Forum Speed

[Damian]

Having used the forum for a few days now I can see absolutely no improvement in the speed.
The old forum was slow, but this is terrible.
A comment has been made elsewhere that it reminded the user of dial up, well, it is not, it is much, much, worse.
The time it takes to load the front page is bad, navigating through pages is very bad, and the refresh rate is pathetic.

Unless a very good fix is put in place in a VERY short time frame, I can forsee users going away from the forum never to return.

In the 4 years I have been a Moderator I have never seen such lack of use of the forum.

 

[Soozeeg]

I agree, Damian. I know there have been lots of problems and the techies are working hard on it all and I've been prepared to be 100% patient. But this is just too difficult now, it's so painfully slow that even I can't be bothered. I'll come back in a few days.

 

[VIP640]

I have to agree, it's so slow it's painful....

 

[Robtel]

Got to agree. If anything it seems to have got even slower today. I have already on more than one occasion over the past few days gave up waiting on pages opening, closed down and went elsewhere to see what was being discussed.

 

[forestgump]

glad i tought it was me one hour to make a post im off for a few days may be a week rest to let my keys cool down.

 

[Rita1]

Well its got slower n slower everyday back in a week or so :-( If at all

 

[DianneT]

I am on the PC Forum now and it is not slow at all.

 

[Parksy]

There is obviously a problem that is affecting some but not others.
The very first time that I loged on the forum was slow and I had the header text seen by others but I have no problem now (touch wood)
It takes between three and five seconds at the most for me to switch between posts or topics so there are obviously some differences in loading speeds here.
I'm using Firefox on a fairly slow 2mb Virgin Broadband with Windows XP.
I use tabbed browsing for regularly used websites, more often than not I have no need to log in but now and again I have to. The log in process does not affect the speed at which the website subsequently loads.
At the bottom of this reply box is the text Path: p

I regularly use a registry cleaner to rid my computer registry of unwanted clutter. The registry cleaner (E Using) is safe free ware (there is a box if you wish to make a donation with a Skip option)

http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_cleaner/updatev20.htm
The registry cleaner is a safe download and can be found from the above link
I don't know if any of this will help the webtechs in any way, the more information at their disposal the better the chances of solving the problems

 

[Damian]

Having just read Parksys post and he being on a 2mb connection I am even more fed up.
I have 20mb connection and just run a speed test which showed, over 6 tests, a download of 18mb and an upload of 1.8mb

And yet this site is still crawling along at a ridiculously slow speed, like 10 seconds to laod front page, and then it gets worse.

 

[Parksy]

To give an idea of the speed here as soon as I click on Save on this thread I'll switch to Forest Gumps repetetive complaint about forum speed in this Our Website section and the time difference will show. I'll just write my name in the other thread.

 

[Parksy]

To give an idea of the speed here as soon as I click on Save on this thread I'll switch to Forest Gumps repetetive complaint about forum speed in this Our Website section and the time difference will show. I'll just write my name in the other thread.

I make it one munute and nine seconds from clicking the Save button on this thread, accessing Forest Gumps thread, adding my comment and clicking Save on that one.
There has to be some factor which would account for the differences in forum loading time

 

[ProfJohnL]

I was looking forward to the inception of the new site, many promises from the Haymarket bods over the years have proven fruitless, but at last a new forum engine,

From my perspective there are good and not so good bits about it.

The Good
Fixed theme listing positions for the forum home page.
Much nicer editing pad, with clear type faces, and word processing facilities. Even a spell checker when using Google chrome.
When editing the window that include the headline or previous post for reference
The ability to easily include graphics in posts and replies

The Bad
Forum Home page is too spread out down the page, it requires scrolling to find many of the topics and themes I follow. – could it be either compressed a bit more or even have the headings positioned horizontally across the page like the sites home page?

The indication of the content of the last post is too short to be especially helpful.

The ‘reply’ buttons are not particularly informative firstly there are two, and there is nothing that describes what each does.- suggest Compose Comment, & Compose Reply, and rather than save – Post

There is no ‘Back’ button to return to the previous page.

Forum speed seems much slower than the previous engine, and it seems to be very variable.