There have been numerous reports over the last few weeks of extremely slow site performance. These reports typically occur during peak site hours on Saturdays and Sundays when many events and tournaments are happening simultaneously.

First of all, I want to apologize for any problems this issue has caused for anyone running events over the last few weeks. Longshanks always strives to make hosting events easier. Recently, we have failed at that goal. The issues people have been having recently are unacceptable and we are working on solutions to restore proper Longshanks performance as quickly as possible. For more information on potential causes and solutions to the issue, read on...

The issue seems to be related to or triggered by high site traffic since it only noticeably slows the site down on the weekends. However, the pattern of actual server slowdown doesn't appear like normal human traffic at all. There are very abrupt increased in all the various server metrics (memory, CPU, etc.) which occur for specific lengths of time and then sharply drop off again, with that pattern repeating at precise time intervals. This indicates that the issue is caused by some sort of automated process and not "regular" site usage.

This screenshot of the server's memory usage on June 21, 2025 illustrates the odd server behavior. The red line indicates maximum system memory allotment. The rise in the red line midway through the day shows an unsuccessful attempt to alleviate the problem by increasing available resources.

System memory usage on 21 June, 2025.

There's no built-in Longshanks script or process that even remotely matches this timing, so it seems unlikely to be an internal Longshanks function gone haywire. To test that, the timing of one such function was modified earlier today to see if that had an impact on the problem. It didn't.

I had discussions with a couple of tech support people at our web host who offered some suggestions but were unable to look into the possibility of deeper issues with the server that could explain this problem.

I have begun looking for an alternate hosting solution with the intention to migrate the site to a better platform in the next week or two. The primary objectives of the new hosting solution are:

• To improve overall site speed.
• To allow for more dynamic responses to increases and decreases in demands on server resources.
• To facilitate better access and error logging to diagnose potential future server issues.

Other than (hopefully) fixing the performance issues, moving Longshanks to a new hosting platform shouldn't have any impact on how the site functions or looks and no data will be lost. I will make another blog post when the migration is complete.