Site speed issues

Stephen · #1 29-10-07

It appears there maybe some issues with the speed at which the forum and galleries load for some members.

In an effort to gauge how many this is affecting, it would be interesting to know if you are finding a particular problem with DPNow pages both on the forums and galleries. Is it taking a particularly long time for pages to load where you don't have problems on other sites? Please also let us know if you don't find any problems and the pages load no slower than other sites.

Also it would be helpful to know if many are having issues with the latest gallery format since the software was updated

Pol · #2 29-10-07

There are times when I find the entire site is painfully slow to load - maybe 45-50 secs before a page opens. On those occasions I've found it's only DPNow that's the problem - other sites are usually working as normal (including FTU actually) It's not an everyday thing - seems to be an erratic situation but nevertheless a nuisance and intriguing as to why there are some extremely slow times for me, but only here on DPN.

As for the galleries - I'd say they're generally harder to use, mainly because of those (daft) icons instead of text for editing, exif etc. I'm don't care for the choices of coding for linking the images to the galleries either. Granted there's a workaround for posting inline, original images ... but I feel it was better with the previous system whereby we could simply copy the coding from beneath the original (larger) image.

So those are the reasons why I've ticked the first and third options in the poll.

Pol

#3 29-10-07

As Pol has stated. The speed of this site varies from day to day. I have Max speed broadband and have not had any such problems on other sites. As I only use the galleries on odd occasions, I can't say that I find one system any better than another. While we are discussing this site. Why dose it take forever to get a response to questions regarding competition winners. I'm still trying to find out who, if anyone, won the slogan competition.

ekkl · #4 29-10-07

Hi. Got 8mg Broadband here through Sky and am having no visible problems with the pages loading. They load around the same as many other sites that I look at.

I have not noticed any changes due to time of day I visit the site either.

As for the Gallery, that loads quickly and I have no problems using it at all.

Using Opera on a laptop with Windows Vista.

Pops · #5 29-10-07

Around 30 seconds wait for most pages. This includes pages i am revisiting which is very surprising.

<edit>
Don't know if someone has been playing around in the backroom but I'm down to 15 sec today

Pol · #6 29-10-07

Quote:

Originally Posted by lumix

I'm still trying to find out who, if anyone, won the slogan competition.

Ian deals exclusively with the site comps so he's the only person who can really respond. However - I'll tell you that he was reminded about the slogan comp results this last w/e and he said he'd be sorting it out sometime this coming week.

Sorry I dunno any more than that as the DPN mods basically only help with the smooth running of the forums, forum and gallery software, spammer smacking etc.

Hope that helps.

Pol

#7 29-10-07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pol

Ian deals exclusively with the site comps so he's the only person who can really respond. However - I'll tell you that he was reminded about the slogan comp results this last w/e and he said he'd be sorting it out sometime this coming week.

Sorry I dunno any more than that as the DPN mods basically only help with the smooth running of the forums, forum and gallery software, spammer smacking etc.

Hope that helps.

Pol

Thanks Pol, I did realise it was down to Ian. As I have asked on many occasions I guess I'm the only one interested.

I did notice that all those that signed up just to enter the competition seem to have slipped by the wayside. This site is lacking active members. I've lost count this week alone that I have been the only one signed in.

Ian · #8 29-10-07

Well I was having terrible problems loading the site this afternoon - Eclipse (my ISP at the office) was down

- couldn't load anything!

I look at DPNow at home using Virgin Broadband and at the office via ADSl (Eclipse) and I can't honestly say I have noticed any general speed problems, but I am naturally concerned if others do. Maybe there is a common theme that can be identified?

DPNow lives on a dedicated server in Germany, but the server is not as high-spec as the US server we run FTU on and we intend to upgrade DPNow to a more powerful server in the new year. It had been planned to do this last month, but we ran out of time and it's too disruptive to do this in the run up to Christmas. But I'm not so sure it's a server power issue, but a backbone connectivity one; I'm not sure our German hosting company is as well connected to the Internet as our US one. But it's hard to prove.

The gallery software upgrade was a bit of disaster at first (and it wasn't just us that were hit) - the company that produces it, PhotoPost, have issued bug fixes and we've installed them all. The main remaining issues are the changes to the UBB code for posting your gallery images in the forum, plus the unintuitive command icons. We're working on in-house customisations to fix both of these as PhotoPost don't apparently regard them as problems.

But not all is doom and gloom on the gallery front - you should find that the new codebase is faster, there is a new notification system to alert you when you receive a comment or rating on one of your photos and some tidying up of the page layouts has been implemented.

Finally - sorry for the delay on the caption competition last month; I've been asking various people for a consensus on the winner; it's just about done, the winner will be announced shortly.

Ian

Autumn · #9 30-10-07

I have recently moved to Talktalk and 80% of the time it's fast enough but there are times when it is just painfully slow, therefore, I don't know whether it is the Forum or my broadband.

With regard to loading my pictures, where I could put the larger image on the forum previously, I now only manage to get IIRC 600x? I see other people can show larger sizes, but I do not know how to. I do use the drop down menu where it gives me an option but I don't think it gives sizes.

Pol · #10 30-10-07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Autumn

With regard to loading my pictures, where I could put the larger image on the forum previously, I now only manage to get IIRC 600x? I see other people can show larger sizes, but I do not know how to. I do use the drop down menu where it gives me an option but I don't think it gives sizes.

Audrey,

Upload your pics to the gallery in the same way you've always done. When you want to post a picture in a thread and you want to be sure your larger version is displayed in that thread do it this way .....

Use the "My Pics" option (from below the smilies) then select 'original image' and 'inline' from the drop down menus. That will post your larger image for you.

I'm adding an attachment from a screenshot I did recently for Sue (spl) to show how to display an original (larger) image in the Salon.

Pol

Pol · #11 30-10-07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian

I look at DPNow at home using Virgin Broadband and at the office via ADSl (Eclipse) and I can't honestly say I have noticed any general speed problems, but I am naturally concerned if others do. Maybe there is a common theme that can be identified?

<<snippety snipped>>

Ian

Thanks for all that, Ian. I suspect it may indeed by an intermittent server problem and perhaps some of us find it slow if we're unlucky enough to be browsing the site when the server's throwing a bit of a wobbly?

It's a very random occurrence, for me anyway. I'm flying along as normal at the moment and that can be the case a lot of the time - then it might suddenly slow right down to a crawl whilst I'm still browsing, typing out a reply or whatever.

I'm using a wired connection but that's the only probably-not-very useful suggestion I can make regarding a possible common factor for those of us having on/off slow loading.

At least we can look forward to the new, more powerful server in the not too distant future. In the meantime I'm managing ok on most days, normal speeds a fair amount of the time too.

Pol

Autumn · #12 30-10-07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pol

Audrey,

Upload your pics to the gallery in the same way you've always done. When you want to post a picture in a thread and you want to be sure your larger version is displayed in that thread do it this way .....

Use the "My Pics" option (from below the smilies) then select 'original image' and 'inline' from the drop down menus. That will post your larger image for you.

I'm adding an attachment from a screenshot I did recently for Sue (spl) to show how to display an original (larger) image in the Salon.

Pol

Thanks Pol. That looks quite easy. You would not believe the performance I always have by making new tabs and returning to the gallery, because when I did it from the My Pics beneath the smilies, it was so small and I did not know why.

You learn something new every day.

I will give it a try.

Pol · #13 30-10-07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Autumn

Thanks Pol. That looks quite easy. You would not believe the performance I always have by making new tabs and returning to the gallery, because when I did it from the My Pics beneath the smilies, it was so small and I did not know why.:

You learn something new every day.

I will give it a try.

I was having the same sort of hassle until Ian reminded me about the value of the 'My Pics' facility and also reminded me what options to use from the drop down menus.

Have a play about by starting a new thread in the User test Board and feel free to fiddle and faff until you're confident about getting things displayed the way you want. Here's the link to the User Test Board

Pol

Blithe · #14 31-10-07

I do find the forum slow to load on occasion, but certainly not on a regular basis. No worse than any other sites which I visit.

Ian · #15 01-11-07

I have a theory to propose: this morning I did experience a slow down with DPNow, yet Google, for example, was still pretty zippy. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I did a thinkbroadband.com bandwidth test and the result was that our ADSL was crippled with a download rate of just 0.1Mb/sec - it should have been 3-4Mb/sec. Everything was taking 30-40 times longer to download. There is no escaping from the fact that DPNow is a heavy ste, but it doesn't show it until the link speed drops significantly. Google on the other hand is very light and did not appear affected. I reset the modem router and everything was restored to normal.

Ian