Dear Members,
Allow me to fully explain the issue which first started showing up just over a year ago.
Firstly, not all members will see the problem. The members most likely to see a problem are:-
- Those who have a posting total above about 3000
- Those who post to long threads which have more than about 50 replies.
- When two or more members are trying to post to the same thread at the same time such as the Wednesday thread
The actual error condition which you do not see is a Microsoft SQL "Command Timeout" which by default is set to 30 seconds which is built into the Telligent Community Server and cannot be changed.
Until last July we paid a lot of money to Telligent to receive technical support and I spent months (greater than 6) working with them to get a resolution, but the only solution finally they could come up with was to upgrade to their latest version. I did upgrade on a seperate database which the Wednesday thread now runs on every week and has done so for about 6 months. Whilst it appears to provide an improved service, it still fails in the same way from time to time and I felt it still was not a total solution. The moderating team run on yet another version seperate from the main forum and the Wednesday thread, but whilst much better, still not a complete solution.
Much discussion has taken place between the moderators about the issue and to be frank we are all very frustrated particularly me, about the situation. Whilst this is really the first time we have publicly discuss the issue, a considerable amount of time and money has been invested to finding a long term resolution.
About two months ago, I proposed that I build a new Beoworld database from scratch using the latest available software version and effectively start the forum over again and make the current forum "Read Only" with links back from the new version to the old read only forum.
What this proposal means when implemented is that every posting ever made will still be available to all members for reference and you would still be able to link to any posting from the new forum, but all new postings would be on this new database. We would also put the new forum on its own faster dedicated server which would no longer be in the US.
So, where have I got to in implementing this proposal ? Due to my other work and family commitments, so far I have only managed to build the basic SQL database. My next step is to configure Community Server software to use it in the same way as we use the current forum which is not a minor task.
In conclusion, Lee, myself and the moderating team want to offer our sincere apologies to those members who have been suffering with this on-going issue. I will keep you updated with progress from time to time and may ask some members to become testers during beta testing of the new forum structure.