Pages load very slow...

Or I should maybe say response time is slow. Or both.

 

Page load times have been increasing over the last couple of months. I hope it is because of more traffic, but it drives me nuts. I saw another post in this area with a similar comment. When I ran a few SMF forums I had to install PHP caching services and fine tune / re-index the DB a lot for instant responses to continue. I only see the latency on this forum.

Thanks.

 

ditto here.

One thing I did to speed up the page load here (still not super fast but better):

I went into my profile and turned on "Don't show users' avatars".

One thing I did to speed up the page load here (still not super fast but better):

I went into my profile and turned on "Don't show users' avatars".

 

That should barely do anything. The max file size is tiny, so I would point to all the DB queries if anything.

One thing I did to speed up the page load here (still not super fast but better):

I went into my profile and turned on "Don't show users' avatars".

 

That should barely do anything. The max file size is tiny, so I would point to all the DB queries if anything.

Did quite a bit for me as certain avatars were veeery slow to load for me from home and at work.  As soon as I turned them off and was only receiving text for most posts it got better.  But I do not expect it to affect everybody as well as it did me.  My ISP is not exactly noted for it's fast and consistent internet access.

One thing I did to speed up the page load here (still not super fast but better):

I went into my profile and turned on "Don't show users' avatars".

 

That should barely do anything. The max file size is tiny, so I would point to all the DB queries if anything.

Did quite a bit for me as certain avatars were veeery slow to load for me from home and at work.  As soon as I turned them off and was only receiving text for most posts it got better.  But I do not expect it to affect everybody as well as it did me.  My ISP is not exactly noted for it's fast and consistent internet access.

 

If the right kind of caching was setup on the server side, avatars wouldn't need to load from the forum's DB but just once. Most popular images/files are usually cached  and since there are so many page reads I would suspect most avatars would/should be. If you have troubles viewing 1-25kb files you have other issues to look into. I can't imagine an ISP being that slow.

If the right kind of caching was setup on the server side, avatars wouldn't need to load from the forum's DB but just once. Most popular images/files are usually cached  and since there are so many page reads I would suspect most avatars would/should be. If you have troubles viewing 1-25kb files you have other issues to look into. I can't imagine an ISP being that slow.

I figured they were being loaded from other sites and were just html links in users profiles here but if as you say they are stored on this sites DB then my problems are something different as you say. 

Same here, very slow load for the past 3 weeks or so..

If the right kind of caching was setup on the server side, avatars wouldn't need to load from the forum's DB but just once. Most popular images/files are usually cached  and since there are so many page reads I would suspect most avatars would/should be. If you have troubles viewing 1-25kb files you have other issues to look into. I can't imagine an ISP being that slow.

I figured they were being loaded from other sites and were just html links in users profiles here but if as you say they are stored on this sites DB then my problems are something different as you say.

 

With SMF when a user gives a URL path so SMF can download the avatar. When that is successful the avatar becomes an uploadable avatar. The avatar "should" be stored in the avatar configured folder on the server which is configured by the admin. So then no constant or repeatedly requests for the same avatar over and over again from remote sites. If setup properly an all text based forum like this can run pretty good on a low budget VPS. DB optimization and caching is key for efficiency.

 

 

 

 

. I can't imagine an ISP being that slow.

 

It's probably not the ISP but the hosting service. I ran into that a few years ago when the server my site was on started getting heavy traffic so I requested my site be moved to a less busy server. They did that over night for me and all was well again. It is really getting painfully slow at this point.

 

. I can't imagine an ISP being that slow.

 

It's probably not the ISP but the hosting service. I ran into that a few years ago when the server my site was on started getting heavy traffic so I requested my site be moved to a less busy server. They did that over night for me and all was well again. It is really getting painfully slow at this point.

It's got to be some peering arrangement that is at fault, because the forum is quite snappy for me, and has been consistently so for months. It's not the host, unless they are selectively sending traffic to some backbone peers and not others. I'd suggest temporarily forcing a DNS change at your end to see if it's something to do with that. You could try using 8.8.8.8 (google) as your DNS server.

 

. I can't imagine an ISP being that slow.

 

It's probably not the ISP but the hosting service. I ran into that a few years ago when the server my site was on started getting heavy traffic so I requested my site be moved to a less busy server. They did that over night for me and all was well again. It is really getting painfully slow at this point.

It's got to be some peering arrangement that is at fault, because the forum is quite snappy for me, and has been consistently so for months. It's not the host, unless they are selectively sending traffic to some backbone peers and not others. I'd suggest temporarily forcing a DNS change at your end to see if it's something to do with that. You could try using 8.8.8.8 (google) as your DNS server.

 

I think I accessed the site from work also, which presented the same slow speeds. 3 or 4 users have confirmed also in this thread. If 2 users said they got much better speed with avatar's turned off then maybe that's not setup right? Check out the very first recommendation in this post. Maybe it is related?

 

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=293441.0

 

 

 

UPDATE: I finally got around to turning off AVATAR's and wouldn't you know the site is quick and the response time is great. Please check the avatar server settings.

The forum has been slow for me as well.  I just disabled avatars, and wow, the speed difference is very noticeable.

The forum has been slow for me as well.  I just disabled avatars, and wow, the speed difference is very noticeable.

Maybe I'm missing something but how do I turn off avatars?

Slow load times are killing me.

 

The forum has been slow for me as well.  I just disabled avatars, and wow, the speed difference is very noticeable.

Maybe I'm missing something but how do I turn off avatars?

Slow load times are killing me.

 

Profile / Account Settings / Look and Layout

Don't show users' avatars.

Ok found it, feel like a dummy, but it was a bit hidden/not intuitive.

Pages load amazingly fast now...  Good catch.

Ok found it, feel like a dummy, but it was a bit hidden/not intuitive.

Pages load amazingly fast now...  Good catch.

 

User BobPhoenix mentioned it earlier in the thread. Just doing that has helped several users with response times.

 

Ok found it, feel like a dummy, but it was a bit hidden/not intuitive.

Pages load amazingly fast now...  Good catch.

 

I was only able to find it after the reply to your post.. Indeed a good performance boost.

@limetech @jonp please fix your forum server settings in regards to avatars.

 

I've noticed that after clicking on a thumbnail in a post (such as a users' screen pic), there's a significant delay before the full pic is displayed, much longer than in the past.  Could this be related, the same issue?

If you check out "Vanilla" forums, they are pretty fantastic. When Plex moved their forums over to Vanilla I was very happy. So simple to use, but very modern and easy to work with. I believe all the free forums out there have very outdated looks. I'd love to see Lime-Tech with a new approach on their forums. While SMF has served its purpose and old school / die hards will never like anything new or different it would be very cool to see a new face. Lime-Tech I hope is a profitable business and think they could afford one of the Vanilla subscriptions. I know setting up those micro brew houses cost money, and o so taste very good when a fresh and very cold one is poured into a frozen mug. I know, hard choice right?

 

Maybe Lime-Tech can throw up a vote to see if anyone is really interested or not. Maybe know one cares. When I recommend unRaid to friends, family and co-workers I want them to be enlightened when they first visit the support forums. Because here, not the website is where you'll be most of the time when starting, using and retrieving support for unRaid. Stock SMF with a few theme changes looks just like everything else out there.

 

DISCLAIMER:

And please, if you are a die hard SMF or free based forum fan and hate change, please don't let my opinion offend you. I've had users really get upset and get very arrogant with me just because of my opinion on this. It is not my intention to hurt or offend anyone's feelings towards an online forum with my opinion.

 

 

I wish they would switch to XenForo.

I've noticed that after clicking on a thumbnail in a post (such as a users' screen pic), there's a significant delay before the full pic is displayed, much longer than in the past.  Could this be related, the same issue?

 

Could be related. I've had that happen where the full size image doesn't load at all. Someone needs to check out their page hits, resources, cache settings, SQL backend, all that good stuff that happens behind the scenes.

If you check out "Vanilla" forums, they are pretty fantastic. When Plex moved their forums over to Vanilla I was very happy. So simple to use,

 

Not sure if I like the narrow format of the plex forum, seems like a lot of wasted space, spreading things out too much.

 

Also as much as there is a definite increase in loading with avatars off there is still something going on because if I click on say the v6 forum it still takes awhile for all messages to load. I will get 1 or 2 then wait 15-30 seconds before the rest will show. If I exit the go back t that forum it will load faster unless new messages have been posted in the mean time, then it will wait just before the new message. This happens more Mornings and Evenings when the forums seem to be the busiest. A month or so ago this was not an issue.

If you check out "Vanilla" forums, they are pretty fantastic. When Plex moved their forums over to Vanilla I was very happy. So simple to use,

 

Not sure if I like the narrow format of the plex forum, seems like a lot of wasted space, spreading things out too much.

 

Also as much as there is a definite increase in loading with avatars off there is still something going on because if I click on say the v6 forum it still takes awhile for all messages to load. I will get 1 or 2 then wait 15-30 seconds before the rest will show. This happens more Mornings and Evenings when the forums seem to be the busiest. A month or so ago this was not an issue.

 

Personally i cant stand the plex forums now.  I use to be pretty active there but i rarely event go there since they changed to the new forum software