Forum slowing up? - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich 

Man wasn't ready to be brought into the circle.....

  That explains it!  

_Man_

I get this a lot:

I know it's just a blank page but notice the icon in the address bar is not the normal one.

I can usually go back and try again and it works but it is annoying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve_Pannell 

I get this a lot:

 

 

I know it's just a blank page but notice the icon in the address bar is not the normal one.

I can usually go back and try again and it works but it is annoying.

Steve-

Is that just in that specific thread or other threads as well? 

Quote:

Originally Posted by WaveCrest 

I've found Firefox better to use than IE7. I was told on the web a long time ago that Internet Explorer contains bugs. The pages here were downloading a bit quicker a fortnight ago. But these last couple of days they've been taking longer to appear again.

 

Would several threads for the same topic cause bandwidth problems, making the forum pages download and appear slower? For example, in the TV on DVD folder on the HTF, there is an existing thread for Mannix and Hawaii Five-O. But separate season threads have been started for both (Season 4 for the former, and Seasons 9 & 10 for the latter).

Richard-

For better or worse all browsers contain bugs.  Your best bet is for whatever browser you opt to use (Firefox, IE, etc) that you use the most current version.  So IE8 (soon to be 9) would be more stable than IE7.

Multiple topics shouldn't cause bandwidth problems.  We are working on ways to improve the speed.  Making sure you have the latest browser version helps too.  For Firefox that's version 3.6.15

I have FF 4.0b12 that is a beta trial version. It is super buggy so don't go looking for it. I havent been using it much.

.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adam Gregorich 

Steve-

Is that just in that specific thread or other threads as well? 

 

Happens in random threads.

FYI, I'm using Windows Vista, Firefox 3.6.15 & HughesNet Satellite.

HughesNet is usually ok but some days does some unexpected things so I'm willing to believe that it could have something to do with satellite downlink or something.  Maybe not likely but who knows?
 

Just blame it on Vista(!).  Vista's just like K-Mart...  it sucks!

_Man_

Quote:

Originally Posted by WaveCrest 

Could there be less traffic on here today? The forum dosen't seem to be at a snail's pace with pages loading up at the moment.

Are you complaining about the rather low posting traffic?  OR that the site is slow to load?  I'm not sure which one.

I'd glad take somewhat slower load times if it's actually caused by an influx of forum regulars who actually actively participates here, which we sorely need...

FWIW, site performance doesn't seem any slower than usual for me.  Maybe there was some slowdown earlier after the new poll contest (w/ Amazon GC prize) was put up?

_Man_
 

The site seems pretty snappy most the time to me. I use Chrome on the Mac. I haven't noticed any slow downs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WaveCrest 

First of all, I have nothing against more posters on here. In my last post I was asking whether there was less traffic earlier because pages on the forum weren't taking so long to load up. The more posters the merrier. The thread as a whole has been a question about whether the forum has been slowing up.

Aaaah...  So you weren't saying the site just got slower (again) today then I guess.

This thread is old (although maybe it's hard to tell since traffic is so slow these days and threads remain near the top for ages), and the discussion kinda ended more than 3 weeks ago, so when you suddenly posted that comment, I thought you meant it got slower again today...

I'd add though that the site is certainly not "snappy" for me (and probably many others).  It's only tolerable, especially for a forum site, but nothing to be proud of.  For one thing, I still think HTF should do everything possible to cut down on Flash ads here, especially since a new one got added to the bottom of the right side panel a little while back -- I sometimes end up w/ 3 Flash ads on a page, which is really a very BAD thing for a forum site.

_Man_

We have been doing some performance tweaks lately and we killed a bug earlier this week that was causing some pages to load more slowly than they should.  That may be what you were seeing.

I surf the HTF on two different PCs.

One is a brand new laptop with the latest bells and whistles.  On it, the forum speeds right along.

But the other PC is an older Pentium 4 with about 750mg RAM.  Each HTF page takes a while to load.  I often have to wait for the page to load before I can enter a response.  This did not use to be the case until recently.  Since there has been very little change to that PC, I expect the forum is demanding more of it.  In particular, it seems as if it is the images which are holding things up for the page loads. 

I use Chrome for Mac, and i also have an ad block. The site is nice and quick on Chrome, i assume because i do not have to wait for the Flash ads to load. But, if i use Safari it is damn slow. As a matter of fact, everything that uses Flash is slow with Safari.

Site is VERY slow today and the reply box is back to messed up

It has seemed normal to me all day today. I haven't seen any real slowdown.

I have ALWAYS had issues with this forum's software, and each "upgrade" seems to pile on more problems rather than fix the old ones. Some examples:

1. This Forum seems to log me out more frequently than any other.  Usually, I can go years on some forums without a login-glitch, but it seems that if I go a stretch of a week, maybe two without logging in here, upon loading a Forum page, I find that I'm not logged in.  Placing the cursor in the upper-right Login box, I often cannot type anything for a while, sometimes having to move the mouse and click in the box several times before it takes.  THEN, the word underneath doesn't go away - it just stays there while I type my name in the User ID box.  Tabbing over to the password box also doesn't work sometimes, and the "dots" also print overtop of whatever's there.  Those little things are annoyances, but at least it usually works.

2. Lately, when I click on the "take me to the first new post in the thread" icon (the little green arrow to the left of the thread title), the forum has been very slow to react.  After a seeming long time, the top of the last page loads, and if the actual first new post is way down the page, it seems to take forever for the new page that's loaded to actually move its focus to the first new post.  Sometimes it NEVER does, and I have to manually scroll down.  This seems to have always worked strangely, but it's gotten worse lately.

3. Whenever I load a thread (for the last number of months), I get an Internet Explorer information bar at the top of the screen with an exclamation mark in a yellow/orange shield with the message: "An add-on for this website failed to run. Check the security settings in Internet Explorer for potential conflicts."

4. For as long as I can remember, even back on the old vBulletin version of the forum, I've gotten either an exclamation mark in a shield in the bottom status bar, or, in the old days, a message of "Done, with errors."

5. Email notifications are spotty at best.  It used to be that if I was subscribed to a thread from years ago and someone updated it, I'd get a nitice in my email.  Now I NEVER get one of those.  I only get emails for recent threads I've participated in - and only IF I've visited the Forum since the last set of emails.

I hope this information helps.  I'd love for this forum to have better response times and to act the way it logically should, and am listing these in the hopes that it does help.

Harry

No idea if you can go back to v3.6, but that's what I'm still using right now on my main PC at home -- well, it's actually v3.6.1x -- although I've been thinking about upgrading since I do find 3.6 to be annoying slow, particularly for HTF.

_Man_