Is the forum slower than it used to be?

[greytop]

Has anyone else noticed a slow down in the response when navigating round the forums? It may be just my machine/connection although other sites seem OK.
E.g. Click on the tree to go back a thread.

[Edith]

Yes, I have noticed it too.

[richardksa]

Good, It's not just me then. I work through a satellite uplink, so I'm never sure whether it's that or the server I'm connected to. Yes, it is slower.

[Brian]

I believe that our webserver is somewhere in Germany, so it's altogether possible that there's some router having issues between it and where you are. I'm experiencing no issues here- at least no slower than normal, considering that we're halfway around the world.

[greytop]

It does not happen all the time. I get a "waiting for NIS" message and the net activity bar stays blank for 10-15 secs, then the window loads at normal speed.

Update 25/9 : 1145 Spanish time - it's fast again

[Ben]

Funnily enough I had noticed this recently, but it seems to go in fits and starts. sometimes it is very quick, sometimes a bit slower. This makes me think that the problem has to be with our hosting provider, and if it persists, or becomes annoying, then we will have to consider changing.

This weekend, when we get back to Spain, I have to upgrade the forum software again, maybe it will improve after that, as the latest version is said to have ironed out a few bugs from the previous, recent upgrade.

Has anyone else noticed the forum being slower?

[Nic]

Yes. I've been noticing it for the past couple of days. When I click on something it seems to do nothing, then the status bar at the bottom says loading page and then after about 15-20 seconds it will display the page. I thought it might just be my connection because a couple of weeks ago it seemed fairly quick.

[Pepino]

Has anyone else noticed the forum being slower?

Yep, I had put it down to being on my flatmate's WiFi as the slow-down seemed to co-incide with when I arrived in Spain, but now people have mentioned it, I suppose it could all have one central cause.

[Ashley]

I had thought it was my connection, too. Most of the time its fine but them sometimes pages take quite a while to load.

[Ben]

It has just occured to me that this occured at about the time we added a couple more sub forums, last weekish, and moved a lot of the posts around. Does this seem right? I am on the case anyway and hope to sort this out asap as it is very frustrating!!! Why do these things crop up just when one goes on Holiday for a week?! Is that the law of Mr Murphy or Mr Sod? One or the other anyway!

[richardksa]

The same thought had occurred to me. I know nothing of how these things work but now the bit that does the searching has more things to search through, it proably takes longer to do it. (Stop me if I sound too technical!) Maybe size does matter.:rolleyes:

One thing that does annoy me a little bit is that if I take the shortcut to look at the latest entry in the only live thread in a section, the red blob does not dim. Then I can't remember if I've read the entry or not and go back to read it again. I humbly apologise for nit-picking.http://qsmile.com/qsimages/240.gif

[Ben]

To be honest I never use the red blobs, I just use the 'new posts' link at the top. It shows all the new stuff since your last visit, and if you cick on it again after reading a post, the link for the thread in question will change (lighter) to show you have read it.... if that makes sense. As for forum speed, I'm hoping that a bit of 'table optimisation' tomorrow morning will sort everthing out.

[guapo]

yep, 'new posts' is the only button I ever use too, though sometimes I find the browser gets confused about what I have seen and I miss a few posts.

As for the slow response times it could just be some growing pains. There are now over 8,500 posts sitting in the database so I can believe some tweaking may be called for. Having said that I don't think it is so bad that it can't wait a few days. I would hate to think you are stuck indoors fixing this when you could be out enjoying the British sunshine ;)

[Ben]

Ok, I have done a bit of forum house-keeping and 'optimisation', let's see if it has sped up a bit! Next weekend I will upgrade to the latest version of the software which might also make a difference. If we are still experieincing slowness in a week or two, then it will be time to look for a new host.

[greytop]

T.....
One thing that does annoy me a little bit is that if I take the shortcut to look at the latest entry in the only live thread in a section, the red blob does not dim. Then I can't remember if I've read the entry or not and go back to read it again. I humbly apologise for nit-picking.http://qsmile.com/qsimages/240.gif

The auto read marking only seems to work if you go back through the tree at the top of the thread. Miss one step and it does not. Using the browser back button also means it won't work. When it is in slow mode it can take forever.

Note that a double click on the red blob will set it to "read", or less red! How does anyone ever learn English!!!!:)

[Brian]

quite, quite slow for me today. Traceroute shows only a latency of 140 ms over 24 hops, so it has to be a server performance issue.

[Ben]

Wow, Brian, you are going to have to explain that for me.... I called the host yesterday and they told me that it wasn't due to any problem at their end, but then they would say that...

[omeyas]

Wow, Brian, you are going to have to explain that for me.... I called the host yesterday and they told me that it wasn't due to any problem at their end, but then they would say that...

You wouldn't expect them to say any different, would you! ;-) Here it's the ISP blames BT, BT says it's not us!
I've got a good fast connection, and I find it very slow here at times. Perhaps the hamster on the wheel needs replacing with a younger model!

[Brian]

Wow, Brian, you are going to have to explain that for me.... I called the host yesterday and they told me that it wasn't due to any problem at their end, but then they would say that...

Traceroute is a detailed report of the time it takes for a computer to communicate with each router on the way to a certain part of the internet. The most common usage in this case would be to open a command prompt (start/run/cmd), and type in tracert www.notesfromspain.com (http://www.notesfromspain.com).

from my pc, more or less, this is the output:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

Z:\>tracert www.notesfromspain.com (http://www.notesfromspain.com)
Tracing route to www.notesfromspain.com (http://www.notesfromspain.com) [195.20.248.30]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
4 13 ms 11 ms * jpr-gw.sigecom.net [63.64.9.130]
5 20 ms 21 ms * POS2-1.GW1.STL3.ALTER.NET [157.130.120.1]
6 20 ms 22 ms * 121.at-2-1-0.xl1.stl3.alter.net [152.63.90.102]
7 44 ms 43 ms * 0.so-7-0-0.XL1.CHI2.ALTER.NET [152.63.68.81]
8 18 ms 47 ms * sl-bb24-nyc-10-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.13.181]
9 47 ms 18 ms * ae-1-55.bbr1.atlanta1.level3.net [4.68.103.129]
10 47 ms 125 ms * as-2-0.bbr2.frankfurt1.level3.net [4.68.128.169]
11 129 ms 123 ms * so-0-1-3.ams22.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.81.198]
12 * * 133 ms ge-11-1.ipcolo1.frankfurt1.level3.net [4.68.118.
105]
13 301 ms 135 ms * gw-megaspace.frankfurt.eu.level3.net [212.162.44
.158]
14 131 ms 128 ms * a0kac1.gw-dista-a.bs.ka.schlund.net [212.227.116
.216]
15 132 ms 143 ms * te-2-3.gw-backbone-c.bad.schlund.net [212.227.12
0.46]
16 135 ms 135 ms * gw-ps3.bs.ka.schlund.net [212.227.125.4]
17 135 ms 134 ms * camera.benjamincurtis.com [195.20.248.30]

This tells me at at the time, my pc only took 135 ms to communicate with nfs.com- which is quite fast for a trans-atlantic link. However, it seems that the webserver is slow to process the pages. I do know that vbulletin can be a strain on a webserver, and it might require some maintenance to speed it up again.

For me, there are times when I reply to a post that I have to wait up to 10 seconds before the reply page loads, or before a post gets written to the hard disk. Again, these seem to be server issues.

Hope that explanation helps.

[greytop]

Using CMD/PING I get 100ms from within Spain so I agree it looks like the server end

[Ben]

Thanks Guys, I have invested in a new hosting package with https://www.asmallorange.com/ , a host that has been highly recommended by other users of this forum software. It may take a day or two to work out how to make the swap, but hopefully we will be back up to speed very soon.

[Brian]

Thanks Guys, I have invested in a new hosting package with https://www.asmallorange.com/ , a host that has been highly recommended by other users of this forum software. It may take a day or two to work out how to make the swap, but hopefully we will be back up to speed very soon.

Hope so. :)

Did your current hosts admit to any issues?

[gary]

Has anyone else noticed a slow down in the response when navigating round the forums? It may be just my machine/connection although other sites seem OK.
E.g. Click on the tree to go back a thread.

i had thought this was the case a couple of weeks or so ago but all seems fine now, maybe someone in the chain throttled capacity for maintenance purposes.

UPDATE - this posted and refreshed in well under 1 second - as good as instant.

[gary]

Thanks Guys, I have invested in a new hosting package with https://www.asmallorange.com/ , a host that has been highly recommended by other users of this forum software. It may take a day or two to work out how to make the swap, but hopefully we will be back up to speed very soon.


Watch out for the bandwidth charges as your site grows - I use a dedicated server with 1&1 (schlund) and have no bandwidth charges, ie I am my own ISP. I recommend you be familiar with basic server technologies and telnet but they do managed servers too. You can run many sites from your server on the same IP address or purchase different ones - be careful moving your domain registrations - some ISPs charge like raging bulls

[Ben]

Thanks Gary, funnily enough it is a 1and1 shared server that is causing the problems at the moment! For now we are going to try a new shared host in the US, leaving the domains with 1and1 and changing their DNS settings, all of which will hopefully happen totally painlessly tomorrow!

[Brian]

Thanks Gary, funnily enough it is a 1and1 shared server that is causing the problems at the moment! For now we are going to try a new shared host in the US, leaving the domains with 1and1 and changing their DNS settings, all of which will hopefully happen totally painlessly tomorrow!


Amazingly, I'm having no issues posting today. I wonder if we're seeing this sort of thing during the server's peak traffic times?

[gary]

Thanks Gary, funnily enough it is a 1and1 shared server that is causing the problems at the moment! For now we are going to try a new shared host in the US, leaving the domains with 1and1 and changing their DNS settings, all of which will hopefully happen totally painlessly tomorrow!

Yeah, I spotted the schlund tag in the ping test

My site engineer (son) says he gets great download speeds from our server and up to now we have had no problems - but we are currently only running a handful of sites with a throughput of maybe 2 or 3 thousand uniques a month, There is no way of knowing who you are sharing with on a shared server and how much of the servers resources they are soaking up. You may encounter something similar on the new server but id you do I suggest whinging a bit and transferring to a dedicated server (theyll do it all for you) Dedicated server isnt much more expensive but like I said you have to sort the whole thing yourself... though it runs very nicely through a browser based prog called plesk if you are unfamiliar with the dark side. There is also usually a dedicated server option which is managed - ie you can pick up the phone and sort stuff out but it'll be slightly dearer.

[timg]

Yesterday one of the "new posts" searches took over 12 seconds (as reported on the results page). Today it says 0.09 seconds!

[greytop]

Amazingly, I'm having no issues posting today. I wonder if we're seeing this sort of thing during the server's peak traffic times?
It seems too random for that. I've accessed it several times today and whilst it has been better than over the last few days actually posting something seemed to take forever.
Let's see how Ben gets on with moving it! We might get our lives back for a few days before it reappears :DLOLOL:D

That took 37 secs to post

[Brian]

It seems too random for that. I've accessed it several times today and whilst it has been better than over the last few days actually posting something seemed to take forever.
Let's see how Ben gets on with moving it! We might get our lives back for a few days before it reappears :DLOLOL:D

That took 37 secs to post

I have no life. ;)

Yeah, right after posting that, it took several seconds to place my next post. I just flipped to another tab while it finished.

[Ben]

Sorry, forum been off all day while I tried to make the switch to the faster server, but of course a few problems cropped up so I will have to try again next week when I'm back in Spain. Why don't these things just 'work'?????

[greytop]

Ben you seem to have fixed it. Suggest you kill tjis thread now.
Thanks on behalf of us all.

[Ben]

Good idea, yes, the speed issue seems to be fixed with the new host, so topic closed! (Though the forum did stop working for 20 mins earlier due to the damn Digg effect (http://www.notesfromspain.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9162#post9162) on NFS! The host had to restart the server! )