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

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.
Very good, I think, as it's way over my head, but it relieved my boredom for a moment. :thumbup:

Like I said before, I haven't got a problem on my Mac with FireFox, LCC loads fast with no prob's, as do all the other sites i use. :clap:
 
Wonder if someone can check their browser network perf tab (should be in developer menu). And I also wonder if it's some ISP's blocking or DNS mangling enroute.

Is it just the first page download speeds that folks struggle with ? Or is it slow, and remains slow forever
 
Wonder if someone can check their browser network perf tab (should be in developer menu). And I also wonder if it's some ISP's blocking or DNS mangling enroute.

Is it just the first page download speeds that folks struggle with ? Or is it slow, and remains slow forever
I've checked my wimwom and it's connected to the sprinklebonker DnD, now my speed is hypegiggling off the GPT output. :)
 
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Slow and remains slow forever + more
Just do this and all will be fine.....I've checked my wimwom and it's connected to the sprinklebonker DnD, now my speed is hypegiggling off the GPT output, then adjust you wobblesprocket to mid point on the natter guage.
 
Ive checked and it's fine on Virgin media and BT.
 
@GeekOKent As per your request (and full breakdown of each request could be made available but would be several pages).

This page reload Firefox Quantum 68.6.1esr 64bit with add-ons (Facebook Container, Tabs Aside, uBlock Origin, uMatrix) logged in.....
47 requests
2.03 MB / 100.93 kB transferred
Finish: 2.16 s
DOMContentLoaded: 2.01 s
load: 2.23 s
This page Chromium Version 80.0.3987.162 (Developer Build) built on Debian 10.3, running on Debian 10.0 (64-bit) no add-ons not logged in.....
241 requests
446 KB transferred
4.1 MB resources
Finish: 15.62 s
DOMContentLoaded: 4.46 s
Load: 15.07 s
This page reloaded in Chromium above.....
248 requests
205 KB transferred
4.2 MB resources
Finish: 11.99 s
DOMContentLoaded: 1.19 s
Load: 11.39 s

FTTC (206m away) 78.3Mb/s Down 20.0Mb/s Up

The above does suggest there is a lot to be said for the browser configuration.

I also have Chrome on this laptop if you want me to try anything. Also a couple of Windows 10 laptops in the building plus my mobile which is Android Ice Cold Project with Jelly, Fennec, Firefox Klar, Privacy Browser (Webview based) and Tor Browser but no google services as I'm using microG. May be happy to install other stuff if it helps.

Ran it through Tor Browser on laptop via a guard in France then the US & Germany and although it is understandably slower (20 to 23 secs for a full load) ,the speed decrease lets you see the requests where it waits and by far the biggest was googleads. Not using normal DNS of course. I am up for trying different DNSs but the differences in the results above suggest DNS is not likely to be the issue. On Chromium you can see that some googleads requests are around taking 2 seconds and more and there is a viglink ping fairly early on that takes 2.28 seconds.
 
@ren thanks for digging. As you say, the plugins are saving you a ton of traffic and requests 47 v/s 240+ :rage:
 
@Crispin After having not received the confirmation email about email address change despite trying many times over, by chanced I logged in this morning 04.00.....don't ask, and I can confirm I see everything is working nicely thank you Crispin.

Regards

Dave
 
I note the various comments about changes being made to the site, I too do not like change being a 'set in my ways' type of person but having be in IT for many years both from a user and an IT lecturer point of view I recognise the need for upgrades. The frustration that many are experiencing at present is something I put up with for months despite many attempts on both mine and Crispin's efforts to sort it, unfortunately we never did succeed and I did indeed end up using the site as little as possible, the upgrade has worked for me.

For me and I am guessing Crispin's as well, is the 'not knowing' what the problem is which is the most frustrating thing. I have over the years suffered diminishing levels of patience with everything not just the internet, so concede that at times I (you) have to give in and have patience.

On closing I will say that some people will never be happy.........now if we can do something about the nasty Red Crispin, perhaps a darker hue? :)


regards

Dave
 
Dave 2000, when you say "some people will never be happy", are you referring to those people that have had, and are still having problems on here, as complainers who are doing just that for the sake of it, or winding Crispin up, myself being one of them? Define "Some people will never be happy", please.
By your own admission, you have had problems in the past, and know what its like !
You say "we have to give in and have patience", I haven't seen anyone on here who is laying into Crispin over the matter. Sure there are on going posts about the subject, problems and frustrations caused, and why not ?
This alerts Crispin to the problem so that he hopefully can address the situation. 'Nuff said !
 
ren, thanks for your post, personally through my lack of knowledge in your field, I dont understand a word.
This is NOT a critism of you, more of a thanks for trying to cast an expert eye over the situation of what is occurring.
Crispin this is NOT a dig at you, I am sure you are doing everything in you power to resolve, and maybe some or all of that technical jargon will help. Thanks.
 
Technical Jargon, makes me :sick:

And I can still report that I have no problems with the new site upgrades, that's not to say I haven't got problems, I've got to many of those. :laughing-rolling:

And the weather is still fine here on Pandora.

And my wife tells my reload time is just great.
 
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I note the various comments about changes being made to the site, I too do not like change being a 'set in my ways' type of person but having be in IT for many years both from a user and an IT lecturer point of view I recognise the need for upgrades. The frustration that many are experiencing at present is something I put up with for months despite many attempts on both mine and Crispin's efforts to sort it, unfortunately we never did succeed and I did indeed end up using the site as little as possible, the upgrade has worked for me.

For me and I am guessing Crispin's as well, is the 'not knowing' what the problem is which is the most frustrating thing. I have over the years suffered diminishing levels of patience with everything not just the internet, so concede that at times I (you) have to give in and have patience.

On closing I will say that some people will never be happy.........now if we can do something about the nasty Red Crispin, perhaps a darker hue? :)


regards

Dave
I know who Crispin is, but who is Hue? is he in Admin as well? Perhaps it's his fault some are having slow reload problems.
 
I'm not sure this helps anybody, but my browser is MS Edge running through Win 10 on a desktop PC. This whole new site is lightning fast and problem free, even with the porridgy state of the web these days. (So was the old site). So some lucky users are not suffering. I hope someone better qualified than me can spot what those poor guys who are struggling have in common.
 
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