09 APR: IMPORTANT: ADDRESSING RECENT PERFORMANCE ISSUES WITH THE CBYA WEB SITE

Published 12:00 on 9 Apr 2025

YOU WILL HAVE NOTICED THAT WE HAVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES!

THESE MANIFEST THEMSELVES AS:

- INABILITY TO ACCESS THE WEBSITE

- VERY SLOW PAGE RENDERING TIMES

- FREQUENT TIME-OUT AND ACCESS FAILURES

-  BEING ASKED TO IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS HUMAN

WHAT IS THE ISSUE

The servers which hosts the CBYA website uses computing resources to operate. These include: CPU, Memory and Input/Output resources and these are only available in finite amounts (quotas). A server can exceed its quotas (overdraft), but eventually the hosting server says enough is enough and cuts the site off. We currently share our hosting server with a few other website companies, so the hosting server is continuously Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

WHAT IS THE CAUSE

The CBYA website is attracting more and more traffic  which is both good and bad.  Good in that there is a lot of interest around the world in our site. Bad in that it is consuming more and more resources. Heres a picture of how the traffic has changed since last year. You can see that traffic (mainly referrals from other sites) has increased 350>#/p###

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION

Continuing as things are is not a sustainable option. We will have to migrate the CBYA website to its own, dedicated virtual server. That way we can assign the resources that the website needs. This will improve reliability and availability

HOW LONG WILL THIS TAKE

As yet we do not have any timelines to achieve this, but we are working on this urgently. As soon as we have a time to resolve this issue we will let you know. Please watch for further updates

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO

We can only ask you to bear with is and keep trying. You may see a CAPTCHA pop up from time to time, asking you to prove that you are human. We have implemented this to stop any bots from trying to access the site.

If you are trying to buy tickets to an event, look out for an email from the event coordinator (for example, an email from the social secretary) which will enable you to let them know you want to attend. We will extend the payment window on all events so that you can still pay for tickets after the event.

PLEASE BE REASSURED

We are working tirelessly to resolve this issue. We will keep the members informed at every stage until we get a resolution

Thank you for your understanding and your patience

CBYA Committee

Last updated 16:51 on 1 July 2025