I've been on this board reading topics and I'm not seeing any server speed issues? Yet this board is moving because of speed?
What's going on here?

Last night it was so slow that it was unreadable. I'd click a link, go make a snack, come back a couple minutes later and nothing would have happened.

Most of the time it's not like that though.

So weird... I can't reproduce it and I'm just clicking around.
Is the biggest annoyance on using ezboard?

It varies over time, so it's hard to reproduce. I have no idea if it corresponds to usage or what...

It is slow right now, for example.

I guess I just would like to understand the reasons for moving off of ezboard.

SPEED - are there real issues here? i've spent 30 minutes clicking around and tracking the logs and do not see anything that would be considered slow

PRICE - you can get GOLD for FREE just by turning on the google ad option (its called FREE GOLD)

FEATURES - are there certain features that are motivation for the move?

We have currently been working on the next ezboard product (a rewrite using a complete new technology base). I believe it will become the new standard of community software. I'll let the product speak for itself, look for it in Q1 2004.

Anyway, any comments would be much appreciated.

Slow right now? How slow is slow? I'm clicking around and not seeing any issues. Where are you located geographically?

Yesterday I had numerous times, pretty much the entire day, when I got "server not responding messages" and load times on the order of minutes. In general, the speed is kind of on the slow side for me. Occassionally it just stops responding completely.

But I think it's a number of things driving the decision to move. Speed, reliability, features and cost. Ezboard is pretty light on features like searching, ignore lists and such compared to vBulletin and the price is pretty high.

Lol @ the EZ Board guy asking me if it is slow for me.

It was when I typed that, took about 90 seconds after I clicked on "Add Reply" for it to go~

But NOW now? No, it is fine now (about 10 minutes later)

That's just the problem, it is VERY spotty in good/bad load times..

Yesterday the speed was attrocious. I would time out trying to load threads, etc. This was happening all day long.

Today its been nice and fast.

My personal reasons for moving my guilds board away from EZboard a few years ago were speed and features. Feature-wise, the most important one was searching. EZboard just didn't have any sort of *real* search.

I would like to add that I noticed that it was slow yesterday too. Like some of the others, I would click on something, then do things away from my computer, then come back. In my opinion, it's a little too late to be asking why the community is moving now.

Artio Ohialehua

Yeah its pretty horrible, and seems to be mostly on this pub server cluster. The other ezboards I frequent dont seem to be affected.

It took me 2 minutes to open this thread....

Tia

I am running A LOT faster than last night/this morning. Took about a minute and a half or so to load each page last night.

I didn't even check these boards for most of the 10th. It'd take over 45 seconds to load the boards, then an additional 30 seconds for any action on the topics - including just hitting the "back" button to refresh the topic list.

Taking a look at the EZBoards support forums, we weren't the only ones:
http://beta.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm87.showMessage?topicID=797.topic
http://beta.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm87.showMessage?topicID=798.topic
http://beta.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm87.showMessage?topicID=777.topic
http://beta.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm87.showMessage?topicID=745.topic
http://beta.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm87.showMessage?topicID=799.topic

The 10th was horribly slow for me also, most of the day.

As far as features go, search has always HORRIBLY sucked. And what I wouldn't give for an /ignore-tyoe feature =)

Tat

I've never seen any site that has the issues EZboard does with spotty, reoccuring slowness. It's very frustrating and it doesn't just happen at The Druids Grove. That's the biggest reason I want to move away from EZBoards.

The second reason is that the service doesn't seem like its there. We had a problem a while back with some serious spammers. None of the board admins could be reached to ban these 2 people so we went to ezboard for help. Once someone finally answered all they did was basically brush us off. So, we had to sit back and watch our community get overwhelmed with spam.

Third, the features just aren't there like they are with other products. Ignore and search are good examples. Granted, you have a search feature but it's pretty worthless. Most people have resorted to just using google.

Finally, I don't like the interface we have to use to personalize our profiles and settings or to send private messages..but that part is just me :)

This decision wasn't made overnight. It's something we've been talking about for a while so obviously these have been issues with us for quite some time.

yayaya @ all that

never could quite pin down why I don't like ezboard..

but yeah, search, ignore, profilfes, PMs, etc etc


the only reason EZBoard is worth a damn is you can use the same login name for every board.. but as more and more guilds/servers/classes/etc move off of ezboard it becomes a moot point anyway~

Trying to load pages on this board yesterday and several times today was futile.

Features for price EZBoard just isn't measuring up.

Seems a great deal of EQ sites have been moving away from EZBoard for the past year or so. This board alone averages what...12K hits a day? Been here over 4 years. Price goes up. Features don't. Time to Succor to a new zone. (We are druids after all)

:)

It was terrible 2 days ago (I assume same time).

I gave up modding stuff cause it took me litterly minutes to get windows to appear.



Tils

--- Repost from <a href="http://pub149.ezboard.com/fthedruidsgrovegeneral.showMessage?topicID=31702.t opic" target="top">Original Thread</a>
<img src="http://www.ezboard.com/image/ad_halfscreenshot.gif" style="border:0;"/>

Vanchau, CEO Ezboards,

People like their landscape and do not like to see advertisements in any shape or form - I realize that it is pretty toned down.. but they drive the community.. because quite frankly without the community - we wouldn't be here; The community is calling for the move after the slowness of yesterday and being down Saturday.. and many times before where we just lived with it... most couldn't get on the boards at all and after posting in the area that alerts your staff that there is a problem.. I didn't get a response till 24 hours later - I realize situations occur but it was almost impossible to post here and most of the time it wouldn't even reach the server - I use IM's and asked several people located in different parts of the country and world if they were having the same problem - they were.

The community is willing to pay for the move; it out of my hands. I even got a couple of emails stating not to allow ezboard to know that we are moving due to the fact that they heard stories about an entire board being removed after they found out. Of course some of that could of been coincidence or a story blown out of proportion, but quite frankly the community is getting upset.. this is their home away from home.. and they don't mind paying for the space, but they do get extremely upset when its down and worst yet.. when its slow.

I met you in Real life and I understand that your the type of person that gets personally involved with your job and the communities no matter how small.. to how big those communities are. I have much respect for you, but that doesn't help when the boards are slow or down. We have taken a bunch of polls and several other boards are doing the same thing .. and for our community to stay ahead and give everyone the same type of service that they are getting used to on the boards that have left ezboards.. and for the community to basically to continue to grow and prosper.. with all the new games coming out .. even EQ 2 and beyond the uptime has to be there.

Cost is down - boards software is from free to running around 168 w/138 professional install, with $20-30 bucks for tech support for the year.. the server cost is Unlimited bandwidth for $99 bucks a year.. with a 99.9% guarantee on uptime...(which is around 3-4 days a year). So basically the community .. even with those members that are either "to scared to give" or "don't think they need to .. others will pick up the bill" it works out to $129 a year vs $400-800..

At one point we had to turn several sections off from non-Ezuser accounts/non-donator's and only let them use one section while the majority of the board was off limits - just so we could get the price down to a reasonable amount 30 days prior to paying. - this a) lowered the price because there were several now who paid for their Ezuser account b) we lost 50% of our population.

- I can't live with that.

I certainly realize that the Internet "isn't free" this all cost money - I pay for the site itself - but doing more with less seems to be the motto that most take on. - I don't know if we will be back or we will just fade away - will depend on if people contribute to the community.. even if its pennies out of the couch, its all about choice and if its important enough to them or not.

Thanks for being here for us Van through the last 4 almost 5 years - We are one of the longest running boards for Everquest and its Druid Community and we plan on staying there.

Be Well,

Sobe Silvertree –

EZboard really leaves a lot to be desired, sorry if that causes any bad feelings Vanchau. It always seems to be slowing down to the point of being unusable or flat out doesn't work at all. It's an extremely frustrating message board because of the recurring technical issues.

Thanks for the comments.

You do what you gotta do.

We have known for some time that our current technology platform has its limits.

That's why you haven't seen us invest a lot in our current technology, we've been investing it in a complete rewrite and redesign of our product. It's a secret project that has been going on for a couple of months and is planned to launch in Q1 2004.

It addresses all the issues we've had to date and also has a fresh new approach to the entire community space.

We've been the biggest for so long, but not the best. With our new product, we'll be both. Perhaps we'll see you guys back on our network in a year or so.

Until then good luck and thanks again for the feedback.

Good luck! EZBoard was pretty darned amazing for it's time. It just needs some sprucing up, redundancy and more features.

It wasn't just this EZBoard having slowness issues. On my guild board, getting things to load, reply, sticky etc were taking forever. Ditto with my family EZBoard that I run. There are times when trying to surf EZBoards is so time consuming that I just don't bother.

If I knew phpp, or had the time to learn it, my communities would not be EZBoard either, but as it is, my options are limited, and I already know this system, so for the time being, my communities will continue to be hosted on EZBoard and I will continue to be annoyed by server slowness/lack of response.

I've been a long time ezsupporter. Our guild's board was on ezboard. I've been a long time lurker/reader/poster on the paladin and druid community ezboards. I fought against it when our guild wanted to move to a private board. I spoke out against moving the DG community to a private board as well. Simply because ezboard has provided reliable service for a reasonable price and provided the features that *I* needed. I also believed that ezboard was there to stay, while I didn't want our community held hostage or possibly abandoned *if* the current admins moved on to other things.

However, I lost the battle with the guild, and the battle with the move for the DG community. And I can understand it. Our new guild board is twice as fast at loading posts, and after the initial purchase cost, is cheaper to maintain. I still prefer ezboards administration features however, because without server access, administration by a remote user is limited on the private board. We have more security issues on the new private server as well. But, speed won out.

While I preferred that DG remain on ezboards, I did contribute to the purchase of the new private board (just as I had previously for ezboard). DG is a community first. It will be just like a family moving to a new home. A bit of an adjustment, some sadness at leaving familiar surroundings, but also some excitement for the new.

Whats funny is.....yesterday and today it seems super fast....what did vana tell his people i wonder :)


Tils

Maybe they gave the hamster some vitamins and it's running around in it's cage faster!

I'm a conspiracy nut at heart, so when I saw the donation thread appear and then the next day I couldn't even get to this board for nearly 48 hours... well, I put 2 and 2 together :)

EZBoard was a good service. I've been a supporter for quite a while. But I think the problem is they grew too quick, and now they have priced themselves out of competition. If you look at all the EQ Boards that have moved, almost all of them started looking because the 6-month renewal cost was astronomically high. Other factors may have sealed the move, but I think price was what got the ball rolling.

The last few months EZBoard has gotten slower and quirkier. Last week was just one example. I've now started getting random disconnects. Like I log in, post a message, go to the same thread I just posted in, try to mark the forum read, but get a message saying I'm logged out... even though I just posted there. It's minor, sure, but it's an annoyance.

I've been in the Druids Grove community since August 99 under one name or another. I'll go wherever the board goes.

I like EZ Board, and would perfer to stay here. However, most of the community wishes to leave. I do admit that I have noticed several serious slowdown issues in the past few weeks that have been very annoying. On the order of several minuets in some cases.

Those random logouts are happening a lot to me lately... only on ezboard. It's truly annoying to have a long post poofed because it suddenly forgot who you are.

Just wait till we have our new product out.

It's redesigned from the ground up and completely rewritten from scratch.

It will be the new standard of community software...

We made a big strategic decision a few months ago. Obviosly, while we focus on that we aren't building a lot of functionality into ezboard.

We are testing our new databases now (which are the primary reason for ezboard speed spottiness), but the combo of the new product and new databases are going to be huge.

Like I said, we hope you'll take a look when it comes out... it will be worth the wait (for us)

First it was the upgrade to faster pubs to keep people in, then it was a supposed boon for EQ based boards on their own pub clusters, now it's wait till the new year for our next product?

That's not exactly the best way to retain people with your service. "We're sacrificing the stability and speed of our current product to test super duper new database for our future products, so just wait it out for another 3+ months please"

Now had you put up an advisory network wide about forthcoming speed issues because you're testing out new tech, people wouldn't mind as much - i'd bet some may have even been excited. Hiding in secret then explaining after a board gets tired and finally decides to move that speed issues are because such and such is being tested, not good. Honestly I'm not trying to attack you or anything, but your cs / community relations needs major work to become what it once was 3+ years ago. You were right on one part at least, ezboard at a time was the biggest and the best - not anymore.

So basically..

We get poor performance, lack of features, empty promises, poor customer service, high prices, and rate increases in order to beta-test a new product that may or may not be better than what we have now. This is instead of focusing on current issues and at least maintaining basic usability.

Did Sony buy out ez-board or is that all just a crazy coincidence? ;)

All due respect, Mr. Vanchau, but you are honestly preaching to the wrong communities if you expect us to buy into that. What may once have indeed been the best, has deteriorated into a shambles of a system, and I can only speak for myself when I say I get my fill of that in EQ.

I do hope your new system is a great success. Perhaps it will be worth a shot.

Tia

It's not that we are sacrificing speed today for things tomorrow. We've basically hit a wall with our current technologies. You have to remember that ezboard is one of the largest sites in the world. It's not just a bunch of web hosting servers that have independant sites. Everything is connected, the global user system alone is a massive amount of work.

Try to set up a database with 14 MILLION registered users, growing at a quarter million per MONTH.. all while keeping the site 24/7 with a technology that isn't really meant to support that. That's our challenge, so we are doing what we can now to improve the current situation, but know that our ultimate goal is a new foundation.

As far as not maintaing basic usability, that is absolutely maintained. It is just not as consistent as it used to be.
Anyway, good luck with your move, I have complete confidence that we will once again be not only the biggest, but the new standard.

Sounds like bad excuses to me.

A company should grow with their users or die trying. AOL is a great example of how to get over that hump (Remember around 1996 when they went to unlimited online time for a fixed price and had the busy-signal problems?). I hope you all can have the same success, but for now - we're jumping ship. Best of luck to ya.

"A company should grow with their users or die trying. AOL is a great example of how to get over that hump (Remember around 1996 when they went to unlimited online time for a fixed price and had the busy-signal problems?). I hope you all can have the same success, but for now - we're jumping ship. Best of luck to ya."

That's exactly what they are doing.

Yeah, EZBoard has really gone downhill in the last year, and the search feature has never really worked. But technical walls do crop up in programming, and sometimes it's better to start fresh than to keep throwing patches at it trying to stop the leaks.

AOL was horrendous during the first months after they went flat rate. It took them time to fix it, and they did, and now it runs well. EZBoard doesn't have the same budget AOL does, so it's taking them longer - cut them some slack?

For the record, I'm glad we are moving, but I don't see the point of jumping on the "SOE sucks, so does EZBoard" bandwagon.

Well, usually this board is the slower one, but right now, Safehouse is absolutely crawling! EZboard is blowing chunks today.