Dan emailed me last night asking what could be done to address slow forum load times. I thought I'd check in and look around. I believe the problem is with freesmfhosting.com itself - I can see they are running ads here and there. I also notice one of the graphics is actually a hotlink from a remote site which has disallowed hotlinking, and the forum trying to load that graphic might be slowing things down before it finally times out and throws out the error image I posted here.
If any of you have full admin rights, I suggest removing that hotlink, as well as any other graphic elements added on that might be slowing things down. Go through any forum add-ons and disable any not in use.
Run some of the database optimization tools and let the system do its thing to free up space and remove obsolete/erroneous database entries.
To be honest, I don't think any of these measures will help much. Such is life on a free, shared forum platform that probably is hosting a few thousand forums on one server. This version of SMF is also 2 years old and will probably never be updated again.
After many years away from discussion forums I am thinking about getting back into it. Facebook is the place to be but except for business use I am scaling back my activities there.
I have kicked around the idea of starting another forum myself, but I simply do not have the time anymore. I run two companies of my own and handle the marketing for a large Century 21 Real Estate franchise.
Still, it might be an option if anyone here would be willing to perform the day to day maintenance and supervision of the thing... forum software has changed drastically and it's now possible to run a board that works well both on a computer and on a mobile device. As an example, Elkharte, a spinoff of SMF, offers a great experience on a small screen and performs well even on a mobile data connection.
Let me ponder...
