Up until just now I thought the terrible slowdown in the time following a contest opening was due to SOOO many users looking at stuff at the same time.

But..there are only 7 people on right now (plus a few guests I suppose)

That doesnt seem like a lot of traffic to me ?

I haven't been around right at contest opening time lately Gran, so I haven't seen what you're talking about, but I imagine it has something to do with the old contest being processed into stats, as well as some other things being processed in the background.

cheers