Panic after AIMS' website overloads

AIMS Games director Vicki Semple said the overnight shutdown initially sent her "into panic". Photo / John Borren

Record-breaking numbers at this year's NZCT AIMS Games proved its popularity in the cyber world when an overload of visitors shut down the tournament's website.

The website was down for more than 16 hours this week after it was bombarded with people who tried to check the tournament updates, draws and media content.

The website crashed about 5pm Tuesday and was down until 9.45am yesterday.

AIMS Games director Vicki Semple said the overnight shutdown initially sent her "into panic", however, a back-up plan to send results and schedules via email and Facebook was put in place.

The computer processing usage (CPU) was exceeded by hundreds of thousands of units per second.

"The website was just overloaded, there were so many people going on to the site but it has really shown us how powerful and popular the tool really is," Mrs Semple said.

Mrs Semple consulted with the web host two weeks prior to the tournament beginning and was confident the site could handle heavy traffic.

"There's more than 8000 kids in the tournament so you think if both mum and dad go on then that's 16,000 people, then there's aunties and uncles and friends.

"There's thousands upon thousands of people using it."

Since the site was back up and running, it had received 1.89 million hits and 31,000 new visitors by yesterday afternoon, Mrs Semple said.

The website had been updated to cope and AIMS Games Facebook page is still active.