Increased traffic brings down UCC News site

UCC webmaster Daniel Hazard says only the news site (news.ucc.org) was affected.
The main denominational website (www.ucc.org) and the service providing
streaming video from General Synod continued to operate.

Hazard says the UCC news office expected increased traffic during this General
Synod and purchased increased bandwidth to allow additional users to access news
and information. But the volume of visitors Monday exceeded all expectation.

Some speculated that some of those 30,000 web visitors Monday were among the more than 10,300 who used another part of the UCC website to search for a church. The total searches conducted on all previous days of synod were just over 4,100.

According to Hazard, fewer than 10,000 Internet users visit the website on an average Monday. By 6 p.m. Monday, the number of visitors reached almost 30,000. The first outage was at 9 a.m. and lasted about five minutes. A longer crash of about an hour began at approximately 2 p.m., after General Synod approval of same-gender marriage.

Hazard says most of today’s hits are from news websites providing a link to the UCC news site. More than 7,500 persons viewed the Monday morning plenary through
the streaming video service. The total of all streaming video requests for
previous Synod sessions was approximately 10,000.