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 A message forum for general discussion. Please come and chat with others! |
| Hello, I have a question regarding the message that pops up when I try to access an Interactive Story while a lot of people are on the servers. The message reads: "Due to server and resource limitations, Interactive Stories are temporarily unavailable to visitors and free members. Please try again in a few minutes..." I've tried reloading the page three, five, and ten minutes after it pops up, with varying levels of success. What's the ideal amount of time I should wait before reloading? |
This question belongs in "Technical Support Forum"  rather than here.That said, There probably isn't an ideal amount of time to wait. It all depends on how many other free members and guests you're competing with at any particular moment. StoryMaster has suggested trying at a less popular time of day. Hope that helps.  Northernwrites___ ~~Image #6000 Sharing Restricted~~ ~~Image #603504 Sharing Restricted~~ |
| I swear they lowered their capacity for the site, I haven't been able to get on in ages since it only frees up after midnight. Well their loss less I visit the site less add revenue they get. |
| Reality check: The site's ad revenue for interactives is almost non-existent -- nowhere near enough to cover the cost to make them available. Best, Northernwrites___~~Image #6000 Sharing Restricted~~ ~~Image #603504 Sharing Restricted~~ |
| It may not be a lowered capacity - it could simply mean there is more activity in general on the site, which eats up capacity. |
| If you love the interactives why not pay the basic membership and then you would be able to access them at all times? ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| I think they lowered their capacity as well, I've been on this website for 6 years and it used to handle 2000 people with no problems and now it can't handle half of those, I have to wait for times when the number of visitors drops under 800 and THEN I have to refresh like 5-8 times to get 1 chapter. They're just forcing their costumers hand into buying premium membership, I've critisized their policy multiple times and my complaints have been met with a blind eye and they removed every post or commen I made (and possibly this one too) I think it's time to move on from this website, I come back once or twice a week now to see if things are better but they're not it's just getting worse |
| We've been pretty clear on this on a number of posts, as well as on the page that displays when you hit the limit. Yes, we've lowered the limit to lower our costs supporting free members and visitors within the interactive section. You can thank ad blockers and a lack of income from the ads on the interactive content. Folks seriously think we'd limit the amount of ad revenue and take a loss on this? Ha ha. That's funny. Unless you're the one person not using an ad blocker and you've been clicking the ads, buying from the sponsors -- then you have no one to complain to but yourself. I know it may seem crazy to you, but brand advertisers are not lining up to pay for ads on things like "Body Part Swap: !!PLEASE ADD!!".  To clarify your comment, though... No, you absolutely do not need a "premium" membership. A $19.95 per year Basic Membership gives you unlimited access for yourself. 5.5 cents per day. But seriously, if using Writing.Com is really not worth 6 cents a day to support us, why in the world are you wasting time your time making rude posts to complain about it? If you've found another site willing to freely support the type of content we allow in our interactives, you might as well just move there -- until they decide to stop paying for the resources to support it. Best, ~~SM
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| That's hard to argue with, it makes total sense. The problem I see is that if someone's decided that they don't wanna pay that 6 cents a day then they aren't going to pay it regardless. Very few, if any, will pony up for a paid membership. While decreasing the server load cuts costs, those visitors who can't access content are likely to get frustrated and leave the site, and are therefore less likely to access other areas of the site that could generate revenue. It's a move that drives traffic away from the site entirely, and eventually the writers will stop generating content because no one's there to see it. I think the better option would be to try and increase profit from the sources that are lucrative rather than limit content. I'm well aware that I could be wrong about this and I'm talking out of my butt here as I'm not familiar with this site's traffic patterns and how interactive story viewers interact with the site, but that's just my take on this. |
| Thanks for your concerns for the site. After 18 years, we've got a decent amount of data and do use that when making decisions on how to run the site, how we handle our expenses, etc. We do know that the users of our interactives stick to those and only those. We know they tend to run ad blockers and not click on the ads even when not using an ad blocker. We know the content in interactives is rather, let's say "niche" and not content advertisers like to advertise on. However, I'll acknowledge that if you're correct and readers do leave the site over the limitations, then everything should work out just fine for you. The usage level on the site will decrease to under the limitations and resources we've setup and the blockage will solve itself. Of course, while you run into the message, you'll know that's not the case and folks are still trying to access more than we're willing to increase the limits past. As we've had these limits in effect for a bit over a month now, I'm not particularly worried but I can understand with your concern for the site and community how you would be... so I'm just trying to reassure you that Writing.Com itself is doing OK and I expect we'll be fine. I've also made a variety of responses on the topic over in "Technical Support Forum" . I've addressed many of your statements there... In particular, I'll link to a few incase you'd like to read them to learn more..."Re: Re: Re: Re: Server volume message" "Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Server volume message" "Re: Re: Site is becoming unusable" Best wishes, ~~SM
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| i just hate that server restrictions cut me off from editing my OWN story. I should be able to access my own story even when people clog up the servers reading other stories. that just frustrates me more than anything. |
| the thing is the story is not even public yet so i feel like non posted stories should somehow be on their own servers then when they go live get transferred so free members can edit unposted stories without getting the restriction block |
| Greets, While I understand this, the technical reason is that when the load is high, the interactive pages have to skip database checks to help bring the load back down or keep it from going higher. Presently, there's no "quick" way for the system to know if it's your story or someone elses without doing more work with the databases. If we added that work back in just so some folks could surf their own stories, we'd end up with a higher load for longer times. The fact is that free members can no longer create or host interactive items as of a whole bunch of years ago. We kindly grandfathered in a lot of old accounts and we were happy to be able to do so. At the same time, we're facing newer issues with resources and costs that have led to the current viewing restrictions. So the good news is that free members that were grandfathered do still get to keep hosting their interactive items for free.  The bad news is that we have no viable means at this time to give them even more by exempting their own items from the load restrictions.Best wishes, ~~SM
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| Just one last question, why do I have the same limitation when there's 1000 or 100 users online, shouldn't the lower visiters number mean an easier way of accessing interactives. I come here during times when Visitor numbers are low and still be faced with the same message |
| 100 users and guests combined? When’s that? Not anytime I’ve seen in the last decade. It’s noon and we’re sitting at about 1,000. [edit now 1,250+ total errrr now 1,400l] We do schedule daily server tasks, tabulations and backups during off peak times. Those processes do also use the resources we pay for and we do not increase at those times. We also have hourly processes that are load intensive and run once an hour for a bunch of minutes. To be sure, it’s not that we can’t pay for additional resources to handle the load. Just like many members are choosing not to pay for membership, we are choosing not to pay for the extra to give them a free ride. Best, SM
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