Why is the forum so slow?

Adrian · January 16, 2003, 15:07:17

Greetings Tia!

Thank you for your comments!

I have not received any other reports about the speed. It is flying along from here, and my server is at another location. At the foot of each page, there is a report that states how long it takes to generate each page. e.g. this one "This page was generated in 0.42 seconds." I don't know of any reasons why it should be slow.

Is anyone else having speed problems at all?

With best regards,

Adrian.

Tom · January 16, 2003, 19:23:20

The pages are generated in less than a second usually for me as well. On a broadband connection they should load quickly. Often I am better off doing something else while waiting for the forums. After the upgrade there was a brief imrovement. It did not last.

Adrian · January 17, 2003, 01:01:01

Greetings Tom,

Thank you very much indeed for your observations.

To clarify then, the pages are actually visibly loading for you in less than a second?

I would just like to mention from a general point of view, that these pages are not static HTML like most websites. Each oage has to be individually constructed from a avery large and complex database each and every time they are accessed and the user does something.

Thanks again.

With best regards,

Adrian.

James S · January 17, 2003, 02:32:01

Tia,

Don't take my idea as being the absolute gospel truth on the matter, but I can think of two possibilities as to why your pages are taking so long to open -

Check your caching option in your browser, in IE it will be under tools > Internet options > the Temp internet files settings under the General tab, or if you are using Netscape it will be in Edit > Preferences > advanced > cache. Opera has it under File > Preferences > History and Cache. If your caching is set to a really low value, possibly to conserver disk space, the images on the pages possibly aren't being held in the cache on your PC, so they have to be downloaded each time you go to a new page.

If I'm teaching you how to suck eggs here just let me know.

Second possibility is the speed of the internet connection between your ISP and the Astral Pulse server. At home I use a 56K modem through a local ISP and have pretty fast access to these pages, as my ISP has purchased a big chunk of bandwidth from Australia's comms companies. At work, despite having a fibre optic link direct from a major comms company straight into our building, we provide private networking facilities to just about every car dealership in Aus. Our bandwith gets sucked dry several times a day and getting in to this site, even with the upgrade and faster page loads, it can still take a fair ammount of time.

Hope that gives you some useful info.

James.

Tom · January 17, 2003, 08:28:13

It says at the bottom of the page that the page is generated usually in half a second or less. It takes a lot longer than that for it to be shown. That is why I often find something else do to while waiting. My connection is not dialup, but instead I have had download speeds in excess of 100 kilobytes per second. The phone connections would be in kilobits per second.

Tom · January 17, 2003, 08:54:50

It could have something to do with the over 500 private messages I deleted from my inbox and outbox just now. At only 2 KB each that would be at least a megabyte. I did not realize how long it had been since the last time I went through and deleted old messages.

Adrian · January 17, 2003, 09:53:38

Greetings James S,

quote:
Originally posted by James S
[ At home I use a 56K modem through a local ISP and have pretty fast access to these pages, as my ISP has purchased a big chunk of bandwidth from Australia's comms companies. James.

I think that says it all - a 56Kbs modem connection from Australia is about a stern a test of page loading speeds as you can get!

I know for a fact that it is not the server which isn't even breaking a mild sweat, and there is plenty of bandwidth to the server as well.

I really would be interested to hear other speed reports, but there is not much that I can do about it unfortunately. Needless to say that I will do all I can at this end - I really want everyone to enjoy and benefit from the forums to the maximum possible extent.

Thanks again.

With best regards,

Adrian.

Tia · January 27, 2003, 13:58:53

Ok, I went into cache and upped the disk space allocation. I emptied my cache. It is still slow. I haven't a clue about speeds. All I know is that I didn't have a problem with the old forum and I haven't changed my computer. I also dont have problems on other websites.

Less than a second you say?

It took me 18 seconds (I counted)to open this topic. The report at the bottom of the page reads 0.52.

Did you know the average time out for most people to wait for a page to load is 15 seconds? And that must refer to women, it's probably 10 seconds for men.

SteppenWolf · January 30, 2003, 02:34:44

Adrian -

The site is *unbelievably* slow. Painful? Definitely! Every page says it was generated in less than a second, but the pages take about 20 seconds or longer to load. Even each graphic is slow to come down. You must have a bandwidth bottleneck somewhere - if not on your server then perhaps the ISP is maxed-out at peak times. (Now is a bit of a peak time)

I have a fast cable connection and it's like I've gone back to 14.4 or worse when I access this site.

Perhaps you are using the same provider as the server, Adrian - hence your good response.

All I can say is if this speed problem continues, I just won't have enough patience to look at anything in this site and neither will anyone else.

If you don't trust us, why don't you ask some e-mates in different countries to have a surf around. There really is something terribly wrong!!

Cheers and good luck!
Richard [

]
[ Web developer ]

Adrian · January 30, 2003, 03:38:46

Greetings SteppenWolf

Thanks very much indeed for your feedback, and applogies for the speed problems you are seeing.

The 'net is still in recovery mode from the SQL Slammer worm, and that includes my server and my hosting company. The server is only seeing a small fraction of its resources used, and isn't even breaking a mild sweat. The hosting company has 8Mbs of bandwidyh which is alot.

You should see an improvement now, and I would appreciate reports from yourself and as many people as possible - the more the better. I am not on the same ISP as the hosting company, but I am not that far away and everything is running very fast here.

With best regards,

Adrian.

Tom · January 30, 2003, 10:23:19

The forums are running smoothly and our computers we are using to view them are working well. It is still a major commitment to view a topic and I often find myself going to do something else while pages load. The problem has to be in the computers the forums are routed through to get to me and to everyone else having trouble. This is something we cannot do anything about. At least we can multitask instead of staring for up to a minute waiting for the page to load.

Adrian · January 30, 2003, 10:42:01

Greetings Tom,

Thanks for your feedback!

It simply must be a bandwidth issue for some people. I just timed loading a topic with a clock, and it took around 1.5 to 2 seconds maximum - which is more or less what I would anticipate. I am not on the same network as my server either, so there is some Internet between myself and my server.

I would be interested to hear other observations, but there is absolutely nothing else I can do to speed the bandwidth up unfortunately.

With best regards,

Adrian.

Tom · January 30, 2003, 10:47:14

Recently I had a file transfer from my home to a computer in a nearby state which was running about 200 bytes per second. Both of us had cable internet. Everything was running nicely on both ends, but because of the way the file transfer was routed we had problems. The same day I ran a windows update and downloaded the new files at over 100 Kbytes/second. It is just a matter of luck.

SteppenWolf · February 04, 2003, 04:45:17

Adrian -

Just for some more feedback - I have checked in to the forums from my work (at a government office in NZ) and even though we have a terrific bandwidth there and perform large downloads at great speed, the forum pages still took 14 or 15 seconds to load, just as they do at home where as I said I have a fast cable connection. (128kbps)

When I browse through the Yahoo groups I subscribe to, the pages load in a second or so so this should put things in perspective. I also had a look around at www.reincarnationforum.org and pages with 7 or so postings take about 3 or 4 seconds to load.

So there really seems to be a problem here.

Here's a possible gain you might make: One thing I have noticed is that your server disables local caching of any data from your server. Every time I go to a different page i nthe forum (running IE6) it reloads every single item on the page - including every single graphic! Since when are graphics not cached at least for a day or so?

As a web developer, I would definitely suggest looking at some of the caching-related headers the s/ware is using. Smilies and tool icons etc definitely want to be left up to the browser to refresh when it wants. It's really very wasteful for people to reload all this stuff each time they visit a page.

Now - I suddenly thought that perhaps you are running Opera 7 and that I should give this a go. So I've just installed it and it takes just as long - but gives some interesting stats at the bottom of the page:

When loading this page:
http://www.astraldynamics.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=667
...it had to load a total of over 180k of data including 37 images.

http://www.astraldynamics.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3070
...it had to load a total of over 115k of data including 31 images. And this topic only has two posts.

Ok - here's another big issue which will slow down the text being made available to the web viewer as soon as possible. I noticed that in Opera it said that the HTML was loaded within a few seconds but a lot of the waiting for for images. Now - this means that in the source that not all images had their sizes specified in the HTML. On inspecting the source, yes - this is the case. The following images are not sized in the source and this causes the browser to have to wait until it can sort out how big they are before it can display the page:

images/ap_200.jpg - the astral pulse logo
images/button_logout.gif - the logout button image
Also any smileys on the page (may be impossible to specifiy sizes for these depending on your s/ware)

Ok - and now with a bit more playing here's something that really makes a difference: disabling Javascript!!!

Once I did this, the text will now display on any page within 4 seconds (though the rst of the images still take ages longer to load).

Adrian - do you have your javascript turned off? (Also are you using any non-standard cache settings on your browser?) Ah well, I have always been suspicious of Javascript-based drop-down menus.

About the Javascript, it seems so detrimental to the average user to have such slow JS menu code there that I have to wonder if it would be better to rip them out and replace them with straight HTML or (at the very least) something which doesn't slow down page loading.

Note that you can't easily recommend that people disable their JavaScript as it is not an easy thing to find - especially in Internet Explorer.

Well, hopefully you will find some useful suggestions there. In the end I now know how to browse the forums a bit faster, but it seems a bit slack if I have to disable my JavaScript each time!

Best regards,
Richard

Adrian · February 04, 2003, 05:58:58

Greetings SteppenWolf!

Thanks very much indeed for your observations and suggestions - I really appreciate it!

Firstly, I am using IIS 6 to view my site without anything at all switched off. I could not possibly do without Javascript! My server is located at a hosting centre remote to me - or at least on a different network, and the pages load in a couple of seconds at Internet speeds most of the time on my ADSL connection.

If the problem related to technical factors, then it would clearly be as slow for me as it is for you, but that is simply not the case. Also, despite requests for reports of slow speeds, I haven't actually received anymore such reports.

So the only parameter remaining is bandwidth between the server and certain locations.

I have tweaked things as much as I can for now - cacheing can play havoc with dynamically generated pages, so I have to be sure before I do anything.

I am looking into this anyway, you can be sure of that, and please do not hesitate to post further suggestions and observations. I am always willing to learn and try anything if it will help people [

]

Thanks again!

With best regards,

Adrian.

coral1 · February 08, 2003, 19:24:51

Greetings Adrian
I just wanted to let you know that the pages semm to be loading much faster today.Perhaps you hit upon the magic tweak! I appreciate your efforts.
Happy Trails

Adrian · February 09, 2003, 02:58:58

Greetings Coral1!

Thanks very much indeed for your observations [

]

I have indeed been tweaking things, and it is nice to know that it is having a positive effect! As I am sure you and many others will appreciate, this site is much more than static HTML - there are literally hundreds of thousands of lines of very complex code and a big SQL Server database behind this site, so there is alot to tweak!

It would be great to get a few more reports from people around the world as well [

]

Thanks again!

With best regards,

Adrian.

Parmenion · February 09, 2003, 05:44:08

Hey Adrian.
Just to let you know i have never had a problem with speed on any forum here.The longest ive ever had to wait is 2 seconds, timed it today.I live in Ireland and use a cable modem which i think is probably about middle of the road in terms of possible connection speeds.I am sorry that some people have trouble loading pages here but you wont here from the majority of people who have no trouble at all.
Thats my two cents

Parmenion

Adrian · February 10, 2003, 03:08:02

Greetings Parmenion!

Thanks very much indeed for your feedback. It is always nice to hear people having fast access to the site [

]

As you point out, those that are getting normal access speeds are presumably happy with it, and accordingly have no need to post. I hope that implies that the majority are happy [

]

Thanks again!

With best regards,

Adrian.

SteppenWolf · February 12, 2003, 02:56:44

Well it is definitely faster than it was when I first posted - pages seem to display in about six seconds or so for me now.

Out of interest - what country is the forum hosted from? I am really surprised that you guys in Britain are getting pages up in less than 2 seconds, unless you have super-fast ADSL connections or something. (Ie if you are getting up to 2 megabits then that's hardly representative.)

Emailed Tom and his experience is the same as mine and again slightly faster now but trhe forum is still one of the slowest ones I've used. Really would help if the pages were slimmed a bit and the Javascript could be dispensed with as I really wonder how people with 56k modems cope.

It definitely is a bit better than it was though. And I don't know if you can simply assume the site is running ok for general users. Personally I would check that out and especially find how it is for 56k modem people.

Cheers,
Richard

Adrian · February 12, 2003, 04:47:18

Greetings Steppenwolf!

Thanks very much for your further observations!

I believe that the speed of page display is due to a number of factors, including, as you say, Javascript, which, in turn, is dependant on the processing power of the PC viewing the pages. It could also be related to local ISP's, and how and where their traffic is routed etc..

I have people using 56Kbs modems in Australia who say the forum loads very fast for them for example. And I literally receive no ongoing complaints or comments about speed.

I think these are all factors coupled with the complexity of the site as a whole - as I mentioned before - hundreds of thousands of lines of extremely complex code. It is certainly not possible to make any comparisons with an HTML site or something like a much simpler PHP forums site.

I will of course continue to try and tune things as much as I can,and I thank you very much for your continued observations which are always most useful.

With best regards,

Adrian.

Spirit_Gurl · February 16, 2003, 17:00:17

i dont have any problems with speed. at all. oh sure once in a while it takes 30 seconds, but hey i'll survive.

Tia · March 12, 2003, 15:55:40

This page was generated in 0.86 seconds.

And that is my final word on this forum. Over and out.

Astpro · March 31, 2003, 13:25:29

I understand for broadband/cable/T1/T3 etc that the forums will just zip up onto the screen. But with us 56k users this just doesn't happen. These forums are dreadfully slow, and it takes me the same 15-20 seconds per page. This happens even if I backtrack to another page, this should just put the page on the screen because there are no changes. I don't know why the site uses its own forums because they are inadequate. If you go to www.teenhelp.org/forums you'll see real forums at work. Invision is what this site needs.

Adrian · March 31, 2003, 13:35:42

Greetings Astpro,

Thank you very much for your comments.

The means of access is not the only issue. We have plenty of members in Australia with 56kbs modems who say the access is fast. The general concensus from around the world is that the speed is fine - as witnessed by the shortness of this topic.

These forums use probably well over half a million lines of code to a very large SQL Server database, and, unlike HTML pages or more basic forums, each page has a huge amount of work to do behind the scenes.

The PC being used is also a very big influence as we have found before.

I hope it improves for you anyway,and the way DSL is coming down in price you might have broadband yourself soon enough.

With best regards,

Adrian.

News:

Why is the forum so slow?

Tom

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