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Sometimes, change is NOT good.

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Adrian

Greetings Winged_Wolf!

I hear what you say. But there is always a balance between progress and technology http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile.gif" border=0>

The new forums  goes way beyond the java menu's and is part of a greater thing happening with the Astral Pulse site in general - the main web site that is.

Obviously those with broadband connections will be fine, and I suspect that once the server and your browser cache catches up, you might find it alot quicker as well.

However - I am looking at a solution which I am sure you would find to be just what you need, but until I have thoroughly tested it, I don't want to say much more.

Thanks for your feedback - it is much appreciated.

With best regards,

Adrian.


https://ourultimatereality.com/
Vincit Omnia Veritas

Qui-Gon Jinn

As a matter of fact Winged Wolf, after postng that message I said to myself, where tha heck did I get that from, hahaa...  I hit the edit button to rewrite it, cause I really don´t think it is more important if some people enjoys the site slightly more - if it means that some can´t hardly enjoy it all anymore (I still can but I enjoyed the former one better, and I understand some people can´t enjoy it at all so)...   well when I hit the edit button my puter crashed (happens every now and then.. grrr....  on other sites as well of course) and I didn´t have the stamina to restart it for the only purpose to edit a message, so I´m with you Wolf.
Just wanted you to know that...  
Parent or no parent, "time" as we know it is limited to all of us here, so most important I reckon is for the forum to load quickly above all...  
  Be well //Qui-Gon

- Your focus determines your reality -

Adrian

Greetings!

I understand what some of you are saying regarding the speed as compared to the previous site. The problem though is not a server problem or a bandwidth problem.

You will notice at the foot of each page is a number  - that number is the time taken to dynamically generate the page from the database. The slowest page is the forums home page which takes 1 second on average to generate, and most of the other pages are taking on average about 0.25 (quarter) of a second to generate. We have massive bandwidth.

In all reality it is down to  the Web browser and the capabilities of PC of the people viewing the forums pages- i.e. the time it takes it to load and display the information. The new site might seem slow - but it is in fact very fast, and only slower compared to the old site when viewed on lower bandwidth or older PC's.

I will certainly see if anything can be done, but you could try going straight to the forum cataegories page here:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/default_category.asp

Finally, for those of you who say you don't have the time to use the enhanced facility, I have to say, with respect, that holds absolutely no sway at all with me whatsoever!

I am a full time *single parent*, with three sons aged 11, 10 and 9 years, to raise myself and with absolutely zero assistance, and with many other responibilities as well.  I spend a huge number of hours of my own time, working long into the night sometimes, to provide this site absolutely for *free* to everyone. I don't get paid anything for doing this work,  in fact it costs me  money I don't have.  Robert and all the team also equally provide all of their own valuable time for free, providing people with the benefit of their vast knowldege, advice and experience in all of these matters. I also provide all of the Internet resources including servers, software and expertise for The Astral Pulse Web site,  forums email and other resources, in order to, with Robert and the team, make these services available for the benefit of *everyone* who finds them of some value. And neither do we derive any revenue from any other source, e.g. by displaying advertising banners, or use popup browser advertising screens to slow things down and annoy people like most free sites do.

So for those of you who say you don't have the time or patience in waiting for your browsers to respond, I suggest you think hard again about the true meaning of time, and whether you have the time for this free service and of its potential or real value to you.

All I, Robert and all of the Astral Pulse team want to do is to provide the best possible service we can do, and for free, on these complex and not widely appreciated subjects. We will of course always try to achieve the aspirations of everyone as best we possibly can, but technology will just have to keep up with us, and people will just have to obtain faster PC's and Internet connections as services and the technologies that facilitate them become more advanced http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile.gif" border=0>

As ever, we really do greatly appreciate all suggestions,  observations and problem reports, and you can be absolutely assured that we always do our very best to sort them out.

With best regards,

Adrian.
https://ourultimatereality.com/
Vincit Omnia Veritas

Winged_Wolf

Each page is taking between 30 and 40 seconds to load.  I'm running a 133 Mhz with 26 MB of RAM, and a 56K modem.
That means, for each forum post, it takes a minute and a half (at least) to load it, and go back to the main menu to get to another one.  Add in a reply, and the time is increased to perhaps 3 minutes--just for loading, not including reading and typing.
The forum is very active.  15 posts could easily take an hour to get through.

It all comes down to whether or not you want folks like us to use your site, I guess.  I know that when I create web sites, I do so with the idea of accessability.  If I didn't want people to see it, why make it?  And why bar people who have lower incomes and cannot buy newer computers?
Maybe that's just me.

I appreciate the time you put into it, and the money.  I do the same thing myself, with my sites and the Guild site.  However, I don't tend to agree that the opinions of the users therefore don't matter.  In fact, if I make a change I feel will slow the site down, I ask people if any of them have a problem with it before I make it permanent.

I'm not being ungrateful or demanding that you serve my needs.  You may do whatever you like.  As you pointed out, it's your time and money.
I just thought you should know that some people aren't going to find this easy to use.  I thought the goal of a forum was to facilitate communication in such a way that it could be easily accessed.  The more people who use it, the more successful it is.
Maybe that's just me.



--Winged Wolf
"I will stare at the sun until its light doesn't blind me, and I will walk into the fire, 'til its heat doesn't burn me, and I will feed the fire...."
--Winged Wolf
http://www.lulu.com/wingedwolfpsion
"I will stare at the sun until its light doesn't blind me, and I will walk into the fire, 'til its heat doesn't burn me, and I will feed the fire...."

distant bell

I have a dial up conection and an old computer- and well- the loading times are killing me!  Yes, the new forum might have its points, but it´s just TO SLOW!  it´s no use if it looks good if it dosn´t work... And hey- I just don´t have that extra 10000 skr (1000 dollars) to go out and by a new computer...


-- Love is the Law - Love under Will --

Adrian

Greetings Winged_Wolf!

I don't disagree with what you are saying in principle. But there is always a balance to be drawn between offering a feature rich service which is of use to users - and there is more planned - and remaining very basic to account for the lowest common denominator of hardware and Internet connections out there.

I have been in the computer business, running by own companies, including national ISP's, for 23 years now, and this has always been a problem. It was a problem when Windows 1.0 first came out - because of the resources it demanded on the then basic PC's. People demanded that we should stick to MSDOS. Where would we be now if that had happened?

The same with Web browser with ever more features such as frames, Java and so on - what do you do - design a basic boring site to for the sake of those that did not want, or could not be bothered to upgrade to the latest free Web browser - I have seen many of those as well.  In fact there are hundreds of cases like that I could mention believe me.

Of course, I want to make the site accessible to as many people as possible at the same time, and as it is, I have only received six complaints - 3 for speed, and 3 from people who use Apple Mac based Web browsers. Well I can't build services to account for the 0.1% or whateever of people with Macs. And speed clearly is not an issue for most.

We have many people, including Robert Bruce, accessing by modem from Australia, and they all report the speed is fine. There is no doubt that many Internet sites use alot more Javascript and graphics, and are also loaded with advertising banners, pop-ups and so on.

Don't get me wrong - I don't mind the time and resources I put into this, in fact I believe it is an extremely important service, and one which I offer willingly and enjoy doing so, but I only have so much time, and the best I can do is to offer the best service I can, with the time and resources I have at my disposal - and of course in conjunction with Robert Bruce who this site is here for.

Your problem is not modem speed or CPU speed but RAM!  My PC wouldn't even boot with 26Mb, much less do anything worthwhile. I am sure you appreciate that most people have at least 128Mb RAM these days as a minimum - 64Mb is OK for most Internet purposes. But I am sure you can see that you are the exception rather than the rule - which is unfortunate.

I will continue to see what I can do though to speed things up - in the meantime you might like to consider treating yourself or your credit card, or better yet getting your other half to treat you  to a nice new Gateway or Dell  http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile.gif" border=0>

Thanks for your feedback and participation - it is appreciated I do assure you.

With best regards,

Adrian.




https://ourultimatereality.com/
Vincit Omnia Veritas

distant bell

I have looked through the new forum a bit more- and I have to confess that I really don´t see any point in any of the new features.... At least not with the loading times that are wery frustarting...  the only really positive thing I can find about it is that it uses cockies.... so I don´t have to use my user name every time I write a post. but I have to say, it´s not fair to destroy the forum for everyone who happens to be in an financiall situation that they cannot afford the newes computer and internet conection...  And IT DOSE destroy the fun of beeing on the site when the loading is TO SLOW!!!!

-- Love is the Law - Love under Will --

PeacefulWarrior

I see both sides of the coin...but I side with the Adrian.  We must be patient as this thing goes forward.  It is too bad for those of us using a dial-up connection, but hey, that's life.  I am not the one investing the time and money in the construction and maintenance of the site so I don't think I have the right to complain.  Well, we can complain...but I just want to give my respect and thanks for the improvements...and my cache has caught up and the pages are loading much faster now (2-5 sec. per page with 56k- that's not too bad!)

-Dan

fides quaerens intellectum
We shall not cease from our exploration, and at the end of all our exploring, we shall arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Elliot
---------------
fides quaerens intellectum

Qui-Gon Jinn

I think I heard someone, was it Adrian?, say that it might get faster as some thingie (I suck on puters) "catches up".
Well the thing is for me, the first day after the change it went a bit slower than it used to before the change but not annoyingly so.  Therefore I wasn´t so massively critical in the first few days.
 I was surprised to hear people say it would take for ages to load a new page since it didn´t take ages for me, even though I probably have the oldest slowest bugger of us all in here and a 56K modem.

 Last night though, and today, it takes ages to load a new page, so it seems to be going the opposite way, slower, at least for me it is...  not to make any "threat" or anything, but if it doesn´t fasten up significantly, I couldn´t longer keep coming here (it is now merely running at all here) - which would be a shame (for me that is, I´m sure you all could manage without me, there are other swedes here after all;) since it is such a neat lil "community", one of a kind to say the least.
And I understand all the work and so forth behind running the sorta places, so not to devalue your work Adrian & Co, but I just don´t see why changing something that worked and "served its purpose" so well, just to be able to add some new features (polls and stuff, which could be interresting but not on the expense of the "user friendlyness")

Well I´ll check in again in the weekend perhaps, crossing my fingers it´ll run then...
  Be well //Qui-Gon

- Your focus determines your reality -

Adrian

Greetings Qui Gonn!

I have had  people who thought it was slow at first, mail me to say it is fast now. I also have people with low powered PC's and modem connections in Australia say it is fast - so go figure!

The speed is definitely dependant on the PC and in particular the Web browser I think. It is not bandwidth or the server. It would be interesting to find out what browsers people are using. I would certainly suggest upgrading to latest versions, because they are more efficient with javascript etc.. - many people seem content to use browsers a few versions out of date, and it is not surprising those people have problems. IE 6 is the latest I think - at least - that is what I use right now.

As for the features - we do need them in conjunction with the new main web site that is coming along.  File downloads and Polls for example. And the Private Messaging is proving to be very useful and popular, and I am sure people will use the Avatar facility as well. Classifieds are not strictly necessary, but they certainly will not slow things down at all.

I guess it is the same situation that one can't please everyone all the time - especially when there are so many different specifications of PC's and connections out there. But we have a definite mission here, and the enhancements are a part of it, and there it is is.

I have had adverse reports on speed from about 6 members out of nearly 400.

I would definitely suggest that people upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer - it is free so there is no excuse http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile.gif" border=0>

With best regards,

Adrian.



https://ourultimatereality.com/
Vincit Omnia Veritas

andy

I use a Packard Bell 60hrz for the simplicity of sending e-mails,its about 8 years old and runs windows 95.I know nothing about computers other than i've always heard people say that the thing that sucks most is that you always have to upgrade them.
Well before this site I would have never cared but liking it as much as I do I have decided to dump this mule upon moving at the end of this month .Once relocated a month later I plan to buy a modern second hand or apply for credit at a computer store.This should do the trick.I prefer second hand as I have no real use for a p/c other than stated above.A friend recently picked up a newer used p/c inwhich she claims is fast as lightining for $500 canadian which is the equivelent of about $300 u.s.  

For now i'll continue on with this beast and take nothing for granted!

Thanks to all at the astral pulse for "Everything" you do!!!
I shall miss this place during my down time.


Peace,Andy


Qui-Gon Jinn

Hey Adrian and thx for your feedback.
I have the forums as my starting site so I get it up every time I start the puter.  I just wanted you to know that now, some hours later, it runs 3 times faster, meaning almost as fast as the former forum - yay!  hehee...  a bit weird though that it changes like that. One would think either its fast, or not...  but it seems to change.
  I use Explorer... I think it is 5.0, could be 4.0 but I think it is 5.0, could be easily checked I reckon but me and puters is like me and cars, I drive them, but don´t ask me to change a tire ;)   (could be done if I had a few hours though I reckon´...)
 Well, take care and keep it going, just don´t add more stuff pleaze... yea - one more thing, why can I not use the "jump to" thingie anymore??
 It hasn´t been working since the change, and I cant use the preview button, and a few other things like the smilies etc., my instincts tell me this isn´t the case for everyone else eh?

 Be well //Qui-Gon

- Your focus determines your reality -

Adrian

Hi Qui Gonn!

I am pleased it is running faster for you now http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile.gif" border=0>

I am sure it is your browsers cache, and probably cookies catching up, but I am not sure why it should take so long?

But the other things you mentioned should work - the smilies etc. certainly work - and many people are using them I believe.

Please let me know if that continues to be a problem, and I will look into it further.

Lets hope you speed increase remains so!

With best regards,

Adrian.


https://ourultimatereality.com/
Vincit Omnia Veritas

Winged_Wolf

Any chance of changing it BACK?

I don't think I have enough time in each day to deal with this.  MANY people are using modems to connect to the internet--in fact, anyone below a certain income threshhold probably is.

MANY of us are using older computers, which may be running (gasp) Windows 95, often with minimal system requirements.  There IS no improvement in this new board...it has, what, a java scroll bar?  Why the hell do you need that?  It'd be just as easy to change the text on the page if you wanted to post a notice.  And a survey?  Is any survey SO important, it has to be on every single page, forcing people to scroll down just to see what it was that they WANTED to look at?

If I sound ticked off, it's because I am--I really ENJOYED this board.  It actually loaded pretty quickly.  The only possible flaw--one that has NOT been fixed by this change--is that you can't move from topic to topic, you have to hit the back button and select each one seperately.  When the board loaded quickly, this was no problem.  NOW, it's a problem--a huge one.

I'm a parent...I get a few hours online each day, and sometimes not even that.  Now, I can no longer read all of this board, and when I do, I feel like I'm wasting far too much time for far too little.

I'm not nearly so equanimical as Qui Gon.  I don't care if others think the board is prettier this way.
The truth is, for what appears to be a good number of people, this change has rendered it anything from less to completely NON-functional.


--Winged Wolf
"I will stare at the sun until its light doesn't blind me, and I will walk into the fire, 'til its heat doesn't burn me, and I will feed the fire...."
--Winged Wolf
http://www.lulu.com/wingedwolfpsion
"I will stare at the sun until its light doesn't blind me, and I will walk into the fire, 'til its heat doesn't burn me, and I will feed the fire...."