Forum slowing up?

I don't know about that, but I get a lot of problems lately where it just says "Something Has Gone Wrong"

Which is kind of dissappointing. The failure to hit a "return" and have it move to a new paragraph is also crazy annoying.

Matt-

I got that several times a few weeks ago, but haven't in the last two weeks or so.  Are you still getting it?

Richard-

We have a full upcoming engineering cycle dedicated to speed improvements so hopefully things should seem to be running faster over the next few weeks.  Is there anything specific that you can point to or is it just an overall slowdown?  

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattCR 

I don't know about that, but I get a lot of problems lately where it just says "Something Has Gone Wrong"

 

 

Which is kind of dissappointing. The failure to hit a "return" and have it move to a new paragraph is also crazy annoying.

Yes, it is.

Except for this time.

At times I have been trying to post a helpful reply to something and got so disgusted I'd just give up and move on to something else.  I never have posted a lot but now I have even less of a reason to post.  It's just not much fun anymore.

Please keep reports coming.  I don't want to sound like I am just paying lip service here, but the editor is currently our biggest push with engineering and they have told us its their highest priority at the moment.  The more examples we have the sooner we can get things fixed.

We want to get it working flawlessly worse than you.  No one should have to think about the editor, only about what they want to put into it .  We want HTF to be an enjoyable place.  I have started a new thread for you to report any editor issues:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/308982/editor-or-reply-box-problem-please-let-us-know#post_3783028

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattCR 

I don't know about that, but I get a lot of problems lately where it just says "Something Has Gone Wrong"

 

 

Which is kind of disappointing. The failure to hit a "return" and have it move to a new paragraph is also crazy annoying.

Matt, just a quick update.  I got a report from a moderator that they had seen this a lot recently too.  I did some checking with engineering and they said it has been happening for a few minutes a week and they are aggressively going after the root cause trying to get it taken care of.  If you see it again feel free to post here or send me a PM so I can follow up with them again. 

I've been getting the "Something has Gone Wrong" thing off and on all day.

I got it once this afternoon for a several-minute stretch.

It looks like it hit multiple Huddler sites at the same time.  They are looking into the root cause of this since it has been happening randomly over the last few weeks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich 

They are looking into the root cause of this since it has been happening randomly over the last few weeks.

Randomly -- and frequently.

Twice this morning as well... and sometimes the pages just sit and act like they are downloading.. and nothing.   Or they eventually do kick up.   Suddenly, switching forums is VERY slow

Just got home and decided to check in, and almost every page is taking between half a minute and a minute to load.

And I've seen several of the "Something has gone wrong" screens tonight...between  Midnight and 1am ET.

Don't really recall running into the other issues (and I've been using a mix of IE7 and IE8 and a slight dash of Firefox 3.6.x across 3 different Win XP machines), but yeah, the site has definitely gotten a good deal slower in the past week or so -- and seems to be getting a tad slower each day (or so it seems to me).

_Man_
 

Hmmm...  Something not so good I just realized -- and might be the cause of some of this recent forum slowdown -- is the site has now added another ad spot at the bottom of the right side panel area, and this spot is regularly including a flash ad.  So if we now always get at least one flash ad in that right side panel and possibly 2x that at times (on top of the banner ad that can also be flash), I can see why there's a site slowdown of late.

Maybe that new ad spot at the bottom of the right side panel isn't really all that new, but I never noticed it before until very recently.  And it does seem to consistently include a flash ad now -- and the slowdown I experience does seem consistent w/ the loading of ads.

IF HTF feels a need to have that additional ad spot, can we at least make sure it's not a flash ad for most parts of the site, except maybe the Home page?  I don't mind as much if the Home page takes a tad longer to load since I'd only hit it once or twice a day, but this slowdown is a serious drag for regular forum usage.

Also, now that I think of it, it's probably downright bad for every page hit to use up extra bandwidth (due to flash ads), etc. during the workday -- there could be serious repercussions w/ that (and/or you'll lose mucho traffic during the workday).

_Man_

I've noticed the slowdown issue over the past several weeks. Using a broadband connection, pages can take up to a minute to load, or even more. I keep thinking the forum must be down, but usually just about when I'm ready to give up and surf to a different site, the page pops in.

I've also had the "something has gone wrong" screens a few times, but not that many.

Just now it's pretty horrible, with the nearly minute-long page load times.

What's more, I was coming to this thread to post this very observation, and twice got:

The connection has timed out.

The server at www.hometheaterforum.com is taking too long to respond.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chas in CT 

Just now it's pretty horrible, with the nearly minute-long page load times.

What's more, I was coming to this thread to post this very observation, and twice got:

 

The connection has timed out.

The server at www.hometheaterforum.com is taking too long to respond.

Yeah, now that you mention that, I too have gotten that (or something similar) sporadically this past week or two.

Maybe I misunderstood earlier, but maybe that's what people meant about the "something has gone wrong" screens -- I thought that was refering to some sort of HTF/Huddler-specific error message that either said exactly that or something to that effect.

I'm basically getting sporadic, generic web browsing errors now and then...

And the additional flash ad spot (at the bottom of the right side panel) does seem to be at least part of the problem here...

_Man_

I just wanted to post a quick update.  We think we have fixed the issue generating the "something has gone wrong" error.  As to the performance issues, engineering has been doing a lot of work on the back end and is currently testing several fixes and tweaks that should have a noticeable performance benefit.  These fixes are currently being tested and assuming all goes well will hopefully be loaded in the next few days.  We appreciate your patience.

If anyone's still running IE7, I'd strongly recommend moving to IE8 -- I just finally got around to doing that on this work laptop I've been using at home despite (admittedly relaxed) company policy (to stick w/ IE7).  Seems to make a huge diff wrt the recent slowness of the site.  IE8 just seems to handle ongoing partial loading of pages (mostly due to images and Flash ads) much better w/out killing UI responsiveness -- and I noticed that IE7 seems to leak gobs of memory dealing w/ Flash (until one exits the browser), which just makes matters progressively worse, although IE8 might not be perfect at that either (and seems to have a very slow leak instead).

FWIW, I also find Firefox 3.6.x to be not so hot at dealing w/ these aspects.

_Man_

Thanks for the tip Man.  A lot of those issues you mention should improve with this next update. 

Tonight I've been getting this:

We're sorry, but there's been an error in our system, and we can't complete your request.

Please report this error to us, using our feedback system. Thanks! You can also go back and try again.  

We have a ping test that runs in the background and it looks like we were down for a bit last night after 10PM PT.  I'm not sure what the problem was, but I will be digging into it tomorrow.

Tony:  That's the error!!

Hmm haven't seen or heard any reports of this error for over a week.  I know engineering has been doing a lot of java performance work over the past 48 hours.  I'll run this up the flagpole to confirm its a one-time glitch or tied to the other work, and go research Rockmelt since I have never heard of it before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyD 



Just now Using Rockmelt browser.

Hmmm...  So that's actually what it says and looks like?

Don't recall ever actually seeing that one myself though I've seen some other effectively equivalent errors (a bit more often than usual) -- usually, I just get a (more) generic web/system error (using IE7 or IE8) instead rather than that, IIRC, though that seems to not happen to me as often as others who get that specific error.

_Man_

Thanks a lot Tony...Man wasn't ready to be brought into the circle.....