As you know, last night the server experienced some major issues again. Well today, I approached a person recommended to me by other people who run this same software. On the forum for IP.Board admins that I frequent, Gary is often mentioned as a savior.

Well, today he did just that for us. The problem last night wasn't that Cheers and Gears doesn't have enough server. No, in fact, the server we have is way more powerful than we really need. By my calculations, we could be 5 to 6 times our current size and traffic levels.... if the server is configured properly. Essentially, we have a Z-06 engine under the hood here.

And there in was our problem. I am an I.T. guy... but I'm not a Linux server specialist. My specialties are elsewhere. My bad habit of breaking C&G while trying to fix something on the server left me rather gun shy about configuring the server any more than what it comes with out of the box. Well what comes "out of the box" in a Linux web server is like a set of Pep Boy special 14" wheels and mechanical wooden brakes.

With all of that power combined with base model server configuration, it was only a matter of time till bad things started happening. My solution in the past was to simply throw more power at the C&G server until it worked right, but it was costing me a huge amount of money for way more power than we should need.

After last night's crash, I'd had enough. I knew that we had way more power than was needed to run a site of our size and traffic.. and I wasn't going to just throw more power at it anymore.

Enter Gary. Now guys, this is where I want you to read. Gary does these repairs and tuneups for people on a completely donation basis. He asks no up front fee. All he asks is that people donate back to him relative to the level of service improvement they see.

Gary worked for over 9 hours today, with almost no notice, first repairing our database, then tuning up the server to properly utilize its power, installing additional software that will enhance our speed, and installing a circuit breaker to prevent any one thing from bringing down the entire site. In short, both our speed and reliability will be like nothing C&G has ever had before. Gary has also offered to come to our rescue again should the need arise.

Because of Gary's efforts, we will now be able to slash our server costs nearly in half. For the next few months, I will be sending him that half of our savings.

I hope you all will leave Gary a note of thanks here and if you can spare $5 or $10, that you might send him some monetary thanks via paypal for his efforts here today.

You can paypal him at GaryThomasUK at talktalk dot net - Format it as a proper email address before you send, I did it that way so he doesn't get flooded with spam.

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Thanks Gary, we appreciate this

Done. Gary, thank you for your hard work. This is my home away from home... my outlet after work. I appreciate you helping out and keeping it running smoothly for us!

Thank you Gary!!

Done. Great to hear this. My experience w/ Unix/Linux has been that someone w/ deep skill esp. in tuning is worth their weight in gold (cliche, I know).

Well, gold is $1,685 per ounce, guessing Gary at 180lbs means we owe him about $4,852,800..... give or take...

Gary you're one hell of a dude.

Thank you Gary!

Huge thanks, Gary.