Practical Caravan Forum - slow running issues

Aug 2, 2006
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Dear All,

I'd like to apologise for the recurring performance problems which have appeared on the site over the last few weeks. This is as a result of Practical Caravan sharing server space with our sister brands, Practical Motorhome, Caravan Sitefinder, Stuff.tv and What Hi-Fi. With the launch of new iPhones, the death of Steve Jobs, a big trade show at the NEC, a hi-fi show this weekend in Manchester, the servers (computers where the websites are stored) have reached the limit of what they can deliver at peak times, and when the sites get busy, they get very slow.

The short-term fixes are being applied but the proper long term fix is being applied in the 2nd week of November when new server environments are being kicked into life. We appreciate your patience while we work around these issues which are very frustrating for us as well as you.

If you want to discuss it further, by all means post here. My specialist area is caravans and travel rather than server environments though, so nothing too technical :)

I'll keep you updated with progress. If you'd rather rant more privately, feel free to email me here. Alternatively, you can Tweet at www.twitter.com/pcaravan or even visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/practicalcaravan

Thanks to the mods who do a great job of keeping people informed and thanks most of all to you for supporting the Practical Caravan forum. It's a valuable resource and we really appreciate you sticking with us, even when we make it a bit tricky...

Cheers
 
Jun 11, 2012
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Hi Nigel thanks for the report ,tonight is painfully slow it took 19 seconds to open your posting up here in Daventry..
Im sure members of the forum who have waited this long for an improvement can wait just that little bit longer now knowing something is going to happen.
Regards Sir Roger
 
Jun 20, 2005
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Thanks for telling us about Manchester Nigel,
I hope the BBC's forthcoming move doesn't make them go sloooow
smiley-laughing.gif

Seriously now, I have a theory that all the moving animated adverts are responsible for making things so slow. Is this possible??
 
Aug 2, 2006
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That is a good question that deserved a proper answer, rather than me making one up. So I put it to the technical chaps...

The answer is NO! The adverts and the rest of the site are hosted in different places.

The adverts are served from a separate place and the way the site is built means that they appear after everything else on the page has loaded. When the ad server is running slowly you might notice that you get the page and then the ads come in a second or two later.

And I've now noticed that if you watch the page loading, the ads do appear last

Hope that helps
 

Parksy

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Nov 12, 2009
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Nigel Donnelly said:
If it is any consolation, they are waiting just as long on What Hi-Fi.......................
Do the What Hi-Fi forum members get that annoying piped muzak while they are waiting?
smiley-laughing.gif
 
Apr 7, 2008
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Nigel Donnelly said:
Dear All,

I'd like to apologise for the recurring performance problems which have appeared on the site over the last few weeks. This is as a result of Practical Caravan sharing server space with our sister brands, Practical Motorhome, Caravan Sitefinder, Stuff.tv and What Hi-Fi. With the launch of new iPhones, the death of Steve Jobs, a big trade show at the NEC, a hi-fi show this weekend in Manchester, the servers (computers where the websites are stored) have reached the limit of what they can deliver at peak times, and when the sites get busy, they get very slow.

The short-term fixes are being applied but the proper long term fix is being applied in the 2nd week of November when new server environments are being kicked into life. We appreciate your patience while we work around these issues which are very frustrating for us as well as you.

If you want to discuss it further, by all means post here. My specialist area is caravans and travel rather than server environments though, so nothing too technical :)

I'll keep you updated with progress. If you'd rather rant more privately, feel free to email me here. Alternatively, you can Tweet at www.twitter.com/pcaravan or even visit us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/practicalcaravan

Thanks to the mods who do a great job of keeping people informed and thanks most of all to you for supporting the Practical Caravan forum. It's a valuable resource and we really appreciate you sticking with us, even when we make it a bit tricky...

Cheers

Nigel,
Any news of what is happening to the forum
images


puternerd.gif
 
Aug 2, 2006
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Update: Owl returned

I have been granted an audience with the technical folk tomorrow. More info then, but apparently our new server environment is ready for us. There will be 30min downtime while the site migrates but other than that, it will be more resistant to laggy performance once we move.

More as I have it.
 
Aug 2, 2006
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Ok. The Practical Caravan site will be offline for around an hour between 11am and noon tomorrow as the migration to the new servers takes place. A holding page will be put in place.

Obviously there will be no problems and it will all go like clockwork :)

For updates while the site is down however, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter - links below...

Good luck everyone and we'll see you on the other side!
 

Parksy

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Nov 12, 2009
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It all seems to have gone rather swimmingly Nigel, congratulations to all concerned!
The new avatar that I've been trying for ages to load to my profile has finally appeared, no matter what I did the old one kept appearing before on the old server.
I only ever had the slow running issue once but I live about 200 yards from a major telephone exchange so my broadband is pretty good. The forum text looks a bit clearer (unless Herself has cleaned my specs) and the response time is quite fast.
 

Parksy

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Nov 12, 2009
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For some reason an old avatar keeps re-appearing even though the new one was shown before I went out earlier.
The one shown in my account details is not the one that I loaded either. Very strange

Edit: I managed to upload the avatar that I wanted to use after changing it from JPEG to GIF
 

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