Site Upgrade (Something has has nothing to do with COVID-19)

[Tractionman]

Congrats with that Dave, and we'll done Crispin.
I too have been experiencing freezing, long delays in loading, and strangely, clicking on one forum and getting another (various). I do not get this anywhere else, just this site, which is, as you have found is not a pleasureable experience.

 

[Towpack]

I‘m getting everything where it should be with the links etc but loading speed is the worst it’s ever been, anything up to 10 secs to load a page. The top part of the page will load immediately, then it just hangs until the remainder loads in an instant several secs later. In addition I also occasionally get nothing with “server stopped responding” errors.

 

[jibberjabber]

I don't have any problems with this new site, it's far better than the old site, thanks for all your hard work Crispin.

 

[Tractionman]

Same here Towpack, and worse!

 

[Towpack]

It‘s weird and it’s annoying because I cant find the cause. Crispin says everything checks out at his end and I don‘t doubt that for a second. Ditto my end as far as I can see as I get it both on WiFi with the Ipad and the Mac on Ethernet but on no other websites I regularly use. My only common denominator is Safari so possibly a compatability issue? Thought of loading another third party browser for comparison but that‘s an absolute last resort.

 

[Tractionman]

I'm on an android tablet using Google and ONLY get it on this site. So frustrating, and getting to me so I am considering giving it a tap with a baby club hammer !!

 

[jibberjabber]

I'm on an android tablet using Google and ONLY get it on this site. So frustrating, and getting to me so I am considering giving it a tap with a baby club hammer !!

I'm on an iMac with Firefox, with no probs, also no probs on my iPhone.

Don't use a baby hammer, use a Birmingham screwdriver.

 

[Firewout]

Also long loading times here...

 

[Tractionman]

Birmingham screwdriver ? You are a bit behind times, they are now made in Taiwan

 

[Crispin]

This is the one I mean

View attachment 164851

I'll see if there is a thin banner I can put along the top with the oft-used buttons when viewing on a phone. Should be something around or I can cobble something together.

I pay membership and i have ads for gear oil a the top of this page and hand stitched leather shoes at the bottom , some threads i see ads between previous posts ?

Shayne, I've emailed you regarding this.

I too have been experiencing freezing, long delays in loading, and strangely,

Any page or site in particular? Are you on phone, tablet etc? Other websites doing it too?

I‘m getting everything where it should be with the links etc but loading speed is the worst it’s ever been, anything up to 10 secs to load a page.

As above, anything in particular like specific times etc?

Also long loading times here...

Ditto; above

 

[Crispin]

@Dave

So whatever the problem was it has gone, so many thanks.

So it seems the reason you're not getting emails is because Hotmail is (again) upset with me for some reason. Should be fixed as soon as I work out why.


C

 

[Towpack]

I'll see if there is a thin banner I can put along the top with the oft-used buttons when viewing on a phone. Should be something around or I can cobble something together.



Shayne, I've emailed you regarding this.



Any page or site in particular? Are you on phone, tablet etc? Other websites doing it too?


As above, anything in particular like specific times etc?


Ditto; above

It’s every page Crispin. I have the main page bookmarked, then usually hit the ‘what’s new’ link, then one of the threads with new posts and they are all slow to load. Tried turning off private browsing but that made no difference. Doesnt seem to make any difference if the thread I‘m viewing is short or long with photos etc, the top will load inststantly, freeze, then the rest will load instantly several seconds later. I had an OS update (which I‘d been putting off) waiting for the Ipad which I’ve now done since the forum site update thinking it might fix something but it made no difference. Everything on the website does work, it‘s just the speed.

 

[Crispin]

Out of curiosity, what adverts are you seeing on the page? (if it's Russian brides or something like that then send to me privately  )

I've seen some of the gambling based adverts slow the site down for me when testing.

 

[Firewout]

Same here as towpack's comment
Adverts : mostly banggood.com. a site I visit regurarly for electronic parts and facemasks or other commercial sites I recently visited.

 

[Chas]

Af

Out of curiosity, what adverts are you seeing on the page? (if it's Russian brides or something like that then send to me privately  )

I've seen some of the gambling based adverts slow the site down for me when testing.

After a period of normal activity the site has gone on a go-slow again for the last three days, BTW I'm not getting ads for Russian Brides or gambling Crispin.

 

[flint]

Might not have anything to do with it, but I've noticed that the interweb is slower in general than usual at times here. I seem to remember reading that some providers are throttling things back a bit due do lots more streaming and Skypes etc. at the moment.

 

[Chas]

Might not have anything to do with it, but I've noticed that the interweb is slower in general than usual at times here. I seem to remember reading that some providers are throttling things back a bit due do lots more streaming and Skypes etc. at the moment.

For me all other sites are OK, it's just the Cruiser site that is slow.

 

[Tractionman]

Every page Crispin, top section/ banner loads immediately, then slow to load, then the whole lot freezes, cant
scroll, click on any forums, until it decides I can go ahead. Every time I want to view something else, I have the same performance again, right the way through the club site, irrespective of day/ time etc. I click on forums and I'm often taken to another.
I'm on android tablet with Google as browser, and don't get it on any other website but this one, and during the last few days my participation has gone down.
Adverts I am getting across top, between banner and forums are varied, brake linings, dating agencies, the list goes on, all nonsense stuff I have not viewed anywhere or am interested in.
Good luck with this one ! Thanks, John

 

[Chas]

Every page Crispin, top section/ banner loads immediately, then slow to load, then the whole lot freezes, cant
scroll, click on any forums, until it decides I can go ahead. Every time I want to view something else, I have the same performance again, right the way through the club site, irrespective of day/ time etc. I click on forums and I'm often taken to another.
I'm on android tablet with Google as browser, and don't get it on any other website but this one, and during the last few days my participation has gone down.
Adverts I am getting across top, between banner and forums are varied, brake linings, dating agencies, the list goes on, all nonsense stuff I have not viewed anywhere or am interested in.
Good luck with this one ! Thanks, John

Exactly the same for me Crispin, but no dating agencies, so far. Oops! dating agency just popped up.

 

[ren]

I haven't noticed any issues but in the community spirit and curiosity caused me to look a bit further into it. I wondered if I hadn't noticed because I may have been blocking anything with an add-on. First I compared this page to halfords.com both as a full reload in my usual laptop browser (Firefox) logged into forum as a supporter so no ads and it took this exact page took 2x as long and there is definitely a pause as mentioned by others but like I say I hadn't really noticed until I checked. I thought this may be influenced by whether there is some caching elsewhere that makes halfords.com quicker being a more popular (surely not) site, especially the front page. I use several browsers and normally use Firefox for most things including this site with various add-ons but Chrome for Netflix and the odd other thing and chromium for if I want to see a site plain and unfettered with no add-ons at all. In clean Chromium the load times for this Land Cruiser Club front page beats halfords.com and eurocarparts.com easily as an anonymous new visitor. However, if I dig deeper into the forums the pages can take as much as twice as long or more to load. So to me the question is how much of a difference is there between loading the front page of the forums and deeper posts. To me the most obvious thing would be the posts are way less likely to be cached on the server (or sercers in bewteen used by ISPs etc. Also there is likely to be more database work involved in grabbing those posts than the front page. So I then thought that this wasn't a very fair comparison either as we are not comparing like for like (a difficult challenge as nothing really compares to landcruiserclub.net). So I also looked at en.daihatsu-club.net daihatsu-drivers.uk (both quick and ad infested but very short threads - wife has Daihatsu) seatcupra.net (quick but a big club - I have one of the few remaining TDI SXs left from 1998) mumsnet.com (as probably one of the biggest forums - slightly quicker than LCC but much slower the older the forum threads I loaded - as a bloke I am not a mum) ih8mud.com (slippery quick even with really old obscure posts) tlocuk.co.uk (significantly quicker than mud except the first forum page which was oddly similar to LCC in speed) pradopoint.com.au (initial load about 40% slower than LCC but deep posts a similar speed although very fast on reload so some caching going on & most aussies kipping at the moment) and bigjimny.com (very quick even with old posts but then even a big Jimny is so lightweight it doesn't take much to accelerate it - daughter has one).

So what may be the issue here is that like some other forums there is a slow down particularly on less recently accessed posts which suggests that some form of forum caching or php or xenforum optimisations may help. To be fair some of the forums looked at above are much lighter weight with less features so not a fair comparison. It does appear though from a quick search there are quite a few tweaks than can be done to speed up the xenforum. Personally I am not familiar with xenforum although I have set up web servers with forum software in the past including simple machines, phpbb and vbullletin but these a a fair few years back. Hopefully this may help @Crispin to narrow down what might help as he will know what optimisations have already been made and can compare to the information out there about what else can be done.

Stay safe and thanks for making this a great community.