25 simultaneous connections is nothing. No doubt button.php would hit that limit quickly considering it makes queries for your members visitors as well.
With your current configuration you have outgrown your hosting account, you can disable pagevew counting to reduce your simultaneous query...
If you have clean URLs enabled in admin settings, you need to make sure you have uploaded the .htaccess file that was included with the download bundle.
Otherwise disable clean URLs.
Also make sure you update paths in the menu manager as instructed when enabling or disabling clean URLs
so the javascript is just not returning live status... can you ensure you updates all the files in the 1.2 bundle? it sounds like you have some old files being referenced in the admin panel.
@top50servers more info please since this is a very different result.
Are you using SMTP or mail() function?
do you have an email address that is not a real address on one of your members?
what does your javascript console report?
no error logs? that would be a first, all servers have an error log.
I have tried to duplicate this issue on 3 different lists but it always works fine for me, email results are shown in real time.
hmm child templates should work no matter what the server environment, unless you have group/ownership issues.
Does your server meet our current requirements? Can you ask your host if your using a DSO php handler or suPHP/fastCGI? You can also login via FTP and look at the ownership of all...
hmm very odd indeed, lets try to narrow it down.
Try placing just XXX in your ad_break_top template and see if it shows up and YYY in your ad_break template. Templates should probably be edited at /skins/yourskin/child/