# Administration Category > Administrative issues >  erratic response

## duncan drennan

Is it just me or is anyone else also experiencing some erratic response from the Forum? I've been getting some erratic behaviour (mainly in terms of speed), and also having problems, particularly when I "Save" a quick edit of a post.

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## I Robot

I've just had a look at the server load times.

Server Load Averages 2.46 1.92 1.80 | 13 Users Online (3 members and 10 guests)

That is not good! Normally the slowest its been is 0.13
Only question now is why?

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## duncan drennan

New servers?

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## Dave A

Shouldn't be the issue. I benchmarked when we made the move and there wasn't a big change.

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## bullfrog

Hi guys,

Sorry about the slow server but there was some perl script running on one of the hosting accounts that was using a large amount of processing power. This caused all the other sites on the server to slow down dramatically. The process has been killed and the server should be back up to speed.

Again I'm very sorry for any inconvenience caused!

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## Dave A

Thanks for the update and dealing with the problem. And given that everything still seems to work here I trust it wasn't us  :Big Grin:  

Sooo good to have a hosting provider that keeps an eye out for us and genuinely deals with issues.  :Thumbup:

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## Dave A

I've noticed since the Amazon.com "smart" advert box was added, there's a delay in page loading wherever the addy is. Pages without the addy seem to load faster. Anyone else noticed that?

As an aside, I've also noticed for a content related "smart" ad, it sure can get off-topic every now and then  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):

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## duncan drennan

That might be what I'm seeing when I use IE7 instead of Firefox. I've actually been thinking the forum or my browser was broken in some way because it wasn't displaying (takes really long).

It is partially an IE thing in that it first downloads all the elements before displaying them, so nav bars at the top are there, but nothing appears below until everything (posts, pictures, ads, etc) are all fully downloaded.

I'm sure this can be set in IE, but haven't gone to look how yet.

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## Dave A

So Duncan, it behaves differently in Firefox?

Heck. I've got Firefox loaded 2. Might as well test it for myself.

The problem is there's a script that calls the addy. Google has the page contents cached (and probably a relaionship set between any given URL and what it might serve) so produces a really quick response.

I'm still trying to get a handle on how Amazon is researching the content (I'm not seeing a crawl), which could be a contributing factor. The other option is a slow turnaround on requests to their server.

An R&D project I might put on hold fairly soon if I can't figure out what the problem is exactly. I'm playing with the concept of intelligent content delivery. It is a new service, only just come out of beta, and maybe they haven't ironed out all the kinks.

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## duncan drennan

> Heck. I've got Firefox loaded 2. Might as well test it for myself.


Let me know if you see a difference...

With me it is taking around about 1 minute to load this link totally in IE7. In Firefox it takes about 7s.

Problem with IE7 is that it is not giving me any visual feedback to show that it is actually doing something (the loading bar doesn't display  :Confused:  weird). It loads the nav bars at the top, and then just sits waiting. After a long wait it displays the rest of the content.

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## Dave A

Really interesting. There is a significant difference on how they progressively handle the HTML.

First, clearly, there is a massive delay on the right hand column now that wasn't there before. Applies to both viewers. The content is arriving at the same speed so firefox isn't faster from that point of view. But it "feels" like Firefox is faster because of the way content is displayed on the fly.

Firefox displays the content for each table *cell* (think column for folks more familiar with spreadsheets than HTML page layout coding) as soon as its got it - therefor you've got something to read in the meantime and the lag is less irritating. When the right column content arrives, there's a shuffling of format to display it now that it's finally in. At first I thought the right hand column wasn't going to show!!

IE7 waits for the HTML contents of a *complete row* before it displays what it's got so far. In this case the entire thread, most of the stuff at the bottom of the page, and the right column. This makes for this long pause when nothing seems to happen.

Time to comment out bits of code and find the cause...

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## I Robot

Hmmm. And the server load times are cooking - from 0.04 to 0.11 which is _quite_ acceptable. Looking closely the culprit is obvious - say bye bye to intelligent Amazon. And an impressive score for Firefox. With IE7 you can't tell what is causing the delay in this case.

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## Dave A

v3g load speeds all over the place isn't helping evaluating a difference with the substitute. I'll say this for Firefox - at least you've got something to get on with while the rest of the page is loading. This definitely makes for less stressful browsing when using slower connections.

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## duncan drennan

Just a note, I'm still seeing the problem in IE7. When I ran the test earlier (1min vs 7s) that was the approx time for the entire page to load everything - sidebars, text, etc.

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## Dave A

Post 11 explains the nature of the problem (probably badly but it's in there). There is a difference in behaviour between Firefox and IE that in this case is significant.

I'm going to test if moving the navigation to the left hand side helps. Otherwise we're going to have to drop the right hand column from the thread area.

BTW what speed connection have you got. 1 min 7 sec for a page load is slooowww.

We can also look at cleaning out some of the code - maybe the quick jump menu and the posting rules at the bottom, for example. I don't know how many people use them and the quickjump menu is a fair pile of code which is basically coming down with every page request.

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## duncan drennan

> BTW what speed connection have you got. 1 min 7 sec for a page load is slooowww.


I think you missed me there, IE took around 1 minute to load the entire page (i.e. everything was finished and loaded correctly), Firefox took about 7s (again everything loaded). I'm on iBurst and regularly get speeds of 80kB/s (but not ever below 25kB/s).

I understand the differences in the layout engines (it's what I mentioned at the start of this).

Both browsers have erratic load times (and it is definitely something in the right hand column). How about removing everything except for the Navigation bar, then slowly add things back and see what happens?

I think it is really important to resolve (or remove) this issue before tonight's post party.

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## Dave A

The only thing that is pulling from off-site in the right hand column is the second box down. I could comment it out as a trial, but I've been examining the page load quite carefully.

The threads essentially have a big HTML payload which has to be delivered first before the right hand column content starts coming in. Payload wise the HTML content of the right hand column is pretty small, but coming in at the end it causes the IE viewing pleasure problem.

The intermittent big delays last night were due to SAIX - international connectivity issues that seemed to affect most services, apparently. Came and went. Certainly a poor night to do comparitive benchmarking and probably the reason for the 1 min 07 page load.

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## duncan drennan

I just want to pick up on this IE problem again - I really feel it is a big issue and will cause people to think that the site is borked.

I think there are a couple of things at play here, I realise that there may be specifics on my side causing things to be amplified, but I don't think that is the root of the problem. There was a definite point in time where things changed.

If you hold shift and press reload and roughly measure the time for ALL elements to load it is approx 1 (one) minute for both IE and Firefox. Firefox wins from a user perception perspective because it displays elements as it loads them, IE just sits around until everything is loaded (except the top navbar etc. show quickly...??).

Firefox also wins when a page is loaded after the first load due to its aggressive caching policy, so the next time you go to the page it will only download the main content, instead of all the elements, resulting in even faster download times.

I truly believe that that type of behaviour is driving people away from using this site - imagine how it is over a modem line!

Can admin possibly try taking out the adverts in the right hand column so we can try to fix the load time issue? I believe it is really critical.

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## I Robot

The problem is at its worst when viewing threads - so I've disabled the column in threads.

Let's see how the browsing experience is now before we look at disabling it elsewhere.

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## duncan drennan

Okay, insteresting result. It is certainly loading the main content faster, but to finish loading everything still takes quite a while. Maybe the culprit lies elsewhere....

The way I test is to refresh (holding shift) a link which goes directly to a post. When the browser "jumps" to the correct post I accept that all the content is loaded.

I'm using this link, http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/s...=2733#post2733

For now the content is loading faster - big plus

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## duncan drennan

Okay, I did an interesting experiment.

I logged off and did some page loads and I would estimate that the load times are about 2x as fast for a non-member. Try it out and let me know if you get the same.

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## Dave A

A big part is all the colourful graphics. If we went with a bare bones text only setup it would load faster. But no avatars, minimal smilies, no graphics in signatures  :Yawn:  It just wouldn't be the same.

There are some pieces of code that load every time that I question anyone is using. One is the forum jump menu at the bottom right hand corner. If we take that out the forum rules on the left hand side at the same level, I don't think anyone would miss it.

Another fairly big piece of code that loads with every thread is the quickreply box. It is very easy to disable and that would stop that bunch of code loading every time. However, I suspect many of us use it.

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## Dave A

> Okay, I did an interesting experiment.
> 
> I logged off and did some page loads and I would estimate that the load times are about 2x as fast for a non-member. Try it out and let me know if you get the same.


Sorry - I missed this post in my earlier reply.

As a member you get a lot of extra functionality - and it all takes extra code!
More options on the top menu bar. More options on the bottom menu bar. And lots more in between. Like the info on who's also viewing the thread. And the quickreply box (it really *is* a lot of code).

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## duncan drennan

Just a question here....are you having any kind of bad user experience when working with IE7? Or is it just me?

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## Dave A

I was suffering with that right hand column in threads - definitely an IE7 related experience. My only other complaint is the "temporarily allow scripts" issue when making links in posts. Otherwise it's pretty peachy.

I think the time to download the total page issue is an ISP / speed of connection challenge. My testing gave me a worst case of about 10 seconds on a long thread. I've scanned some of the sites that give feedback on page load speed and they're all happy - we're classified as fast. For example Google reports the slowest page it's crawled as a 1.2 second load with an average page load of 0.34 seconds; admittedly that does not include the CSS. Given that Google is crawling an average of over 300 pages a day here, a pretty good indicator. I think South African hindernet connections just tends to be a little slow by international standards  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic):  

Is there something else that is bugging you?

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## duncan drennan

No.

The long download times were for a TOTAL refresh, i.e. nothing from cache. That means every picture, every icon, alles was downloaded. When browsing normally a page load is MUCH faster, like under 10s.

It's a pity that the right hand column is causing that issue in IE - I found IE practically unsuable (I was use it when I'm using my wife's laptop so that I don't have to log her out).

It was just niggling away at me because I felt that people might come to the site and have things take really long and think that it was either broken, or a crap site - of which it is neither. It is a great and cool site, I just want people to experience it that way  :Thumbup:

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## I Robot

I've disabled quickreply and the forum jump menu menu to reduce the HTML hit.
/Waits for feedback  :Whistling:

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## bullfrog

> I've disabled quickreply and the forum jump menu menu to reduce the HTML hit.
> /Waits for feedback


nooooo, my fav quick reply is gone  :Frown:

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## duncan drennan

> I've disabled quickreply and the forum jump menu menu to reduce the HTML hit.
> /Waits for feedback


This is just my thoughts, but I'm not too sure how much pure HTML will really impact on the download times. I'm on a fast link, so there shouldn't be any significant delay if it is just text (i.e. html). The things that I would be suspicious of (particularly with IE) are scripts and any type of java. The total load time is just toooo sluggish for it to just be the html (well, that's what I think).

This whole thing still bugs me, and for some reason I don't think it was inherently the side bar (although maybe, who knows).

BUT, we've messed around with it quite a bit (sorry I've been scratching), so no need to spend too much more time on it. I seem to be the only one that it bugs, so if no one else is seeing long load times, it might be time to put it to bed.

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## I Robot

> nooooo, my fav quick reply is gone


Seeing as bullfrog has boycotted posting since filing this post, I have caved under the pressure and re-enabled quickreply.

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## bullfrog

Thanks but it's not really the purpose I haven't posted. Might be part of the cause, seeing as it makes it a little harder to post, but not totally the cause. I'm in a bit of a holiday mood at the moment!  :Wink:

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