I just wanted to let you know what the “CGI limits reached” is all about in case your customers are asking you…
The server is just a computer, and although computers are fast, they are not infinitely fast. So if several hundred customers are all clicking ‘refresh’ at the same time, it is just too many simultaneous queries, and the server throws up that error message. I’m actually quite pleased that the server is robust enough to keep chugging away at it and continue processing as best it can rather than crashing and dying. There’s nothing you or I can do to keep this from happening. It’s just too many customers trying to buy the same thing at the same time.
You can answer inquiries about whether a particular customer got an item or not by asking the customer to check her order history. If the item appears there, then she has successfully purchased the item. In addition, there is a link to the payment page listed in the table.
Oh, and one other thing I’ve been meaning to mention. HC can only prevent overselling on items where the quantity is set to 1. If you list something with qty higher than that, it should work under normal circumstances, but it is possible to oversell by one or two if there’s a lot of demand. So if you anticipate a hyena -frenzy, it’s best to list your items singly.
Thanks everyone!