Slow boards.ie

red_ice

I would like to know if the nice people at boards.ie could do anything about the speed of the boards.
Opening any link under any of the boards titles takes me about 20 seconds and it gets very irritating.
Im on 512 cable and i ping 160ms constant, i can only imagion what its like for 33k or 56k.
Thanks for your time.

Red.

seamus

Emmmm......have you been asleep? These problems are being addressed right now and it was posted on every forum:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35911

Bard

I'd say the speed problems you're experiencing with boards.ie are connected with the problems I was having with the irelandoffline.com site, as they're hosted on the same server.

Basically something happened that filled the disk up... that'll slow ANY o/s down.

I believe Regi has sorted this out, so you should start seeing an improvement in speed... well... now, actually.

red_ice

seamus... i dont look on these boards much... i think that says it all..


N1 bard... not really feeling the difference tbh, ty ne way

red.

Bard

Originally posted by red_ice

Im on 512 cable and i ping 160ms constant, i can only imagion what its like for 33k or 56k.

I'm on a so-called "56K Modem" and my average ping to www.boards.ie is 205ms... which isn't exactly terrible, to be honest.

Celt

My average ping is 1994ms.

yellum

On a 56 modem and pages are loading fine. The only thing that slows the downloads down is the graphical signatures that some people have.

I have noticed a speed decrease though but that may be due to the popularity of the site, which is kind of a nice complaint, but does need looking into.

DeVore

Yes, we are looking into this constantly.

Several things are potential problems, the priimary suspect is the dhtml menus, so they have been taken of for today until we get them recoded and shortened (in html terms). They are 30K in and of themselves.

We'd like to g-zip pages too, which was being interferred with by the dhtml. We'll probably replace them with something similar but they probably wont have the astrixes to indicate new posts as that requires a lot of DB activity.

Long term we met with people today who may well host us in Dublin. We'll have to see how things go.

Keep the faith we are all over this problem... weird as it is.

DeV.

ps: the next thing to go is the sig images ... sorry but we have to see if they are the problem.

yellum

Bye bye sigs. Some are just too big.

Bard

Well I don't know about anyone else but the removal/downsizing of the DHTML menus made a noticeable speed difference for me.

Cheers!

dahamsta

We'd like to g-zip pages too, which was being interferred with by the dhtml.

I don't get that DeV - how did they interfere with each other? (Not being anal - offering to help.)

We'll probably replace them with something similar but they probably wont have the astrixes to indicate new posts as that requires a lot of DB activity.

Pity, that was handy. Guess I'll have to start using subscribtions again then.

Long term we met with people today who may well host us in Dublin. We'll have to see how things go.

Waste of money. If location is that important, put the box in the UK, it's almost exactly the same as putting it in Ireland.

BTW, someone posted the name of your host in the US a few months ago and I have to say I peed myself when I saw the pricing. Feckin' crazy.

the next thing to go is the sig images ... sorry but we have to see if they are the problem.

I've been browsing the boards with sigs turned off, and they're still slow. They shouldn't have much bearing on the /page/ load either, as the images render /after/ the HTML is loaded (unless the threads load at the same time as the HTML thread, and that's limited anyway).

Speaking of optimization, you could use a tighter style on your embedded (and remote if you have any) style sheets. Using the expanded indented style adds loads of whitespace (and a few characters) you don't need.

You'd be better off with something like this (note that you can't use /exactly/ this, because some of the stylesheet is usually generated dynamically):

<style type="text/css">
<!--
.bg1 { background-color: #eeeeee }
.bg2 { background-color: #dddddd }
.bg3 { background-color: #000066 }
body { scrollbar-base-color: #003399; scrollbar-arrow-color: #ffffff }
select { font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: #000000; background-color: #cfcfcf }
textarea, .bginput { font-size: 12px; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: #000000; background-color: #cfcfcf }
a:link, a:visited, a:active { color: #cc0000 }
a:hover { color: #ff0000 }
#cat a:link, #cat a:visited, #cat a:active { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none }
#cat a:hover { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline }
#ltlink a:link, #ltlink a:visited, #ltlink a:active { color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none }
#ltlink a:hover { color: #ff0000; text-decoration: underline }
.thtcolor { color: #ffffff }
-->
</style>

Passed it through strtolower() - hate UC.

HTH,
adam