Forums loading really slowly

[RSD]

Is it just my end or are other people having problems with forum pages loading really slowly? Sometimes taking a couple of minutes - its like being back in the dial-up days!

[BobL]

Yep really slow tonight - thought it was my other half watching a movie and in a zoom session at the same time.

[Simplicity]

I’ve been experiencing the same issues,
Not sure if it it’s due to people in isolation using the net more, or something else.

Cheers Matt

[Bohdan]

I have been having similar delays. I can click on a post in WWF and while it is loading view several posts on the FOG. Some times it even times out.

[RSD]

It only seems to be the forum - all other sites are loading at normal speeds - am unsure whether there is an issue with the server that it is hosted on or something else - definitely not my field of expertise!

[China]

Has been the case for months

[Fluddman]

+1 Very slow to load.

[Uncle Al]

It certainly has been slow lately, but pleased to report that it is much faster this morning, nearly back to normal.
Hope it continues to improve.

Alan...

[rwbuild]

Getting slower and ssslllooowwweeerrr and zzzzzzzzzz

[old1955]

It’s been slow for ages.

[woodPixel]

Perhaps the site could utilise the FREE caching that CLOUDFLARE provides?

Costs ----> Zip, zilch, nada.

Will speed this up 1000 fold.


Takes 5 minutes, its DEAD EASY and reduces server load and bandwidth by 90%..... Cloudflare - The Web Performance & Security Company

| Cloudflare (https://www.cloudflare.com/en-au/)

[LanceC]

Perhaps the site could utilise the FREE caching that CLOUDFLARE provides?

Costs ----> Zip, zilch, nada.

Will speed this up 1000 fold.


Takes 5 minutes, its DEAD EASY and reduces server load and bandwidth by 90%..... Cloudflare - The Web Performance & Security Company

| Cloudflare (https://www.cloudflare.com/en-au/)

I wonder if Neil has ever considered creating an admin team from within the community. There are several of us that I'm aware of with very high level technical skills, who I would imagine would be happy to help out as capacity allows. I do acknowledge however that it takes a rather big leap of trust.

[poundy]

It's been slow for me too

@woodpixel, I'm 99% guessing that this is NOT bandwidth limitations. vBulletins are well renowned for being "extensible" and there's likely a plug-in/add-on or something that has been recently updated, and is impacting the performance, more than likely in the backend database that underpins everything. And given most of the web readers are smart enough to cache non-updated things (most of the forum "look and feel" components) I would expect CF might only offer a small increase, if any, and still wouldn't address the underpinning issue

[woodPixel]

I enjoy the forum.

Here, using the forum direct via TPG with a 100Mb/sec connection, it comes in at 10.7 sec

With a VPN that uses CloudFlare via Equinox data centre in Sydney, it comes in at 7.3 sec

This isn't optimised. CF uses a large number of strategies to improve speed. Its not too important to go into here, but they aren't simply a "distributed proxy". There are hugely significant reasons to use them and no reasons not to.

One can always turn it off in under 5 minutes - its entirely reversible.

DIRECT

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USING VPN

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[Bohdan]

Why does it take 10.7 secs to down load 97kB on a 100Mb/sec connection?

[woodPixel]

Why does it take 10.7 secs to down load 97kB on a 100Mb/sec connection?

The internet connection is fine, as are all the hops in between. The server itself is replying in a decent time - but its the software (the web server or another part) is running very slowly.

It is chewing on something horrible and the admin needs to give it a good slap on the back to cough it up! :)

It could be that the storage is very full :o

This little capture shows all the hops and pings. Arrows point to the interesting columns :)

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[foff47]

It has been alow for a while, but by looking at the posts and the time it has been mentioned, it looks like nothing is being done or will be done.

[crowie]

Plus another here... slow!!:C

[woodPixel]

It's all a cunning plan to drive us off the Internet and into the studio!

[jms_8087]

It's almost unbearably slow I remember dial up being faster than this....

[jms_8087]

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[rwbuild]

Appears to be back to normal..........at the moment..........fingers crossed

[ubeaut]

It is chewing on something horrible and the admin needs to give it a good slap on the back to cough it up!
Slapped it hard :smack:yesterday afternoon then kicked up the but :buttkick: later on. Came good for a while then slowed slightly again.:dunno:


It has been alow for a while, but by looking at the posts and the time it has been mentioned, it looks like nothing is being done or will be done.
We're not ignoring the problems it's not in the interest of the forums or members to do that.

Steven worked on it yesterday afternoon, last night and again this morning.
Been slow for me as well and I'm pretty fast cable. :gaah: Some of the tweaks appear to fixed it for the moment.


jms_8087]It's almost unbearably slow I remember dial up being faster than this....
Hehehe.... You must have a pretty bad memory. 10-15 seconds even 30 sec to load up at todays don't have a second to lose speed seems to be very, very slow but slower than dial-up... Hell no!
I remember dial-up very well. Click load wait, go make a cup of tea/coffee, back to the computer, drink tea/coffee, wait, go to toilet, :poop: wash hands, back to computer just in time to see the download slowly dribbling onto the screen, swear at the computer and eventually chuck a hissy fit after about 15-20 minutes wait. :fit:

Oh yeah I remember dial-up very, very well. 5-10mbps download then and now average 200mbps (on a bad day).
:throw:

[lyricnz]

Perhaps the site could utilise the FREE caching that CLOUDFLARE provides?
Costs ----> Zip, zilch, nada. Will speed this up 1000 fold.


Cloudflare and other CDNs only really speed up static/semi-static content delivery. The slowness of this forum is the messages page (which is dynamic) and some CSS (which should be semi-static, but is taking a long time), not really any of the secondary or static content.

I just did a test on Countersinking in Steel Plate (https://www.woodworkforums.com/f11/countersinking-steel-plate-234311) (random page)
- it took 4.6 seconds to load the main page/html - nothing much can happen until that's completed
- a number of calls to css.php took a long time, each about 4.4 seconds, all unblocking at the same time, which implies a mutex in the server code (often attempting to write to a server-side cache)
- none of the javascript/rendering was an issue
- a bunch of advert junk happened at the end, but the two problems above would need to be resolved first

First Paint was at around 9 seconds, and the "junk" around the edges took another ~5 seconds (but didn't block anything, so no big deal)

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There are lots of articles about tuning your vbulletin performance, but let's see if the maintainers are interested in this, or maybe did work here already.