PvP- As Drew said, it's most likely the party. Could you try it without being in a party and tell us if that works?
Spawners - I believe the mobspawning-routine was actually changed for several reasons. I think there should be some threads around for that topic that explain it a little more in detail.
Wheat - Did you check the lightlevel on those spots, is it high enough to trigger wheatgrowth? Especially when playing with maximum brightness in the video settings you can easily miss such dark spots.
Lag (Server) - i didn't notice anything in the last couple of days (european connection, current Provider: Orange), but I'm still used to the asian connection I played on the last years (mining every 2nd block 4 times before it's gone) , so in comparison probably everything seems lag free to me now. I haven't been much in the miningworld lately though. Might be interessting to know if the problems occur to customers of certain providers/regions.
Site - It has been down a couple of times, the redirection error might however be a different issue. It might happen because of
- a redirection loop on the site (something only an admin could fix, that problem should however affect more users if it were the case here)
- a plugin-problem in your browser (especially some adobeplugins tend to cause it)
- or in the best (easiest to resolve) case a corrupted cookie
(no that's not the ones who don't have choclatechips). You could try deleting your Noobstown-cookie (or simply all cookies), it might help with this error.