First slow web site of 2013 spotted…

At 09:30 on 1st January, as the country stumbled, bleary-eyed into 2013, people’s thoughts naturally turned to New Year’s resolutions. At the top of the list were the usual decisions to eat or drink less. Cancer Research UK has capitalised on this by launching their “dryathlon”.

Would be “dryathletes” are encouraged to sign up and pledge to abstain from drinking alcohol for January. As well as raising awareness of alcohol-related illnesses, the objective is to encourage people to donate their “beer money” to charity.

When, I tried to sign up for this it was obvious that I wasn’t alone. The site seemed slow compared to other websites at that time and part way through the registration procedure I saw this error message.Gateway timeout

I persevered and after a few “page refreshes”, I was able to register. Then I encountered problems with the page that populated the related page on Justgiving.com .

HTTP 500 error

Despite this, I’m pleased to say that my registration was successful. I only hope that this example of poor web performance didn’t dissuade too many people from joining this worthwhile cause.

If you’re feeling inspired to donate, please visit my JustGiving page here.
http://www.justgiving.com/dryathlete-richard-bishop

Author: Richard Bishop

http://about.me/richard_bishop