corvette forum.

 

I was told it was my browser.

Despite the rest of the internet not being slow.

 

Running just fine here in the Land of Lincoln.

 

fine here. switch to Chrome

 

Fine here. Using Chrome.

 

Loading slow or low activity? If the latter, I suspect people are still recovering from overdoses of tryptophan

 

No problems here

 

Actually, I've had a problem just starting yesterday. The forum hangs, then I get the message "Stop running this script? A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly. If it continues to run your computer might become unresponsive. Yes No"

Selecting "Yes" lets you move on.

I went to "Tools" "Internet Options" "Advanced" and unchecked Enable third-party browser extensions" and have not seen the message since. Also, the forum seems to run a bit faster.

May be worth a try.

 

No problems here with Firefox and AdBlockerPlus. Takes 6-7 seconds to load a forum title page after I double click on the desktop shortcut.

 

IE does not like this forum. Try Chrome.

 

I'm in the market for a sports car and I'm considering a Vette but the forum experience is important to me. The delays are simply rediculious. I click on a link and go off to browse threads on other forums before I get a reply. What's wrong with this forum? I've had similar problems with Firefox on this forum and I frequent lots of other forums that don't have problems with IE.

If you're putting together a web based service you need to support ALL of the primary browsers out there - IE, Chrome and Firefox.

Regards,
Ian

 

So you've been a member for 3 weeks and your first post is to complain about the forum. The figures from the main page of the forum say there are approximately 156,000 current members. Must not be a problem for too many people.

Hardly any complaints of slow forum are expressed by forum members who are using anything other than Internet Explorer. If you're also seeing slow response with Firefox, you have a problem with your browser.

Maybe JT can give you some pointers.

 

First impressions are difficult to recover from and my first impressions of this forum, as a prospective Vette owner, is that it's unbearably slow. And, I'm not the only one, there are other threads in the help section right now.

Concurrent users on-line *right now* is all that matters, not total members and I frequent larger forums that don't experience these problems. I'm in IT so feel free to get technical when explaining what you think might be going on.

Regards,
Ian

 

JT would do better at explaining what's probably going on. My main observation is that hardly any Firefox users are having problems with the forum, including myself. Also, users with several other browsers are not having problems: Chrome, Opera, and some others.

From the time I double click on the forum shortcut on my desktop until I have the full page of thread titles in my requested forum consistent;y takes about 6 to 7 seconds. Unless the forum is completely down, it never takes more than 10 seconds.

The forum does support other browsers, but we've seen time and time again where more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer have problems with the forum. Also, I've seen posts where the forum IT folks are working on those IE problems.

Again, be patient and wait for JT to give you some help. He's very good at it.

 

The site is supported by, and does operate on, the major browsers. However, aside from the fact that IE has been known to render pages slower than the other browsers, IE particularly does not do well with nested tables. Part of the delay is your browser calling out to external scripts and ads that support the site or add extra features. Some of that speed delay is between you and the external scripts/ads. The ads help support the site as a site this large and active does requires extensive resources to operate.

The speed issues that are being described are not exactly due to sever load issues. Additionally, amount of users online is not as important as what those users are actually doing. 50 users online that are simply browsing is not as resource intensive as some of those users searching, for example. The delay in the speed that is being described would appear to be associated between you (the viewer) and the external scripts and ads that support the site. This will vary between one member and the next due to different ISP and routing being one factor. Also, Firefox tends to render the page as it's being loaded while IE tends to wait to render the page. This also contributes to the speed differences between the browsers.

Looking over several reports would show that IE usage on the Internet has dropped while Chrome and Firefox usage has increased. It would appear to suggest some of the issues and concerns associated with IE.

 

Go back and see my solution in Post #8. It worked for me and I've not had a problem since. It doesn't seem to affect anything else either.

 

Bwahahahahahahah

 

Without further analysis it's difficult to tell, however, I've been in IT for 20 years and I would be willing to bet that it has nothing to do with IE rendering speed (15 seconds is an absolute lifetime in computer terms, heck 5 seconds is a lifetime) or wire speed but, instead, rests almost entirely on the Ad service you're using. Delays of this magnitude are almost always the result of timeouts related to underresourced servers or bad coding that point clients at servers that no longer exist.

Aside from years of decline in popularity, IE is still the most popular browser out there and the Ad service probably still has a bias towards IE. Chrome and Firefox probably provide a better experience here because they simply don't display the Ads or don't get hooked into the advanced Ad scripting targetted at IE. Advertising is a given, servers and bandwidth cost real money, but I think it would make a lot more sense to upgrade to an Ad service that doesn't kill the browsing experience for the largest single group of clients. If you subscribe to a better Ad service you could improve the experience and increase revenue in the process. A real Win-Win.

How about Google Adsense? I've found their adverts to be very accurate based on previous browsing (they've actually got me to click on a few) and the service doesn't seem to introduce any delays.

On a side note, I followed the link from the Doubleclick Ad server to their main webpage and experienced the same delays I've been experiencing here!

Regards,
Ian

 

Ian, browser render speed is a factor. However I did not suggest it was entirely responsbile. There are several reports that show how Firefox and Chrome render pages faster than IE.

When there are slow speed reports, it could be one or more several things. From server load, network issues to the datacenter, network issue between the members and the datacenter, and several local (member side) issues (browser issues, virus, spyware, etc.).

As far as seeing delays with the ad services, we will look into that. We do continue to investigate speed concerns, however, they're not always on CF's end nor are they always consistent.

Thanks.

 

I've diagnosed lots of client/server performance problems and, while we can get into packet sniffing and process analysis on the client side, I've found the most effecient way to approach a problem like this is to start with general observations:

- I have a cable based ISP that provides 15Mbps download, an i7 processor and 6GB of RAM. No other sites render as slowly, period (although I must admit that it has been better over the last 12-18 hours)
- I frequent other vBulletin based forums without any problems whatsoever
- Server load problems would affect everyone but not everyone is affected
- Network issues would affect other sites, assuming the problem is closer to me, or everyone, assuming the problem is closer to your datacenter
- Malware isn't an issue on the machine in question
- I've seen at least one "delayed page" with an ad that contained no content. I will keep an eye out for more.

Problems that come and go are always more difficult to troubleshoot and correct than those that are easy to reproduce. It would be helpful to work on reproducing the problem and noting the time/environment/etc.

Regards,
Ian