September 16, 2025 @ 3:28 PM
Something is still strangling the site. It’s a CPU game, and even with full CF Edge Caching and minimal traffic (:(), the CPU is losing.
September 16, 2025 @ 11:08 AM
Sorry for the site being so slow lately. WordPress may power more of the internet than any other platform, but it’s not perfect. For the second time, ITS has reached 10,000 posts in the database. WordPress has issues when the post count grows from 4 digits to 5 digits, causing major slowdowns for every page load.
The first time, two years ago, I created archives.insidethestar.com to shuffle off all content we created from Jan 28, 2009 to Dec 31, 2017, bringing us down to around 6,000 posts here on the main site. This time I took another approach that seems to be working well. WP thinks we have about 3,000 posts, but all 10,041 (and counting) on the main site are still available.
Unfortunately, almost two weeks of this BS has taken a toll on readership. We’re still here, still working at it, and it should be running a lot faster for you now (for us too).
September 7, 2025 @ 2:41 AM
The site is experiencing some issues. I’m in the process of redeploying to a new server to rule out misconfigurations and split the site from the DRSN database. Optimizing everything along the way looking for the source of the CPU drain. Some issues with the Dallas data center and Cloudflare masked underlying issues, so I’m working to suss them out. More to come when there’s more to say.
August 29, 2025 @ 3:31 PM
Many of y’all may not realize this, but I despise ads. A site like ITS doesn’t run on hopes and dreams, though. Thankfully, Mediavine (our exclusive programmatic ad partner) is rolling out a refined ad package that reduces the number of in-content ads you see. It is my hope that this setup becomes at least a little less intrusive.
There’s always the subscription option if you’d rather not see ads but still want to support the work we do. 😉
August 28, 2025 @ 7:13 PM
I decided to start this little system status page for the site. Sometimes, things happen that we don’t really have a solid way to communicate about with readers; social media gets some but not most. This will be our log of those things. Newest items will be at the top, and there will only be updates when there is something to share. Thanks. Bryson T.