I hate to see this happen but seems it's coming if they don't get the site going right. We have all been patient in waiting for them to get things going. Very sad, it's such a nice place to meet new friends and share our lives with each other.I don't know of any other sites like SBF, and will miss it,and viewing all the gorgeous pages that we all post on here. Hurry SBF before it's too late:(

Joce I agree - The whole site is like waiting for paint to dry!!!!!!! Im sick of error messages - support keeps saying they know of all this but so far dont seem to be doing anything to sort it out. Members are leaving all over - fewer pages uploaded each day. Ive been a member for 8 years and never know anything like this before xxxxx

We have been watching the site closely and knew exactly how it got slow down. We have passed all information to our Internet Service Provider (ISP) as it is for sure caused by the network, not our server. We have to wait for them to fix the issue. Thank you very much for being so patient.

Thank you support - lets hope its sorted sooner rather than later xxxxxx

For Support
Well it took me almost an hour to vote on 8 pages this pm!! Couldn't even get into my home page this morning so gave up on everything.

From just my experiences - this has been going on for 5 months at least with the server errors, etc. If it is your Internet Provider that is the problem, which you have eluded to several times now & I doubt, why in the world wouldn't you have switched by now?? COs wouldn't put up with this if such problems existed for them. Folks change ISP's today like underwear!
Sorry don't mean to be crusty but my patience is wearing a little thin

Well done Mimi yes that is all so true. Our son is a system analyst/programmer and he says it's a problem fairly easily fixed. Change your ISP and demand better service.

Decided to give the site a try this morning (NZ time)- yes not too bad getting into my page, challenges, forum. BUT then I tried to get into my Message Centre to vote and comment - After ages and 4 error messages I gave up - then had trouble signing out of the site.
Sorry everyone but I won't be commenting on your pages today.
I have sent Support screenshots of the error messages for all the good it will do!!!!!!

Showed my son the error messages (he is a programmer/systems analyst) and he says it is quite plainly coding errors - the code needs to be checked and redone. It should be a straight forward problem to fix seeing as they have the error messages to guide them. First time up today it went quite well thought things were fixed but then I got the error messages 3 times and everything went to custard!!!!!!
Has support and administration deserted us are they happy to see us all leaving??? Please let us know how things are going!!!!

Please understand that the error message was caused by the missing data which could not be fetched in time due to the performance. We have been working with our Internet Service Provider for this issue, because it is mainly caused by their network performance. It is even harder during the long weekend.

Sorry but this has been going on for months and a long weekend should have no bearing on the work to fix the problem. If they know what the problem is then why hasn't it been sorted before now - obviously it is not a priority to them but it certainly is to us. Thank you support for your answer.

Yesterday morning 5th was a nightmare- It was like trying to knit fog even getting SBF to load in the first place - Then no way could I get into my home page - had 3 tries then it eventually opened - then I couldn't get into the massage centre!!!!! I gave up in the end................... Had another go in the evening and got on a little better but nowhere near good.
Today 6th. is a little better except for the long wait between flipping through pages ..............got the dreaded XML data message several times ......PLEASE SUPPORT GET THIS SORTED OUT QUICKLY OR ELSE SBF WILL BE NO MORE BECAUSE EVERYONE WILL BUGGER OFF FOR GOOD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From 9:00am to 4:00pm today, we have being monitoring the site performance from three different places (in California, Illinois and Rhoade Island). Every hour, several major pages were opened once for timing. The longest single page response time is 21 seconds, all from CA and happened 5 times. Overall average response time is 3.643 seconds. All places are using either cable or high speed DSL. We will run the same testing periodically.

I hope you are going to run tests for the rest of the world - remember that this site is a world wide site not just US. I'm in New Zealand and I have high speed ultra-fast fibre broadband and I get problems all the time. It's not the individual systems and servers at fault it's SBF's server that needs sorting so that everyone world wide can get the fast action times. Also I am using the site when you are all asleep up there in the Northern Hemisphere!! It does not run that fast down here!!!!

I am in the UK - I have TalkTalk broadband and use Chrome as my browser............Its still very slow here today and still getting the """ SBF says - There was a problem retrieving the XML data""" Our page response here is much higher than you have tested, For me its minutes rather than seconds ????????

I started on SF in 2007 back then things were pretty simple, except I was just a beginner. I dont really participate hardly anymore, just because I kinda lost interest.....now I started checking back in to see the latest downloads, contributed by designers for free, hardly ever any new ones, maybe SF should have kept it simple, creating paid for accounts instead in addition to basic free accounts...... sometimes people fix things that arnt broken. Sad. Hoping all the people who have become friends will get each others personal email or fb page info to remain in contact. No reason why a site like this should have such issues in 2016.

I started on SF in 2007 back then things were pretty simple, except I was just a beginner. I dont really participate hardly anymore, just because I kinda lost interest.....now I started checking back in to see the latest downloads, contributed by designers for free, hardly ever any new ones, maybe SF should have kept it simple, creating paid for accounts instead in addition to basic free accounts...... sometimes people fix things that arnt broken. Sad. Hoping all the people who have become friends will get each others personal email or fb page info to remain in contact. No reason why a site like this should have such issues in 2016.

Even though I don't get on here as often as I would like I would feel so lonely having to leave .I've made some luvly friends here..

I so agree. I know so many people now world wide and I enjoy the contact with them all so I'm hanging in there and hoping that the site improves. At the moment it is so inconsistent - good one day and then slow and error ridden the next. It's been so long now and still they can't fix it.

I too am hanging in there for the sake of friends made here but just don't have the time to attempt uploading a page over and over again. Hoping it gets sorted out soon.

All,

We are so sorry about all the technical issues on the site. We believe we have found the issues and we are working to fix them. See my post in the Editor's Forum Technical Issues string for more details.

Thanks so much for your patience as we work to fix the issues on the site.