Website takes too much to load

same here

everybody trying to download left 4 dead 2 since it's free until tomorrow, so yeah

I don't know the reason either, but it's happening to me as well. Often, I'll get a timeout.

At the risk of having anthrax mailed to me by the site's sysadmin, it sounds like SG's DB queries could do with some optimisation.

I'm pretty sure there are steam API hits for every load and so the sites are tied together somehow. +1 to psyren89's comment.

Things that (I guess) hit SG's DB:
Syncing account
Giveaway stuff (browsing, entering, filtering)

Separately:
Forum stuff
Commenting

Stuff that can be improved(?):
User's library list (not updated often) can be cached, should improve giveaway filtering performance
... or remove giveaway filtering altogether and point users to SGP
Lower maximum giveaway duration (less entries to track, smaller DB size?)
Cache/keep a counter of number of comments/entries on giveaways/forum threads if you don't already (so it doesn't have to be counted each time)
Enforce a minimum time between comments if you don't already

Dunno what else is possible. Bear in mind that I have very little knowledge of DBs, so someone more experienced than I could give more sound advice.

Yes it's a little bit slow and sometimes it times out and I have to refresh the page. Maybe because it's because of the high traffic?