On Friday evening I added a fix for Auction Sidebar Tool on the server.  Although it's still too early to tell for sure, I successfully ran the gadget all day Saturday with no issues retrieving feedback score, searching or viewing items.  Fingers crossed everyone and please let me know if these problems have disappear for you or if they are still as bad as ever.

 That all being said, our server is still having issues.   We're still working hard to fix these issues, read on for more details.

 This is the email I received from Robert Arrowsmith of Revolution Hosting:

Hi Andy.

I just wanted to update you on the server status and the problems we're seeing.

Firstly, we've made a change to the way the server handles connections from clients. We hope this will cope better with the huge number of connections we're seeing. Secondly, the server wasn't actually down at all. Its been struggling with the load and, while some users will get connections to the server, many will see problems connecting. This is due to the way your client software polls the server for a connection. If a client fails for some reason to connect, the software sends far too many reconnect requests. Other users trying to connect get blocked and also send far too many connection requests. From there on the problem just snowballs and we see server-down messages approximately every half hour (because our server monitor fails to get a connection).

If you can modify your client software to use a random-time-period connection request you might find people can connect and use the client.

Please let me know if there is any other information you need.

Best Regards,

Robert Arrowsmith
Revolution Hosting, LLC

Unfortunately, we can't see any way in which we can change how connections are made to the server.  There are some things we can try but ultimately we're working on a new version of Auction Sidebar Tool that will make more requests directly to eBay and less through our servers.  We're hoping to have the new version ready this week so please keep an eye out for the update notification.

I'd like to apologize again for the issues Auction Sidebar Tool has had these past few months.  Thank you to all our users who have stuck with us, patiently awaiting a solution.