FORUM ISSUE: Speed

[DataMiser]

I haven't gotten a DB error for a few days now, still a bit slow at times but seems better than last week.
I still get the message asking if you want to navigate away from this page when doing a quick reply and I am still seeing the top part of the page displayed in plain text mode from time to time.

[Niya]

I got a time out a while back but aside from that, it is performing quite well today, not as perfect as it should but better.

[Niya]

My posts are being acknowledged in a blink now hehe

[DataMiser]

Not so good this morning, Took me about 10 tries to get this page to load, all I was getting was the ad at the top then it would just hang. Control panle showed up after 3 tries but had the little yellow ! in the corner and some of the icons and links were missing from the page.

[Niya]

Ya its performing poorly today and the icons for the reply text box aren't showing up now.

[DataMiser]

I'm seeing a lot of pages now loading most of the way then hanging. In this case everything is displayed except the reply icons, the progress bar is showing about 99% loaded and the browser is still trying with 17 items remaining. Make that 16 items now. It appears that maybe it would complete if I let it sit long enough but at this rate would take 10 minutes to complete.

Edit: I reloaded the page and waited for it to complete. It slowed to a crawl with 25 items remaining. It looked like all 25 of them were png files for icons and buttons. It took 8 minutes for these 25 items to complete and then once the page had completed the icons are still missing for the replay window, the rate, report multi quote and other such icons that would be on each post are not there. Quick reply window is also missing the icons. May be others that I haven't noticed.

Edit 2: I noticed after I posted that section of the menu where you would find Settings is also missing on the last several pages I have tried to load.

[techgnome]

"the menu where you would find Settings is also missing on the last several pages I have tried to load." --- look up under the ad in the upper right corner... that's where it's run off to an is hiding... sometimes its ontop of the ad, otehr times behind it.

-tg

[DataMiser]

LOL, Yeah it is all the way at the top behind the ad, totally hidden right now.

[nbrege]

Performance is extremely poor today & I'm getting timeout errors. Just when I thought things were back to normal...

[techgnome]

same here...

[brad jones]

Thanks guys - we are looking into the issue.

[brad jones]

I was told the servers were back to operational levels. Let me know if it still seems slow, or if you are still getting DB errors again. Report only new stuff from this point forward.

(This post didn't seem exactly zippity.... )

Brad!

[techgnome]

well, I got another DB error... about 30 seconds ago (and a few more prior to that trying to view trheads) trying to view my new subscriptions using the "Settings" link ... I will say this... when it reports a "DB Error" ... it happens fast ... usually hitting refresh will clear it up... this time I had to refresh twice.

-tg

[nbrege]

Yes, getting lots of database errors now & formatting issues ... have to refresh 2 or 3 times.

[thebuffalo]

I just got a DB error, but it is loading pages faster when I don't get it. Also got a DB error first time trying to post this.

[Magic Ink]

It is a shame that a site dedicated to IT issues seems to have been victim to an IT disaster like the ones we hear about most days in the news. It is a poor reflection of our industry. For God's sake get it fixed or restore to a backup of the old site software, if you have one.
I wonder if it will work when I click Post Quick Reply just now.
It did!

[Shaggy Hiker]

This is how bad it is: I tried repeatedly refreshing this very page. The first two times, it took a long time, but I didn't time them. They took so long that I started timing, and here are the restults:

First Attempt: Time to load was 1 minute 8 seconds. How lucky I was!

Second Attempt: Time to load was 2 minutes 20 seconds before the Quick Reply was useable, though the Quick Reply icons still hadn't loaded.
Third Attempt: Time till I gave up was 2 minutes 40 seconds, by which time the Quick Reply icons were up, but the textbox wasn't there, so it wasn't useable.
Fourth Attempt: After 2 minutes 12 seconds, without the page loading, I inadvertently hit a button and brought up Google Earth, which loaded in a couple seconds, as every other site I have visited does.

Fifth Attempt: Wrote this while I waited. The page flashed on the screen at 34 seconds, then went away. Page popped up after 6 minutes 15 seconds, but the Quick Reply hadn't loaded at all, and was still trying.

Sixth Attempt: Page popped up after 35 seconds, though Quick Reply, avatars, and many other icons hadn't shown. Quick reply box without icons was useable by 1 minute 36 seconds. Gave up and posted this at 2:20, having decided that Quick Reply would probably never finish loading.

Basically, the performance is the worst I have ever seen. At least when it was screwing up routinely, it was doing it reasonably fast.

[dunfiddlin]

Absolute nightmare today! I've had replies timed out and lost, non-refreshing pages and now half the interface is missing. It's by far the worst day I've had so far.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Let me also add that the poor performance does not appear to be random. I can do whatever I want until I post a reply. The first reply is often pretty quick, the second may or may not be, but in short order I get to a quick reply that doesn't refresh the screen...EVER. If I close the browser and open a new session, the post is there, so that part is happening, but I can't navigate off the page to anywhere else in VBF by any means. Sometimes, if I do navigate, the new page will come up after a couple minutes, if I am willing to wait that long, but I just had a situation where, after my second reply, the browser neither navigated elsewhere, nor timed out, in well over five minutes.

It does seem like you always get one. However, once the slowdown begins, the only way to make the site useable, if you can call it that, is to close the browser and open a new one. Using IE9, it appears that this means closing IE and opening a whole new browser, not just a new tab, though I haven't tried the latter enough to be certain.

[thebuffalo]

I am not having any problems with the quick reply, I did notice though what Shaggy was saying about after Posting the reply, I wait about 5 minutes to see if it brings me to the thread but it doesn't so I exit out and come back, sure enough the post I made is there.

Pages are loading in about 20-40 seconds for me now, haven't really been moving around the site much this morning, will probably edit in more later.

Okay I used a Quick Reply to post here and experienced no problems, but I just went to use it again to post in "The iPhone 5" thread and the page locked up after I clicked Post Quick Reply, it took about 1 minute 45 seconds to navigate back to the thread with my new post.

[techgnome]

Today (so far) is probably the best I've seen it in a while... hopefully that's a trend that will continue.

-tg

[dbasnett]

I have been away from vbforums for some time. When I came back the first thing I noticed is how slow it is, and how many problems there seem to be. Until I was able to get this post to show(refresh several times) I did not realize how bad it was. Hope it gets fixed soon.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Your absence has been noted.

Frankly, it is doing quite a bit better since I posted my complaints back on Sept 26th. There are still occasional slowdowns, especially when posting a reply. However, they are much less frequent than they were (it doesn't happen every time, but about 1 in 10, or so), and I seem to remember this happening occasionally back in the old version, too, so things are certainly getting better.

[brad jones]

Membership list should now be back on.

Brad!

[Niya]

Membership list should now be back on.

Brad!

Ah Cool

[Shaggy Hiker]

Membership list should now be back on.

Brad!

That explains it. I was wondering why I kept falling over.

By the way, the performance seems to keep on improving, so I'm pretty happy by now.

[DataMiser]

In general the site is working much better, I have had a few instances where I click on my link to the settings page and it will take a minute or more before the page loads but it is not happening as often now. Still having some issues with the quick reply and reply functions, sometimes they take from a few to several seconds to be ready for typing and other times a refresh is required. Most times they are now taking me back to the thread though it may take 10-20 seconds but other times they just hang for up to 2-3 minutes so somethig is still not working right.

On the other forum I mention also using vBulletin I posted a few quick replys this morning and they all took less than 1 second. It seemed almost instant. Would be awesome to get that type of performance here.

[dbasnett]

Your absence has been noted...

Really?

I have been trying to learn PHP and mysql, and soon java. I am lost often.

[techgnome]

Did something happen last night? so far the forums has been pretty responsive... quickest I've seen it since the upgrade at least, and posting no longer take so long that I get bored and wander off... it could be because it's still early yet too... but even for this time of the day, things are looking good to me.

-tg

[dbasnett]

It took me over 2 minutes to load this page.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Really?

Every time somebody posts a Serial Port question, I think: Now where's dbasnett gone to....

Now I know where: You're off experimenting with drugs. PHP and Java, indeed!

[dbasnett]

@Shaggy - Funny as ever I see. I thought my experimenting days were over Did you take your yearly hiking trip?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Yeah. The performance got so miserable towards the end of August (it actually was really bad right after the upgrade, but the rate of improvement was high initially, then declined), that I decided to walk across CT, MA, and into NH for three weeks. I was expecting that by the time I got back all would be well. Apparently, I didn't go away quite long enough, though, because the performance was horrible when I returned, as you can see by my posts in this thread. However, in my case, I have seen such an improvement in the last two weeks that I have no complaints any longer.

Perhaps the key is that the forum has to "warm up" to you? Maybe I'm getting a frequent flyer bonus?

[dbasnett]

It was very slow for this morning, but is better now. Did you walk to the right coast?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Nope, I flew out there, then walked north from pretty near the coast.

[nbrege]

Performance is off today & I'm getting timeouts & DB errors. Anyone else?

[Niya]

Performance is off today & I'm getting timeouts & DB errors. Anyone else?

Ya I got a DB error earlier today.

[techgnome]

Mixed results in jsut browsing around today... mostly good... posting on the other hand... my ADD wants to kick in and I start to wander off.

-tg

[Niya]

For the most part the site works good but at times it just stalls out, indefinitely waiting for a response from the server.

[DataMiser]

Sometimes the quick replay window does not complete and requires a refresh to be able to use it. The drop down for the color selection is quite agravating sometimes I will have to click it 4 or more times before the color selection grid shows.

In general it is working better than before but still having some issues with pages talking to long to load mostly when trying to post or reply but sometimes when just trying to view a post.