Personally I like the auto fresh. I do not have to sit there and manually do it constantly. I can walk away for a minute or two and do something and come back and see if anyone has moved. I think however the problem was said though. There are people who are logged on and using the site and not even at home or at the computer. For common courtesy people who are not going to be playing should log out of the site. I know I have taken games from the waiting room when I looked and saw the player was on the site. However they must not have been playing because no response from that player for over an hour. So staying logged in even when you are not playing on the site is discourteous and deceiving.

I think Dmitri is right, why not just leave it to us to hit refresh when we need it. Each time a page is refreshed it uses site bandwidth and with auto-refresh on, it means many people are using bandwidth even while away from the computer....lack of an auto-refresh would reduce this greatly.

Sharon, that definatly can and does slow a site down. The more bandwidth being used means more demand on the server and ultimatly can slow it down. It may not be responsible for putting a site offline, but can slow it down to the point where some cant access it, or very slowly at best.

it may not cause the site to be inaccessible, but it probably slows the site doen when it is accessible.

Why is it needed? If someone wants the creeen refreshed, there is a refresh button. Clicking any link on any page refreshes anyway, so who needs the auto refresh ?

I have used auto-refresh quite a few times, and found it handy; not always, but on occasion. That isn't what is slowing down the site.

<if we can't log on .. how can it auto-refresh??.. lol.. and what is the difference if have auto-refresh on or we manually do it?.. do you really think that is what is slowing things down?>..

I agree the auto-refresh has to consume alot of bandwidth, many times while people are probably not at their comp, I know I used to be guilty of just that myself before things got slow on here, at that time I turned off the feature as well.

I guess all we can do is have patience, I'm sure Fencer is losing sleep trying to get this sorted and all we have to endure is a few less moves. Let hope he has luck with this.

SushiShark: You basically have two options.
1. You can purchase a brain rook membership. You will be a rook for either that 6 or 12 months, and then the remainder of your knight membership will follow when that has expired.
2. You can ask Fencer, and he will give you a price to upgrade your memebership for the remainder of the time to rook. Only he can do this for you, and only he can give you the price

Hope that helps!
Kevin

Auto-Refresh is Cool! You can even make it auto-refresh every 10 seconds! (and since it takes about 15 seconds to load the main page.....)

OK, I'm just kidding. I've actually turned mine off.

I think they should keep it, but they should have it turned off by default for new users - and take about the 10 & 20 second refresh times.

BBW (BIG BAD WOLF)

yes, I agree that the auto refresh should be deleted.

Maybe the server is getting a bit busy...

I think if the "auto refresh" were just deleted (Does anyone think we NEED an auto refresh?) it would probably free up much needed space...

Just a thought...

Hi, I also sent Fencer an email, but he is obviously too busy to reply. Perhaps somebody can help me?

I have a Knight Membership and want to upgrade to Rook Membership. How does it goes with the costs? I already paid an ammount a few months back.. do I have to pay the whole ammount again?? Will I get a refund on the ammount I already paid??

Please help.. I wanna upgrade asap, so I can attend in more games for Patty!!!

God bless..

Yep, I tried the site all day long... no responce.. only the upgrade page.. so when I tried to login a few minutes ago, I sat rejoicing in my chair: it's working again!! Yippieee.. but any reason for the outage, Fencer?

Yes, the same thing happened to me AGAIN today!

I second that, or should I say third or fourth that.

Looks like the site has been down to all.

Blaze

i'm on a computer and i've had the same problem today and yesterday.

I was wondering what happened with Brainking today. For a good 3 hours there was no getting into the site. I am on MSNTV and everytime I tried getting in I got the message that Brainking could not access the requested page. Any reasoning for this Fencer?

today it is just as slow...it is 4pm here aussie time, english time would be about 6am, and american times vary but it would be about midnight on average...I can understand where you are coming from Angus...i would NOT be happy if i was paying for the games :(

Actually, on the 30th it happened THREE times - on top of that I can't even access the game I was in the middle of playing. Sorry, but I am definately NOT a happy PAID subscriber right now!

I notice this too. It sometimes lasts just a few minutes though. Today between 6 and 7pm Central USA time for me the problem occurred. However i had to make dinner for myself so this might have been a good thing. LOL. However it is frustrating especially in mid-move on a game.

And today it happened twice - so far... and it's still so slow I don't know if it will actually work! PLEASE Fencer, can't this be fixed?

And today it happened twice - so far... PLEASE Fencer, can't this be fixed?

It seems like every day around 3:30 central time, USA, this site goes haywire, telling me it's too busy to be used right now.... this lasts at least a couple of hours. This is very frustrating!!!

Blaze, you're quite right, that sorted it, thanks! :)
Its definitely one for Fencer to look into! We can only hold that off so long, once we get another 10 pages or so there will be no way to cure it. Thanks for that, it looks loads better!

try deleting it :) that has happened to me as well :)

My Message box keeps showing that I have 1 New Message but I've already read it what do I do?

Harley, I had the same problem here. Solved it by setting it to 80 messages per page, so only 19 pages listed. I'm thinking if you have the same problem, it could be to do with the numbers just above that go across the page linking to all the previous pages on this board. For some reason once the numbers fill the width of the middle frame, they don't start a new line, consequently the middle frame just gets wider and wider. Maybe something for Fencer to look into.

Blaze

ROFL!!!! Ha ha, good idea!! :)

yes harley ! write shorter messages ! LOL

Does this board seem stretched to anyone?! It seems to drift over to the right more than other boards. I have to scroll to read messages where I didn't before. Any suggestions?

There are periods where it seems like the site gets slow or jammed up. I just check some e-mail or go to another site for a few minutes and usually things are better after that. I also delete cookies and clean up storage folders which seems to help a bit. I also have the main page saved to my favorites folder and it seems to work better by clicking on that. Just some suggestions that may help most of the time.

I'm with Bernice - it wasn't just slow, it kept saying that the site was too busy... I couldn't even log out, just got stuck. I just turned off my webtv and tried a few hours later when it was ok. This happened late afternoon, central time USA

I can third it! The only problem I've got is chattytea beating me.

I can second BBW on that too.... I have been playing very fast indeed! No problems whatsoever.

I've been playing games for the past few hours - and I have had no slowness problems - very fast.

Except it was down for "upgrades" for about 3 minutes.... but other then that, very fast for me tonight. (Mid-Illinois-USA)

I have just played 14 games and it has taken me 1hr 15mins to play them :(
I am not a paid member, and think Fencer does a good job...BUT...the times taken to get onto this site and play games is definately a deterent to being a paid member I think :(....I love this site and the people (on the whole) that I have met have been wonderful...is there anything on the horizon to speed this site up???

glad i could help :)
you just enjoy yourself there :)

thankyou so very much! it worked:) don't anyone miss me to much while i'm playing with ellie here in sunny florida:)

try deleting your cookies, if you have had yours set as auto log in as i have done, i had to do this to let my daughter get on to the site
hope this helps

cats4954 is here visiting me, and she's tryng to log in so she can set up her vacation days, everytime she goes to brainking.com, it gives my page, i even logged out, and she did it again and we stll get my page. can someone tell us how to do it. when i logged out, the log in page was there, when she logged in she got mine.
thx. ellie

Hi are you going to have Battleships hear soon?? that would be cool..

send a message to fencer with the game number. If you go into the message boards you will find him faster if you look at "tournaments" where he is listed as moderater. Click on his name and send message including the game number.

I'm playing a backgammon game no#82972 between myself and Kneightskye and part of the came up missing, who do i e-mail to get the problem corrected. Or what do I do to correct the problem, thanks for any help you can give me RSM

The last three days have been frusterating for alot of people. I for one have gotten alot more work done the last few days as the site is harder to get in to. I dont think it matters where in the world you are or the time of day either. Saturday at 8:30 EST I wouldnt think the server would be clogged up enough to stop me from getting it but alas.. 2 hours later and I finally get in..

More memberships mean bigger, better, faster server PASS IT AROUND!!!!

I am having the same problems in the evening. Sometimes,I get on the site and right in the middle of a move I get the message Brain King.com is to busy to use right now. This may last a few minutes,or several hours. I'm using a webtv.

well it is mainly morning for me i just cant get in...so dont bother. Now morning for me would be evening for most of america.It is annoying but i think we should wait and see if it continues....Fencer does a great job :)

...every evening and the sluggishness and as Angus stated not worth waiting for. I thought perhaps it was my dial up but I have been making my moves at my office puter which is quite sophisticated...and goodness me, lag time is exasperating. What gives? I recently joined, like the site and I agree Fencer appears to be a cool person. Wonder what is up? Good to know it isn't just my imagination! :D

I have not been alert enough to document the times, but probably every day there is a time when the site is so slow it's not worth waiting for, and maybe every other day *at least* I can't access it at all for at least a couple of hours. I know Fencer is and has been doing a great job, but I have to admit this is getting annoying and I hope it will be permanently fixed soon.

For the past couple of weeks I've noticed that brainking has experienced downtime every evening, on average a couple of hours per evening starting at around 8pm GMT. Often it's back up and running by 10pm, but on ocassion has been down again shortly afterwards until around midnight GMT. These problems are occuring every day here, and whilst intermittent, there does seem to be a pattern to the times we're getting the page cannot be displayed errors.

I've spoken to a few other people who are having problems getting on the site between those times and was wondering whether this is just a temporary problem, or something caused by rush hour traffic...lol.

This is a really great site and I'm sure you'll all agree that Fencer is highly dedicated to it! I for one, appreciate all the time and effort he devotes to the site, both in keeping it running and also in research and providing such a good range of games! Keep up the excellent work Fencer!
Everyone agree this is the best games site there is? :)

Also wondering... is there any way you would be able to update the brainking info site when downtime is expected to last a while or if there is a known cause. We would really appreciate the updates!

Blaze

New to the site...thanks to ScarletRose! I hope you will all give me a warm welcome here...I do play backgammon and a beginner at Chess (LOVE IT). I am from N California, USA just outside her capitol which is Sacramento. I think I am going to enjoy this site! Just wish the moves could be done faster...like on Dailygammon. Just an observation.
Be well,
~RaVen~ (Lily on Caissa, Warrior Queen on Dailygammon and Scorpion Queen on IYT)

thanks Brian and Kevin for the info :)