Same story, different actors.

WinCustomize gets slow, flakey, etc.  We fix problem with new code or new server. Site gets faster. Traffic increases. Then the next item on the list of things that causes pain comes to a head and the site gets slow, flakey, etc.

The good news is that we have a quad dualcore 64-bit server with 12 gigs of RAM to be the new MASTER database server which all the clustered machines answer to.  The bad news is that it will take a couple of weeks to make that migration.

We're trying different things so that the overall experience on the site is smoother while we get the new mega server up.  This weekend, we're turning off personal pages to see what impact that has.  We will be interested in hearing whether the site performs better for users with that feature disabled temporarily.

Also, users have asked about the status of the GUI Championships.  We originally planned to do this in March but the website issues that have been cropping up have taken precedence.  We don't feel that we should take on doing a major multi-site contest like that until we get our house here in order.  The plan is to do this later this summer. 

We also plan to soon have an IRC meeting to fill people in on what we think the next step in skinning is likely to be now that we're fully briefed on Windows Vista and have a good handle on what can be done with it (lots of interesting things).  We'll announce a time shortly.