**Update from D2: In searching through the queries that our database is now flagging as time-intensive and looking at the way the (still sluggish) site is behaving, we're much less convinced that the forums are the culprit, and more convinced that there's a separate access issue in Drupal that's chewing up database cycles needlessly. We're testing it fully on Tuesday, and will report back Tuesday night with the verdict.**
Well, we spent the weekend tuning the database. Our work sped things up slightly, but not nearly enough to avoid the crippling case of The Slows that's been plaguing the site. In an attempt to make the site work as it should, we've temporarily escalated things to DEFCON 2: The Vanishing Forums. At D2: TVF, all forums except for the Regional Lounges are disabled.
We've never had to go to D2 in the history of the event, and this sucks immensely and hurts our hearts and is a frustrating interruption of the good conversations that we've started in the forums, but the trade-off is that (hopefully) people will be able to sign up for NaNoWriMo now, and the rest of us can use the site without Drupal popping up to yell access-error codes at our heads.
We're doing everything we can to get the large-and-in-charge, full-featured site back, including hardware improvements and a server addition. We will be monitoring the effects on our database of D2 over the next week, and will flip the forums back on as soon as the site can bear them.
Cybele has posted a little how-to on Regional Lounge affiliation on the main Forums page. The upside: Having forums conversations with people in your area is really one of the great joys of NaNoWriMo. The Regional Lounge conversations often lead to in-person conversations. Which lead to going to kick-off parties and write-ins, which lead to new friends and a well-documented boost in noveling productivity tied the fact that no one wants to look like a loser in front of new friends because of a substandard word-count.
It's the beautiful cycle of NaNo-life, and it's yours to find in the Regional Lounges.
If disabling the forums doesn't help the slowness at all, we'll go to DEFCON 1: Chinchilla Farm, in which we transform the NaNoWriMo servers into a breeding ground for adorable, soft, and valuable rodents.
We're really hoping to avoid the chinchillas.
Thanks for your patience everyone! We're so sorry for the inconvenience! We're getting it sorted for November!
Chris
