the host’s point of view, i.e., KB is one user, and his website gets 4 connections. Host-side restrictions are usually set up that way.
I am still monitoring the issue. Looks like I’ll have to go for my own server, though the trouble with that is that everything will need transferring and there will be downtime - and it’s a lot more expensive, of course…
Best,
Keith
If not for the wonderful community, I’d have stopped coming to the forum two months ago. 25 second delays between clicking on a link and being able to read the post are the norm. If there’s a way to improve response times, I’d welcome it.
Is cost a big issue? I have no idea how much getting your own server would run.
Edit: Not that I want this to be one of those cases where one thing leads to another and then another. First you want a writing program, then you write one, then you upgrade it, then you have to upgrade to your own server to support it – and in the meantime, the whole point of the program takes back stage. Ignore me. Write the book!
