New Features and Changes

Is this website too slow?

Please respond to this poll. It is open to all members. We need input to determine a course of action if it is necessary. Please no bickering or rude comments. We are working to improve your experience on the site without removing any features. We are aware that some features may be slowing down the website. If you feel your Internet connection has a problem, please do not vote! It is important that we obtain a valid assessment. Rest assured, we are also using other methods including some database benchmarking and load testing to determine page load times.

Mike,

The only lag I experience is when I'm posting a new thread. It's not that bad.

All other functions are fine.

The only lag I experience is when I haven't had my morning coffee... Link Removed

I had to reply yes as over the past few months since i joined in December I have experienced various issues with speed and resolving of pages

some of them I have put down to DNS\router changing which is due to BT at my end and their server software ?

others have been harder to attribute to anything but whenever they happen i run some quick comparisons which leave me sure it's this forum at that time , there have been times I have to wait 30 to 120 secs or more to post which seem like database problems and another occasion where the forum scroll went sticky .........

most of the other speed issues I have put down to user load and adverts which I am confident you are working towards solving

Everything seems fine on my end.. Fast and feature rich!

Response and Update

Here is some additional information:

The reality of the situation is that the server, for the most part, is absolutely fine. The website itself, however, is operating on a level slower than normal. A preliminary report shows this is due to 460 database queries per second being initiated on the database. This means the server is expending all of its resources serving up queries. And while that response is quick, we are on the cusp of what can be considered an overload.

Because the database is using up this much processing power, this makes the web server itself slower to load pages. Those page loads are delayed for delivery for several seconds since so much database activity is taking place. There are some ways for us to solve this problem -- and one way of doing so is to lessen the load on the database. This could be accomplished by identifying the queries per page and trying to lower them by removing unnecessary features.

But before we do that, we are currently working on internal optimizations which may help "lighten the load". There is no danger of the server becoming inaccessible or extraordinarily slow, as we could still serve, in all likely-hood, double the number we are serving today. It would be then that this would become a major problem.

People claiming to see artifacts on the screen or discussing some major, extreme slowdown must be getting a bad route to the website or there is an Internet connection problem to the site. This is a an extremely small, but very vocal minority, which equates to about .01% of the visitors we get on a daily basis. The reality is, anyone with broadband, and not dialup, has probably noticed a small to moderate slowdown of the site. Part of this is because we have doubled the number of features in the last 6 months, and the number of visitors has grown to nearly 1.5 million unique a month.

Rest assured the problem will be solved soon enough.

An update has been applied to improve this situation. The results will be posted soon.

Preliminary Results Show Vastly Improved Website Performance

Preliminary results show a 50% reduction in CPU usage and a 50%-80% reduction of load averages on the web server.

Tests taken from the 23rd of March when compared with today's tests show a marked improvement (a lower number is better).

We have isolated the most costly features on the site, in terms of resource usage, and these currently are the security keyboard for password protection and the live search feature. These two features consume a large amount of bandwidth and cause page load time to lag.

Originals (23rd of March):





Improved (28th of March Results):





These benchmarks show the result of extensive testing and indicate a marked improvement in page load time for a small, medium, and large number of clients accessing the website repeatedly and concurrently. The results show a vast improvement at higher levels of activity.

We will continue this level of testing for the next 48 - 72 hours.

Website Too Slow

Today the Website seems OK...... But I have had trouble turning pages and jumping around. I don't know if this is the intended color, but your page appears white and grey with the (Forum) on top blue. The icons have some color....

Celestra said:

Today the Website seems OK...... But I have had trouble turning pages and jumping around. I don't know if this is the intended color, but your page appears white and grey with the (Forum) on top blue. The icons have some color....

Click to expand...

This is the latest theme of the site, which uses neutral colors. You can change to any style using the Quick Style Chooser at the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

However this has nothing to do with the speed of the site -- if only that the "lastest" style uses less graphics for people unwilling to admit they have aging hardware.

Further optimizations are taking place to increase the speed and performance of the website.

Thanks for the updates Mike.. Hopefully we can catch up later if your around?

Additional Changes to Speed Up Windows 7 Forums

Additional changes have been made to improve the speed, performance, and responsiveness of the website. The website is now using the lowest amount of resources possible at this time.

When comparing benchmarking tests performed two times before we are seeing a significant decrease in load times and system resource consumption has been reduced by 60% or more.

These changes mark the end of our optimization plans for the website at this time.

Mike said:

Additional changes have been made to improve the speed, performance, and responsiveness of the website. The website is now using the lowest amount of resources possible at this time.

When comparing benchmarking tests performed two times before we are seeing a significant decrease in load times and system resource consumption has been reduced by 60% or more.

These changes mark the end of our optimization plans for the website at this time.

Click to expand...

good to hear mike.

Further optimizations have been made. Several technologies that enhance the site have been updated including the Facebook Bridge

krypto said:

good to hear mike.

Click to expand...

Load time has been reduced to 3.24 seconds.

mike said:

load time has been reduced to 3.24 seconds.

Click to expand...

sweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now an infrequent visitor, but I was drawn to comment on an an observation.

In the two closed threads, and this one, it is easily observed tha of those who care to post on this issue, those in favour are in red (moderators), whilst the very few adverse comments are not.
I believe it is a fact that moderators do not see the majority of the adverts? Also, regarding problems which some have from particular countries, and yet not others, I can see that many of the adverts are country specific. (A small example from my page attached)


Link Removed due to 404 Error

I do not see why you would be seeing this in another language. All moderators see advertisements, including myself, unless they are Premium Supporters. I, myself, am not even a Premium Supporter. Unfortunately this is necessary to keep the website operational at this time.

Mke. Did you get two Pm's from me in the last few minutes? Mt sent box shows empty.