What The Hell Is Wrong With Free Republic!?!?!?

Vanity | 11/05/2012 | Cww

[Marcella]

“I can barely connect from work in the past week, and I only lurk from there.”

I’m on fast cable and everywhere I go is a fast load, except here and it is so terrible it’s almost useless.

[dalereed]

“What the he'll is going on?”

Hundreds of idiots like yourself flooding FR with inane dribble!

[firebrand]

One thing I’ve discovered: Sometimes your comment has been posted on the thread but there is no notification yet on the posting-comment page.

You can open FR temporarily in another window to check on whether your post appears on the thread.

Never hit “post” more than once. That is one of the things that create duplicates and contribute to the logjams.

Also, if you have one of those annoying browsers that open things without your actually clicking on them, it could be helpfully hitting “post” for you multiple times. I used to have that happen and now I move the cursor away from the “post” box right away.

I am as far from being a technical person as you can possibly be, so if any of this is wrong just give me a pass.
: )

[grame]

Way too many squeaky wheels. I hope none of these whiners ever have to communicate by snail mail. FR is worth waiting for. The fact that all these hissy fit throwers got themselves in a wad is proof. Best site anywhere. Hope I'm never in line for anything ahead of these people.

[grame]

Thank you couldn’t get the courage to say it myself!

[SandRat]

Well you’re 3hrs40min away.

[Magic Fingers]

“If FR is going to be down, the Briefingroom is a great alternative site to go to, where there are many familiar names.”

Ditto - it’s a good site.

[Smokin' Joe]

I have a g-mail account I tend to leave open on another tab when browsing FR. (I'm using Firefox). When I closed the G-mail tab, suddenly FR started loading faster--much faster.

Coincidence?

How many out there who are having problems have an e-mail program/site open on another tab? Try closing it and see if that helps.

[Windflier]

FR is one of the most open, interactive, dynamic sites I have ever seen. I have no idea how all these threads going back so many years can be kept active.

You betcha. Name any other forum with so many members who've all passed their tenth anniversary. Tough to do.

As to the archived threads, someone mentioned that it might be a good idea to segregate threads over a year old to some other servers, so that the active traffic could move faster.

I'm not a techie, so I have no idea whether that would improve site performance or not, but it sounds like an idea worth exploring.

[Windflier]

just recently read that JimRob said JohnRob wasn't even talking to him. Sad.

I saw the same comment, but I tried not to read the worst into it. I'd like to think that JohnRob is just up to his eyeballs in something, and has been lax in returning Jim's calls. I hope that's all it is anyway.

Yes, it's a doggone shame that John won't allow any of FR's uber talented IT pros to give him a hand with this. I highly suspect that if he did, this issue would be handled quickly.

I learned in business a long time ago, that enterprises such as this, are a team effort, and that it takes an ability to inflow and outflow help to get the job done.

I can't tell you how many good suggestions employees gave me, that I later incorporated into our standard business model, or field tech. Some of those suggestions permanently changed the way we do business to this very day.

Well, we've got a group here, and it's my opinion that it's darn near suicidal not to allow them to help to some degree.

[GeronL]

good question

[goat granny]

been having problems all day, turned my computer back to 2 weeks ago and its running faster with less of the WE cannot load this page....

[Windflier]

Does anyone think this could be some kind of denial of service attack from the left? I’m being serious.

That idea has been floated here since the site first showed signs of non-optimum performance, but time has shown that it's something technically related - not from outside attacks.

The problems are chronic, and not at all intermittent. No DOS attack lasts as long as the problems we've seen here.

[Windflier]

Geeez...that’s the best news I’ve seen you report about this issue in ages, Jim. Thank God for a positive report for a change!

Please let JohnRob know that the Freeper family appreciates all his efforts to debug this!

Thank you!

[Fungi]

Same here, same here, same here, same here, same here, same here.....................

[Fred Nerks]

Well now it’s 5.15pm Eastern Daylight Savings time on the east coast of Australia, and everything is running like brand new again.

It probably will be fine in the (my) morning, but by midday it’s impossible to even log on...and it’s been that way for several weeks.

[Windflier]

Wow! I just hit refresh, and the page refreshed in about a tenth of a second. Holy moly......I haven’t seen FR do that, in I don’t know how long.

Crossing fingers that it holds up.

[RebelTex]

OK, everybody - try pasting the ip address (209.157.64.200) for freerepublic.com into the url at the top of the page, like this:

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2954973/posts
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/2954973/posts

Now you can do that by clicking on the link and while the new window is trying to find the address, then go to url and do the paste then hit enter - should pop the page right in.

OR

You can right click on the link and select “copy shortcut” from the menu, paste it into a notepad, then substitute the ip address for freerepublic.com and copy that to the address bar of a new window.

My favorite trick is to keep a notepad open with the following allready typed in:

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/

then all I have to do is
A) enter the article number followed by “/posts” or “/posts?post=34#34” (or whatever post # I’m going to,

or

“/reply?c=34” (or whatever post # I’m replying to)

or “http://209.157.64.200/perl/post"; to post the reply.

This solution indicates that the most likely problem is DNS related, maybe D.O.S. attack, maybe bad DNS database - who knows?

I just know that I get threads and pages really fast with this method. Maybe Jim or John can check this out and let us know.

[Political Junkie Too]

John's a miracle worker. I think the recent problem is fixed, just in time for the Super Bowl!

-PJ

[wardaddy]

I've only been here 12 years and usually at high demand it stops for me in rural middle TN on Comcast with the biggest fattest HP Pavliion made last year..superfast

but dies here

when i came on board during the Gore fight I could barely lurk and it froze most of the time...course I was ADSL then

but it usually does this...elections, natural disasters, 9-11, debates etc

the setup has simply never been adequate for high demand but is satisfactory for just the ho hum...and the ho-hum since 2006 is less than it was

i am not a techie...but I did notice last debate...I got on none of the four...that i lurked HuffPo just to see reactions and it ran fine with 15,000 replies on debate thread...even KOS was ok with a post every second or so

but here I was locked out for 4 hours and I have noticed like the poster of this thread that lately it just seems worse..and more frequent even at low ebb too

now I am gonna jump out here and take a hit

unlike assclown anti freepers that have existed from jumpstreet like pilotfish and who criticize Fresno from making a living here

I do not and in fact do not think they are maximizing their earn from this which would also make a drastic upgrade feasible economically

JR like me...ain't getting younger

and I don't know how many real posters we have but I would guess it's at least 10,000 even though we've had over 20 times that sign up since 1997

that makes this site valuable either for an advertisement rack on the side or top or as a sale(least desirable) or equity slot..like HuffPo..a publicly traded company with enough shares held by founders...one could even sell shares selectively through a sympathetic underwriter based on subscribers and that would bring the value to the founders which i would assume they might not mind and bring the joint up to speed

and I would suggest fresh faces for the financial end...not freepers...my knowledge of getting freepers involved is like a church hiring members for building committee...FUBAR and always leads to intrigue and crap

if they have 10,000 unique visitors...at least daily or once every few days or so in a week then those folks are worth on the books at least a few hundred dollars a piece ...maybe even higher if our demographics justify it

an investment banker will make this judgment based on what they think ad rates will run given the traffic

I'm just giving a skeletal appraisal

I was involved in local server startups once in the boom and those were worth basically 18 months subscription rate each or around 600-800 each...big money made back then..not me so much but a little...Mindspring...Telelink...I think when local Telelink was bought they had 11,000 subscribers and sold for 9M...I don't think FR has the same subscriber value but it would be substantial

I know freepers view commercializing Free Republic with the same eye dog breeders view puppy mills but I think JR and family deserves a payday after 16 years and if folks here want to play then they can damn well buy shares...it could make money even...hell...there is no real competitor.....Blaze forum...nope...NRO forum..lol....does Breitbart have one?

seems like we are the only big time conservative posting joint.

I would like to know how many annual unique contributors we have...folks who actually get off their bloviating asses and pay up....I sure as hell do and always have and I was even banned once but that is beside the fact

Those of you who don't pay have no right to bitch about the equipment...I hate to say it but I bet less than 10% give...I don't care if it's 10 bucks a year or Big Texan's bucket of cash...you wanna play here and it costs to run and oversee the streetfight then you ought to be willing to pony up either what it's worth to you or you can afford in principle...one thing is for sure...the joint needs a serious overhaul and I doubt those are cheap