As is obvious, we have for the last two months had issues with the website—running slow or returning error pages. We have been working with the host as well as a developer to remedy these issues as quickly as possible. It bothers us as much as it does our readers.
Over the last few months, we’ve upgraded the server twice, first to a more powerful Virtual Private Server and then to a dedicated server. Both should accommodate the traffic RRN receives.
We’ve also had to deal with constant denial of service attacks on the server, but we have made improvements that greatly mitigated the frequency of these attacks.
Our developer believes a comment plugin may be responsible for many slow-downs, so we have disabled it until we can know for sure if it’s responsible, as we monitor the server over the next day or so.
If the plugin is not the issue, we will continue working on the server until we isolate and remedy the issue.
As a last resort, we may have comments hosted offsite on a platform like Disqus, that intergrates seamlessly with our site. This would be a last resort, as they are expensive and have their own terms of service.
Thank you for your patience.