Young Writers Society

Lately, YWS has been slowing to a crawl (or just not loading at all) at certain times. This is supposed to happen every day at 7am GMT (8am BST, 3am EDT, midnight PDT) because that's when the database gets backed up, but it's not supposed to happen at other times of the day.

I've been trying to pinpoint the cause, and you can help by just letting me know here if and when it happens to you. Remember to include your timezone and what browser you use! Also, if you get the error "too many connections," add that in as well. Always err on the side of too much information please.

Right now, I'm pretty sure it's just the Googlebot going bonkers. But, I rather be certain.

Time: 9:41 am to maybe about 10 am. I don't actually know when it stopped; I just came on YWS at 10:11 and it was fine again.

Timezone: EST -5 GMT

Browser: Safari

I didn't get am error message; the site just wouldn't load.

Same problem with me. Around 1pm to 2.30 pm English time, I think.

Not totally sure because I didn't look at the time but that's about it.

I'm using IE, and it's been off and on since around 11am GMT, and it's now quarter to four. Like Aqua, I didn't look at the time specifically, but it's not been consistent - sometimes I'll leave my computer for ten minutes and it's still not loaded, and sometimes it'll be instant.

Thank you all, and don't worry about converting it to GMT. I much rather people just say their local time with their timezone. A lot of times, people get the GMT conversion wrong thanks to daylight savings time.

If you don't know your timezone, then just say your country, state, and/or province. Lastly, in addition to the name of the browser, the version number is very important (especially in the case of IE). To find your version number, go to Help then About.

Version number: 4.0.3 in Safari, on a Mac.

IE 7 - or version 7.0.6100.1800. As for times, my local time is GMT, so that's okay.

Mine's the same as Jet's, sorry I didn't mention that before.

At about noon today (Friday) YWS was slow for me when I changed pages. I could open a new tab on YWS just fine, but as soon as I changed pages it was slow. Only lasted about five minutes.

Same information as before. EST, Safari 4.0.3 on a Mac.