This is going to be a double post since we have two threads running.
There seem to be several separate issues being talked about at once, and being confused as the same thing.
I'll address generalities first, and specifics second - as far as what happened this week.
We do have some occasional issues with the server getting bogged down, and they usually last a few minutes. I catch it and fix it. That's when you see "Internal Error", for example.
It's like when your PC gets bogged down and you need to re-boot it. Same thing here.
It seems to happen once about every 6 - 8 weeks, and lasts a few minutes.
Since the inception of PipesMagazine.com in early 2009, we have upgraded to bigger, better, faster servers 3 times.
I'm looking into the possibility of doing so again.
Reading through theses 2 threads, I see some things being complained about that are likely user error, or just features that some people haven't figured out how to work - like how to use the emoticons. That's not a website or server issue.
The site is once again becoming a victim of its own success. Our traffic is at an all time high of 15,000 unique visitors per day and about 1/4 of a million page views daily.
Regarding this week -
Mon - Tues - everything was fine.
Wed - Murphy's law. I decide to take the day off and go to the beach. I'm normally on the site all day and catch any issues before the monitoring system does.
Lawrence actually caught it and called my mobile and sent me a text. I didn't see it right away since I was out for a swim.
When I did see it, I contacted the server tech who found the issue, corrected it and made some changes to the server configuration to try to avoid the problem from happening again.
We were down for about 30 - 40 minutes on Wed, 9/11 somewhere between noon and 1 pm eastern USA time.
It took about 24-hours later to realize that the new server configuration had broken other functionalities - anything that had to do with photos and thumbnails.
@captainsousie
The album feature isn't working either.
I think this should be working now.
Uploading new avatars was broke, and the thumbnails for the most popular articles list was broken as well.
All of the above has been fixed since about 3 pm eastern USA time yesterday, Sept 12.
Be prepared for the site to break this afternoon (Friday) as I plan on going to see a movie.
Seriously though, thank you all for being participating members in the community, and thank you for your patience and understanding while we experience some growing pains.