NATCHEZ —  Scheduled server maintenance will briefly interrupt service on natchezdemocrat.com early Thursday morning.

Once completed, the server upgrades should alleviate sluggish response times some users have experienced during peak traffic times.

“We expect the downtime to be minimal, likely less than one hour,” said natchezdemocrat.com Publisher Kevin Cooper. “We apologize for the temporary outage and are working hard to ensure the site’s performance improves.”

The website regularly hosts approximately 10,000 visitors per day, Cooper said, though that number can spike when big news breaks.

“During last year’s flooding and this year’s prison riot, traffic tripled and our servers were struggling to keep up with the demand,” he said. “People know to turn to us when news happens and these technology improvements will make their experience even better.”