We upgraded to a new server way back in December. We were targetting another upgrade towards the end of the year but a few unexpected things happened.

The site is serving considerably a higher number of visitors these days,
last year this time we were serving 20,000 average daily, now its hovering close to 50,000.

The last server upgrade cost was in excess of RM10k, the next one would be around the same. There are a lot of other costs to be covered as well (hosting etc) and this is still a FREE to use site. We only recoup a fraction of those costs via advertisments.

We've stopped pruning (removing) posts like we did before. Apart from the Kopitiam and Trade Zone, we're not deleting old posts from the other sections of the forum as these archives contain valuable information that might be looked up by members sooner or later. The bigger the archive, the more load it takes for the server to search through it.

We do monitor the server's performance almost all the time, and while there are peaks periods where the server crosses its limit and gives out a busy message, its occurance is still seldom and does not intefere with the site.

We will continue to monitor the situation and decide on the best course of action from time to time. Rest assured that the problems will not get any worse then it currently is.

introducing the search engine > http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?act=Search&f=2

there is even a search box for each section/thread at the bottom left corner.

We do have close to 50,000 odd members you know, even if 1% were to donate RM20 each, we'd have RM10k, but we're trying to balance out between having a good free site with minimal advertisments. Donations are only as a last resort. The current ads you see do cover most of our cost and help with purchasing new servers, however servers are expsive and the "tabung" was broken only in December to get a new one!

So do bare with the current load spikes, it isn't that critical yet, we're already getting ourselves ready to break the "tabung" again.