I appreciate everyone's patience with this situation. I have been hopeful that it would get straightened out on the host side but things aren't looking good.
We've taken a number of steps that have been helpful in the past but the results have been in vain. Most recently I migrated the database to another server (they are randomly assigned when a new database is created) but it did not result in a permanent improvement.
The issue is related to the disk access and wait times relative to the database. The database and the site/pages/code are different servers. One is fast, the other is not. This is why you'll see the home page quickly, it is static. The Who's Online page loads quickly because its database content is in-memory. When you hit a page that requires searching the database, we get sometimes excessive wait times.
We've had the same host for probably 5 or 6 years and issues like this were typically just temporary. This time its been an issue for weeks.
Moving to another host is an option but it is a laborious process. I'd like to make certain that its worth it before committing. As a money saving option we have prepaid our hosting and it is unclear if the refund would be favorable.
A senior member has offered to give us some space on a well managed server and we are actively exploring that option.
We try to do a lot on a small budget and my overall goal has been ensuring the long-term viability of the site. Given that our numbers will reduce and we will never run advertisements, eventually our meager donations will cease to be enough to support the site at the levels that you expect and we have historically delivered. Long-term viability means being frugal and maintaining reserves. We've done this by not overspending on hosting.
Those who tell us about how fast their site is, what they pay, etc., need to keep in mind that we serve about 600 million pages to 60,000 unique visitors per month. Roughly 2 million database queries per hour.
Although we're not on the cheapest plan, we are on the cheapest form of hosting, and that's shared hosting. We are always doing battle with other sites on the shared servers for the same resources.
There are steps that can be taken to be more efficient with our resources, and most have been done already, just short of improving the way the original board software queries the database. We will work towards optimizing this in the long-term.
For now I just want everyone to understand that we're doing our best with our limited time and resources and I thank those of you have come forward with assistance already.