FORUM ISSUE: Speed

[Niya]

Did anyone change the font settings on the forums ? All the text appears smaller now for some reason.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Did anyone change the font settings on the forums ? All the text appears smaller now for some reason.

You've got your glasses on backwards.

[RhinoBull]

Shaggy: you have to stop being so sarcastic, it's not funny... go to chit-chat...

Niya,
check your browser zoom ratio.

[dbasnett]

That is right Shaggy. Go directly to chit-chat, don't pass Go and do not collect $200.

[Niya]

You've got your glasses on backwards.

But its the new thing....All the cool kids are doing it

Niya,
check your browser zoom ratio.

I'm pretty sure its not that because every other site I'm accustomed visiting is unchanged.

[EDIT]

Actually, nevermind. You're right, it was the zoom. It seems it the zoom is site specific in FireFox ie it can use different zooms for different sites.

[Arve K.]

It has been a long while since the forum upgrade now, but the performance is still horrible. E.g. Facebook (or any major site) takes about 3-4 seconds to fully load, while this site use 10 to 30 seconds (sometimes much more, if it even load at all) until the quick reply editor is ready (apparently the last thing to load).

I would think this must be very frustrating for the heavy posters around here, unless they equipped with a whole lot more patience than me



Oh, and I suppose I should attach this as well..

[techgnome]

Or it could be just you... I've haven't had any performance issues for some time...

-tg

[Arve K.]

Yes, it could be, but it only affect this site and it I honestly don't remember having these issues before the update, so I don't know.. I do live quite a distance from the servers, but I don't belive that is a factor. But with all this said, I really do enjoy this forum, and I spend quite a lot of time here, even if I don't post much, that is why I want it to perform at its best

[DataMiser]

The site is much better than it was shortly after the upgrade but still slow and seems to be the ads that are the real issue. I have noticed several times in the status bar at the bottom where it is linking to other sites apparently to show the ad at the top and bottom and quite often they take a few seconds to several seconds to load and only then does the forum load up.

I see this with a few other sites too. Weather.Com has gotten horrible, even slower than it was before and quite possibly the slowest site I go to, whereas another vBulletin site I go to is almost instant on every page.


Edit apparently it is more than just the 2 ads I see, my ad blocker is blocking 3 others on every page but it still seems to try to connect to them.

[Shaggy Hiker]

For me, the performance issues that resulted from the upgrade are almost all gone. There are still occasional times when the Quick Reply box doesn't come up at all, but that is on the order of 2% of the time, or less. At times, I also see that duplicate post message (the actual message is that I have to wait 30 seconds between posts, but it means it tried to post the same thing twice), though this is both rare and clearly not randomly distributed. If I get a duplicate post message, then I'll be getting a few more. They seem to come in batches, which I assume is related to heavy traffic, though they aren't common enough for me to really care.

EDIT: Let me add that the forum comes up as fast as any other site, for me. It may be that ALL sites are slow for me, but the time seems to be around 2 seconds, or less, so it seems reasonable.

[Arve K.]

Well, ironically, the performance have been very good after that post, so hope it stays that way

[FunkyDexter]

Or it could be just you

No, I'm getting it to. It got better for a while but seems to be worsening again in the last few weeks. Sometimes it's nice and quick, sometimes it's dog-slow. And when it's slow it's consistently slow. And it seems to be slow more and more often. I suspect Brad's just getting tired of peddaling.

[dbasnett]

No, I'm getting it to. It got better for a while but seems to be worsening again in the last few weeks. Sometimes it's nice and quick, sometimes it's dog-slow. And when it's slow it's consistently slow. And it seems to be slow more and more often...

Me too.

...I suspect Brad's just getting tired of peddaling.

I bet we could get Lance Armstrong at a good price

[DataMiser]

If you are using firefox pay attention to the text in the far bottom left. It is almost always connecting to a web address to load an ad when it slows down. I think this shows in IE as well but not sure. It seems that in the ad rotation there are some that just take a long time to connect and load and that causes the whole site to slow down.

[szlamany]

There have always been evil ads - even from before the upgrade.

And I do believe the slowness is due to to factors - the ads - and the number of what appear to be bots search the forum. Look at Ifuser in "who's online" - they been sucking content out of the forum for weeks. Probably all going to China...

[nbrege]

There have always been evil ads - even from before the upgrade.

At least we no longer have to put up with those seriously annoying embedded links that popped up an ad whenever you accidentaly ran your cursor over them.

Regarding Firefox, I do see that it's connecting to ads, but they flash so fast I can barely read them ... it seems like the majority of the time it's saying "Waiting for www.vbforums.com" or "Transfering data from www.vbforums.com". Not sure how significant that is.
Also, when running Firefox with Adblocker enabled vs disabled, I cannot notice any difference in load times. My guess is that the vbforums servers are what's causing the slowness...

[DataMiser]

I think even when ad blockers are enabled that the data is still transferred just not displayed. As for the waiting on ads. When the page is slow so 10-20 seconds it is almost always waiting for a response from some other domain or more than one other domain. Rarely does it wait long on VBForums though sometimes it does

[brad jones]

I continue to work with our techs on slowness. Whey you guys yell and give examples, it makes it easier for me to get them to look at the issues. Some of the issues in the past were around the database. Others were around traffic and getting hit with some spammers. We've put lots of things in place to help with a lot of that.

I also know that some add-ins can cause issues. I stopped using IE because different add-ins were choking on things. I tend to use Chrome and Firefox a bit more (although I use all three and multiple versions since I need to see what is going on).

Overall, the site should be performing smoothly. If not, keep commenting. Stating what is in the status bar (which is causing the delay or being loaded) is hugely helpful.

As a note - I was out last week and am behind on PM and emails. Working to catch up with what's been reported and stated!

Brad!

[brad jones]

oh.... and why you don't want to hear this.... The intellitext (text ads that pop-up) are supposed to still be running here. They will be back. Sorry. Just being transparent so you aren't shocked when you see them return. They should not impact speed though. They are done with scripting after the page is loaded.

[dbasnett]

For the most part it is a lot better than two months ago (knock on wood). We appreciate your hard work.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I didn't realize the ads were gone. I guess they either didn't matter much, or they haven't been gone for long.

For me, all is well, and I, too, appreciate all the work.