Another GAF downtime error: 16 Sep, 2009

There was a time when I used to talk about: how trusted GAF’s uptime is.

In fact, I wrote few posts where I mentioned that I personally have not seen much downtimes at GAF.

I used to work for 8+ hours at GAF and most of the time when I do not had any job to do, I just refreshed GAF’s main page in order to catch the newly posted projects: so if there was any downtime at GAF at that time, I would probably have noticed it.

Comparing that time to the present: it looks like GAF uptime has suffered a lot. Nowadays, I check my referral stats at GAF few times a day. It just takes few seconds: I just have to refresh one page.

Unfortunately, these days, I am seeing lots of errors/downtimes at GAF.

I have included the screenshots of the errors I got in the past in few other posts. Some of these errors are about database error or about site maintenance and things like that. Sometimes, just refreshing the page removes the error but sometimes, we need to wait for minutes/hours before the error vanishes and we get to see GAF online again.

Recently on 16 Sep, 2009, I saw another interesting error at GAF. This time it said something like “GAF server is under heavy load”.

First of all: the reason why I write about downtimes of freelance sites is that these downtimes are extremely dangerous for people who are working there.

In many ways, these downtimes can create problems. People can lose lot of money and possibly rating/ranking because of a freelance downtime. I will write a separate post where I will mention the effects of downtimes on freelancers.

Anyway, the new error may suggest that GAF now has lot of new members compared to the past and due to this increase of members, their servers are giving this error. If this is the case then I guess GAF support should work on upgrading their hosting plans in order to resolve this issue. May be they need a more powerful host.

Or maybe the recent changes made at GAF are increasing the load on servers. GAF used to have very simple design and features, but now more features have been added and the new design looks resource hungry.

In either way, GAF need to get a better host or upgrade their hosting plan in order to resolve this issue which can create lot of trouble for the users. Not solving this problem will have a negative impact GAF reputation.