I was able to log in, reminiscing the speeds of a media-heavy page over dial-up (for those who remember...). Then I got a fatal error trying to search. It took minutes to get to the error page.
I've spent more than I will admit to gain the privilege of using this crappy and now non-functioning site. I have points that will expire and am getting increasingly irritated.
I was suspicious of a 15-hour maintenance window, as serious firms keep such windows to 2-4 hours, NEVER planning for 15 hours of downtime. They didn't even properly intercept traffic and tell you the site was down. Saying it was 'intermittent' is ridiculous. An interactive website that serves a small percentage of page requests is not intermittent. It is down.
This should never have gotten this bad in the first place. The site keeps getting slower and slower through the years. I'm sure they have 100-page presentations explaining the history, which vendor or former staff's fault it was, long-range plans, and so on. The bottom line, a team has created and evolved a very weak tech stack and deployment configuration. This isn't even a high-volume website by any modern standard.
A consumer-facing issue lasting multiple days is a reason to replace a technology team and its leadership as soon as possible.