Not sure, SDAI-Tech1. The load on the server goes up and down quite a bit. You'd expect the server to be pretty quiet after 11PM, although there are some automated processes, such as backup, that start around midnight.

There have been no signs of a scaling problem--the server isn't slowing down gradually as the number of messages in the messagebase goes up. Your message ID is 441587, which makes it the 341,587th message posted.

Even though I generally build small sites on my server, I always worry about choking on success if a site takes off. I try to design each page as if it'll be requested a thousand times a second. I mention that because I'm always learning new ways to make sites run faster, and the next version of the Zone UI should be faster at the same time it provides more features.

It'll be based on the trendy new "AJAX" technologies, though I've been using them since 2003, long before they had the cutesy name. AJAX means that instead of refreshing and loading entire pages, a little component "behind" the page called an HTTPRequest object is used by script to send and receive minimal packets of data. For example, when you click on a subject line in the new TOC, you won't see a new page. Instead, the script will call up the server and ask for the text of that message ID, and when it receive it, it'll inject it right into the TOC under its subject line. AJAX interfaces more closely resemble traditional GUI apps than Web pages...and that's a good thing.

I have a crude demo of the new UI. It doesn't have the message-injection I just described, but it does show the use of an HTTPRequest object to request TOC pages.

None of which directly addresses last night's slowdown, but since I don't have any idea why that happened, I figured the next best thing is to reassure you I'll be designing around the whatever-it-was with a site that's faster by design.