Is the forum running slow again for anyone else??

[crowie]

Is the forum running slow again for anyone else??

Over the past couple of days it's been slow to load on both the iphone and the laptop running windows 10 on firefox...

Thank you!

[Wimmera Jack]

Yes for me too. Earlier this evening, it would not allow me to open links or increase photograph sizes. Gave up, but it seems back to normal now. Still a whisker slow to load, but otherwise OK.

Hooroo.

[BobL]

Yes it was but it seems a lot better now.

[AJ.]

This seems to come and go and has done as long as I have been around. This morning it was not usable, this evening seems fine. Other forums I frequent with the same format work fine.

Cheers Andrew

[rwbuild]

In light of the news I think we may have an answer

[lyricnz]

I think it was down completely last night? Certainly my phone and laptop and tapatalk were not working, even though the rest of the web was.

[Chesand]

I couldn't get on to it last night after teatime. Gave up trying.

[Treecycle]

In light of the news I think we may have an answer
If you disappear we will know why.

[RSD]

I've only been on the forum a couple of months but so far I've only seen two speeds - "mid-90's dial up speed" and "gogettacuppawhileitloads" speed

[rwbuild]

If you disappear we will know why.


Don't worry, lots of people wish I would disappear :D

[elanjacobs]

Yep, slow on and off here as well.

What I don't understand is that the metalwork forum rarely (never?) seems to have the same issue :?

[mature one]

slow is an understatement the forum is very very slow I don't envy the person who has to try a fix.

[BobL]

It's VERRRRY SLoooooow this morning.

[verawood]

Yep, I find it a bit slow sometimes.
But I think it's just waiting for me. :D

While here, do we have any way of requesting someone to make some room in their forum PM Inbox, pls.
I'm trying to reply, but notification says
"???? has exceeded their stored private messages quota and cannot accept further messages until they clear some space.

[ubeaut]

We are being hit with many hundreds of thousands of of times in the last 20 days by 3 IP's that don't appear to be search engines. One didn't resolve to any members and has been blocked (without no appreciable difference to speed) 2 others resolve to members and have hit the forums over 251K times in the last 20 days (that's over quarter of a million times) So it's obviously not the 2 members.

However not sure if blocking those IP's will help. We will see.



While here, do we have any way of requesting someone to make some room in their forum PM Inbox, pls.
I'm trying to reply, but notification says
"???? has exceeded their stored private messages quota and cannot accept further messages until they clear some space.

Can't get anyone to delete messages from their inbox even though they should get a message about full their inbox being full when they log in. Admin can do it but need to know who it is and are reluctant to do so as the messages could contain information that's import to the member.

Your best bet is to click on the users name in a post and in the dropdown see if it say @ Send Email then click on that and email them and maybe suggest that they delete or archive PM's.

Cheers - Neil :U

PS: We are aware of the problem and definitely working on it but not as easy as it would appear. May also have something to do with the ongoing cyber attacks on Australia, but probably not likely to be that far up the ladder that we'd warrant being included.

[ubeaut]

Was able to block another IP and that seems to have sped things up quite a bit.... At least at my end.

https://www.ubeaut.biz/woohoo.gif

[Picko]

Still slower than a wet week here Neil.

[AJ.]

Very slow here as well, I got timed out 3 times trying to post a reply.

Cheers Andrew

[woodPixel]

Not sure how many times I need to mention it, but....

CLOUDFLARE


It does DDOS mitigation for FREE.

On top, it does SSL for FREE and caching for FREE and preferred network delivery for FREE.

It take 5 minutes to implement.

Christ. Just do it already.

[SilentButDeadly]

Not sure how many times I need to mention it, but....

CLOUDFLARE


It does DDOS mitigation for FREE.

On top, it does SSL for FREE and caching for FREE and preferred network delivery for FREE.

It take 5 minutes to implement.

Christ. Just do it already.Yeah... don't do that. Death lies down that path...

[redminch]

Always !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Treecycle]

Speed seems pretty good this morning. Thanks Neil and your team for the work you have put into this over the weekend to keep us happy.

[lyricnz]

Anything we can do to help? I'm a cloud/server/performance guy, if that help? The forum is rather slow for me all the time, which does rather get frustrating.

Edit: According to pagespeed, it takes ~5 seconds for anything useful to render on mobile; about half of that is waiting for the server to deliver the start of the response.
475937

PageSpeed Insights (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.woodworkforums.com%2Ff20%2Ffixing-sagging-router-table-top-235418&tab=mobile)

[ubeaut]

Not sure how many times I need to mention it, but....

CLOUDFLARE

Pretty sure I've said it before but just in case I haven't...........

For what it's worth... We have tried the cloud before and it was useless (for us). Some forums seem to work well on the cloud if they're smallish in size and aren't vBulletin.

vBulletin v4+ (that's us) and the cloud, definitely don't play well together (at least they didn't on the couple of occasions we tried in the past) especially when it's a large to mega forum like WWF with over 2,012,595 posts by the time this is posted and read.

Even vBulletin recommends against it. Apart from their own cloud and that seems to be mostly for vB 5+ which we have on Photo Forums. We definitely won't change WWF or MWF to vB5 anytime in the near or distant future.

We still have a couple of tricks up the sleeve to try but being on the cloud won't help with the problem we have recently been having and will only create a heap more problems down the track.

Better the devil we know than the one we know won't work for us.

:U

[lyricnz]

I wasn't suggesting the cloud as such - it's no magic bullet. Am aware that vBulletin has ... it's own resource demands :)

Presume that any band-aids would be more low-level: tuning, maybe some tweaks to config and caching, etc.

[ubeaut]

Sorry lyricnz
I wasn't responding to you but to woodPixel forgot to add the quote. :doh:
We have other stuff to do, (some if which may be quite a big change) which may happen later tonight or over the nest week or so. :gaah:

We've done the simple and Band-Aid stuff with only a part way to a full fix. Things are running slightly faster and on a forum of this size with the number of hits per day and all the bells and whistles everyone expects it is never in this form going to just snap onto the screen.

Cheers - Neil :U

[Shedhand]

Its so bad that I spend very little time here now unless I have something to sell or want to buy.
Its the same on all of my Browsers, Chrome, Vivaldi, Firefox and Tor.
I have a powerful desktop with all the bells and whistles, Windows 10 Pro and Linux Ubuntu all latest versions. Internet plan is AussieBB NBN 50/20 unlimited connection. Ive contacted them to run tests and everything is fine their end and mine.
Its the slowest web site of any others I visit.
Thanks for raising this.

[old1955]

Very slow here today Neil.

[KeithP]

Very slow here.

Rgs
Keith

[ubeaut]

OK folks couple of things done last night/wee small hours this morning.

Let us know how you're going today.

[Chesand]

This log-in was much quicker than it has been lately.

[Acco]

Pages are loading straightaway for me now, whatever was done this morning has made a big difference.

[Treecycle]

Working fine here, thanks.

[rwbuild]

HUGE improvement here too, Thank you :2tsup:

[AlexS]

Slightly better, but still pretty painful here.

[Picko]

All good here again. Thanks team.

[elanjacobs]

It was good but seems to be slowing down again :/

[steven]

It was good but seems to be slowing down again :/
Hi there, the dababase server handles between 550,000 - 750,000 queries per hour. Sometimes the queries can queue up and it might take 10 seconds or more to run a query when it'd normally take a 1,000th of that time.

The system is closely monitored which combined with the feedback here should keep things on track. We have a few other improvements that will be progressively rolled out over the next week.

[rwbuild]

Thanks Steven :2tsup:, I don't envy your job trying to keep us impatient so and so's happy :D

[Shedhand]

Vast improvement here. Pages rendering in about 3 seconds. Well done everyone involved.

[Lappa]

It’s taking so long trying to load that at times is won’t load with the error message -


476057

I can get on after a number of tries but its slow, half loads then hangs at times, some times it will work.

Thrn when you go to save a reply, you get this time after time

476056

Then hopefully, after three or four times it will save.

[Ironwood]

I usually log on a couple of times every day, and have a quick look. Lately the forum has been slow, sometimes very slow.
Last night and this morning it has been as fast as I can remember it ever running.
Thanks for the top effort.

[mature one]

slow here today 25/6 so far.

[ubeaut]

Should get better as caches repopulate.

As Steven said in his earlier post. "We have a few other improvements that will be progressively rolled out over the next week."

[Midnight Man]

Thanks for the hard work on this to all who are doing it on our behalf.

Page speeds this morning, on Internode/TPG network are very much improved!

EDIT: 15.49 AEST and it's gone slow again - page load time 15s or greater. No complaints of course, we're all non-paying spectators, so are glad the place exists in the first place - just wanting to provide feedback in case it's useful :)

[Treecycle]

Someone might be able to explain this to me as I'm not a techno guru.
Below is a clip of my Task Manager taken when I clicked on a thread. After clicking there was a pause of maybe 5 seconds before there was any movement on the TM graph. After this time the "send" signal and "Receive" signal appeared on the screen. Is that a problem with my computer or this site as other sites seem to react straight away.
Apart from that this site seems to be working well after the fixes.
476085

[poundy]

@Dallas, no it's not your computer, it's the site. That seems to have been a common thread on some of these reports that there's a pause before action.

[ubeaut]

G'day Dallas

Are you still having the same problem or has it cleared and running fast again for you.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


MM has it come good for you again since the slowdown at: 15.49 AEST yestertday

Cheers - Neil :U

[ubeaut]

FWIW we still have a bit of work to do over the next week or so.

Even though it's running like greased lightening for me right now.

2 seconds to post first line of this and 1 second to edit this post to load after hitting edit then back to 5 seconds to save edited page.

Saving an edit is usually slower than some other things.

[ubeaut]

Bugger last edit change took almost 15 sec. It's still all over the place.

[ubeaut]

2 seconds to edit out sig from above and 1 sec to open this new text box

[Treecycle]

Yes you're right. It seems to be random timing as sometimes there is hardly any delay and other times it takes ages.

ps. this post took about 30 seconds to upload

[woodPixel]

Block the bots! :)

[ubeaut]

So.... Been 4 days since last post.

Any more problems with the speed.

[Treecycle]

95% of the time it's really good. Sometimes when posting a reply it hangs up for some time but eventually goes. I have had the message that it has timed out or something along those lines and I need to click on the button that allows more time and then the post goes after a while.

[crowie]

Most of time okay but still way too often very slow to load, sorry.

[Acco]

80% of the time it has been loading quickly, other 20% it hangs, so in general, a massive improvement from a week ago

[poundy]

I concur, there's flashes of brilliance along with some ~15sec pauses. But the brilliance seems way better than the forum has been in a while

[P.W.H.]

Was r e a l l l y slow to start with for me last night, but sped up quite a lot by about 2 am. This morning (1/7/20) it's quite fast (07:45).
Maybe Mr. Xi's Black Hats have gone to bed?!?

[Chesand]

Similar experience to above posters - Mainly good

[ubeaut]

Thanks guys

Please keep us informed.

Because it's up and down it's not easy to find the problem. And no it's not the search bots. The forums have been under attack with many thousands of hits from suspect IP over the last month or so, all of which have been being blocked instantly over the last week after a clean-up of the 4 biggest ones which accounted for over 1/2 million hits in 20 days. Some of these were attached to long time members IP addresses.

We need as much feedback as possible to help us keep on top of the problem.


when it slows down, eg: Times between 7:30am - 8:05am or 3:20pm to 3:40pm etc
length of time and what you were doing, eg: editing a post, loading the forum, reporting a post, submitting reply, etc
Any message you might get, eg: Timed out. or other.


Any and all info will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers - Neil :U

[ubeaut]

Reply to this thread above.
2:51pm 1 July 20
37 sec to show reply.


​EDIT:
This reply 2.5 sec

[poundy]

I'll add some data - but it will just show the absence of trends when looking at my workflow.

I have a browser tab open to the forum. Randomly along the day I might get a moment to look - I'll use the " new posts" link from the menu to get a list of updated threads. The query takes usually 3-5 seconds to return; I'll time a few so the next time I see an outlier to that I have some metrics, but that usually is pretty constant. Assuming I get time to go further, I'll click each link, usually bottom up, to go to the next unread post - when doing that is when I often see the most noticeable pause, when it's trying to load the actual thread. Sometimes it's loaded in the usual 5-6 secs, but others it's 20+.

[poundy]

this morning things were working fine - and then one time at around 8:57am (SYD) a thread opened quite slowly, in the order of 15-20 secs. After reading another thread or two (normal speed) going back into the thread that was slow was fine, so it's not something in the thread its the server response that went slow.

[old1955]

Tried to open about half hour or so ago. Finished up going to Metalwork Forums and then used it’s link to open WWF which seemed much quicker. No times as have only just found the above request.

[woodPixel]

WWF is hosted on Midphase. Go into the control panel and enable Cloudflare.

It will automatically add on all the features the site seeks... Cloudflare Hosting | Improve Security & Speed | Midphase (https://midphase.com/website-hosting/cloudflare/)

Zero risk.

[elanjacobs]

8:05pm Melbourne time

46 seconds to load this thread, 8 seconds to get the reply box, 59 seconds to post this reply (including the "are you sure you want to leave this page" message from Chrome at 26 seconds)

[poundy]

new report from me. 8:36pm the thread https://www.woodworkforums.com/f163/hand-plane-identification-235638#post2195728 from my unread list started taking a long time to open. When that happened I opened a new tab and tried to open this thread, which also took a long time. 8:37 ticked over on my PC. All up probably 40 secs to load these two pages, so it was very localised to the server at that point.

[Treecycle]

I clicked on the go to last post button on this (https://www.woodworkforums.com/f8/containing-mess-235591/2#post2195888) thread at 4:30pm and it took 30 secs. Most other posts open fairly quickly.
Just clicked go to first new post on this (https://www.woodworkforums.com/f8/spindle-registration-mounting-threaded-accessories-235669#post2195690) one 10 minutes later and it took 1 minute to open.

[Fekit]

TBH, this whole slow thing is getting a bit old. I just got;


Request Timeout This request takes too long to process, it is timed out by the server. If it should not be timed out, please contact administrator of this web site to increase 'Connection Timeout'.


In attempting to get to this point, I have clicked on every single bookmarked page that I have, 25+, none of them missed a beat. I still had to wait for this site.

[ubeaut]

More work done this evening from 7:30pm - 7:48pm.

Lets know if it's any better.

Not lightening fast but not far off. Way, way better than it had been, at least it is for me and I've done a ship load of speed tests over the last week.

[Fekit]

In a relative comparison to recent speeds, todays speed is lightening fast.

[steven]

Hi there

That timeout would have been caused by me backing up the database and then making a bunch of major changes to how it's configured. There would have been several periods where it was timing out for 10-20 minutes at a time. There is still some more to do over the next few days, but i'm hopeful we won't be seeing the table locking issues that have plauged the site quite badly for the last couple of weeks.

We're monitoring things today with some more minor tweaks likely to follow tonight.

thanks

[Treecycle]

Certainly be running well over the last day or so.

[rwbuild]

Yes, a lot more stable :2tsup:

[poundy]

Tues 7th, 9:47pm thru to 9:53 at least, things were back to treacle. Wonder if it was Stephen doing more maintenance (and :2tsup: if you were) otherwise the lemmings fell off the cliff again

[Midnight Man]

Just as some feedback, around 17:15 on 9th July, around 20 seconds to open the notifications page. Other pages a little faster, perhaps 10-15 seconds.

[poundy]

i had several pages open slow ~4:20-4:30pm today 9th.

[Treecycle]

Yes, same here around 4:00pm opening the Market Place and Boxmaking was very slow up to nearly 60 secs. Seems fine now.

[ubeaut]

Running pretty fast for me 9:15 to 9:32pm Thursday

[ubeaut]

Average time to edit or post 3 sec. Longest time for around 10 posts/edits etc was just under 5 sec. 1 or 2sec would be better but way, way, way better than some of the 30sec to 1+ min of a week or so ago

[John Saxton]

Can't complain really mostly good ,no worries if it is a little slow I just go out to the shop find a job that needs doing.

[Midnight Man]

Still no complaint, only posting for feedback, but things are a bit slow at 9.55am on Saturday 11th July - timing indicates a minimum of 75 seconds to open a page.

EDIT: 3 minutes later, and it's back to pretty snappy.

Is there a database cleanup/compact/verification process that runs on a regular basis?

[Chesand]

Still no complaint, only posting for feedback, but things are a bit slow at 9.55am on Saturday 11th July - timing indicates a minimum of 75 seconds to open a page.

Same here although opened quickly this time.

[Lappa]

Working fine at the moment

[Treecycle]

Seems like the wheels have fallen off again. Every forum or post very slow to open tonight. Had been great up until now after the fixes.

It is okay again this morning and even later last night it appeared to come good again. Other sites were still running at normal speed when this one was slow so it shouldn't have been the internet slow overall.

[wood spirit]

Was the last time I was on -not notable tonight.

[ubeaut]

I informed Steven around 4pm yesterday that I was having long time to get post to send and he worked on it again last nigh.

Seems better this morning at least for me.

:U

[Midnight Man]

I informed Steven around 4pm yesterday that I was having long time to get post to send and he worked on it again last nigh.

Seems better this morning at least for me.

:U

Came here to say this morning, around 8.30am through 8.40am was the fastest I've ever seen - pages were snapping by, with less than a second or so between "click" and "show".

If there was any change involved in things last night, it certainly seems to have had an impact!

[elanjacobs]

The gremlins are back. It's so slow at the moment it's borderline unusable

EDIT: Must have been a temporary glitch, now 10-15 seconds load time. It was on the order of minutes for a bit.

[steven]

The gremlins are back. It's so slow at the moment it's borderline unusable

EDIT: Must have been a temporary glitch, now 10-15 seconds load time. It was on the order of minutes for a bit.

Thanks. I can see our monitoring is also showing some temp slow downs between 2 and 3pm. I'll have a look through the logs tonight and see if I can workout what the cause was. Likely dodgy bots hitting the server and overwhelming the database.

Thanks for the feedback

[AlexS]

Forums seem to be steam driven at present.

[mature one]

I agree slow as all getup to open pages.

[poundy]

I think it's been a bit variable over the past few days / up to a week. Some times, works fast, others not so... but yes, not like immediately after the last major tuning works were done

[AJ.]

It is painfully slow tonight, virtually unusable.

I can catch up on several threads on other forums whilst waiting for a page to load here.

cheers Andrew

[elanjacobs]

It's working fine for me :shrug:

[homey]

Working fine for me right now. iOS, Safari, NBN50 with TPG.

Brian