Buttercup said:
You got that right, Francisca. But what I want to know is, who is getting in, and how did they do it?
I don't think that you guys need to worry TOO much. The slow down is across the whole site, so those who did get in are probably even more frustrated because they can't continue the process of registering for events.
As for outsourcing, I'm curious what they outsourced. The code may be great, but if they have only one server running the site (including the database), you'll see a TREMENDOUS slow-down when you have a thousand people all trying to access the site and hit the database.
What they should have done was put the database on its own server, and then load balanced between two servers that handle the code on the front end.
In all, it would have cost them around $8000 to do this properly...not counting the license for the database (if they're using something like SQL Server...if they're using Access as their database, I don't even want to know).
I'm fairly disappointed that they didn't make a more concerted effort to fix this problem. Last year, they had so much Flash that it bogged down the website. Then, they had problems with the computers at the convention itself. You'd think that they'd hire someone to manage all of the computer and internet issues.
