Yep, very frustrating, it’s been going on for nearly an hour now!
I’m getting the heavy load message or application error message when I try to get into my own shop, look at anyone’s items, in fact the only thing I can access without issue is the forums.
Natalie
I emailed urgent support a while ago so they must be aware and also tagged Folksy on FB clubhouse post.
Got here by googling is Folksy down not via my Folksy shortcut…
Hi everyone
We are aware of the current ‘heavy load’ issue on Folksy and are working to resolve it as soon as possible.
We have been aware of several instances of heavy load over the last few weeks and our engineer has made it his priority to fix these issues as and when they arise. We’ve added auto-scaling infrastructure to handle greater load and we’ve been optimising background tasks to use less resources and run at less demanding times. Each fix we have put in place means that the system in general handles things much better.
This latest instance is currently being investigated and once we know what caused it, we’ll look into preventing it in the future.
Hello – we’ve fixed the issue, now, and are monitoring things generally. I’ve written a status blog post about the issue.
Basically, it turned out that our main database was struggling for memory. Once I’d identified that and worked out how to fix it with one of our database provider’s engineers, we cleared out some memory and everything seems to be behaving really well, again.
The status blog post goes into more details but it’s worth saying here that this memory issue has been building for a while and could well have been a contributory factor to the heavy load issue some people saw, too. Tonight’s work, as well as the recent optimisation work generally, should hopefully see the back of those.
I’m really sorry about tonight’s outage. Thank you all so much for being patient with me whilst I investigated and fixed things, I really do appreciate it.
I’m going to go have a brew, now, and then monitor things obsessively for the rest of the evening.
My apologies and my thanks again,
Doug.
Doug I just checked my expired listings and mine date back to 2010 with photos still on all of them.
It’s useful sometimes to have old listings to reference and copy for a new piece but to be honest I’m not likely to ever want to use anything from any as old as that.
You are more than welcome to delete any expired listings of mine with their photos which are more than 5 years old…i.e. expired and listed before 2015 ?
I am sure you should be able to write a script to do this ? and maybe you could get a general agreement to do everybody’s… Surely that would help your database memory problems and benefit all of us xxx
That’s a really thoughtful offer, cheers @JOYSofGLASS!
It could be a good idea for us to have a think about archiving some older data and it’s definitely something I’ll have to schedule for some point.
For the time being, though, the issue is with the sheer demand in accessing the database, rather than storage space. I know what I’m keeping an eye on, now, so we should be okay.
It’s fascinating when you start optimising pain points: often the first consequence is that you uncover the next pain point! For instance, the auto-scaling was put in place to handle increased traffic, which it did admirably. Of course, it in turn increased demand to access the database, which started to tax the memory of the database… Anybody else recalling the old woman who swallowed a fly?
And again, thanks so much for being so understanding when things go wrong and even considering ways to help. This community makes even stressful nights like tonight manageable, thank you so much.
Doug. x
And actually, lots more traffic must be a Good Thing for Folksy - (even if it gives you headaches, Doug!! Thank you!.
That should be fixed now Helen. My fault! I woke up at 3am in a panic because I suddenly remembered I hadn’t set it live.