After months the forum is still very, VERY slow

dimi3 · 2014-07-15T18:25:26.000Z

I am doing a traceroute on the site and things get bogged down at network solutions hop.

the pings are 70-115ms

compared to a google which is 18-25
and
operator-1 which is 24-50

dimi3 · 2014-07-15T18:31:07.000Z

FYI…

Load time of http://www.elektronauts.com/ w. Pingdom Tools: 5.07 s from New York City, New York, USA. Size: 2.3 MB. Rqsts: 60. http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/dn8LK1/http://www.elektronauts.com/

Acidfever · 2014-07-15T19:25:31.000Z

""dimi3"":

FYI…

Load time of http://www.elektronauts.com/ w. Pingdom Tools: 5.07 s from New York City, New York, USA. Size: 2.3 MB. Rqsts: 60. Website Speed Test | Pingdom Tools

The frontpage actually loads in 4.16s if I test the same. Now lets try http://www.elektronauts.com/forums (the subforum overview):
First test: 9.43s
Second test: 18.82s

Third test: 10.89s

To make things clear, this is not from my pc but from a location in NY City.

This is extremely slow for today’s standards!! I am on a 120Mbit line in Holland and my results aren’t better compared to what I posted above. The performance issue is just at the network end, it’s at the server end too.

boomzeg · 2014-07-15T19:37:22.000Z

As far as I can tell, there’s a bottleneck somewhere between their PHP and the database. There’s at least a 4 second wait before the page even starts rendering, and it’s likely waiting for PHP to return. Also, none of the static assets (images, etc) are cached on my end. This is pretty bad web engineering for 2014.
(source: I do this for a living).

dimi3 · 2014-07-15T19:43:58.000Z

might be to keep the kitchen ware out…

Accent · 2014-07-15T19:47:28.000Z

[quote=“” PeterHanes""]

[quote=" Accent"]I don’t find it too unbearably slow, but it’s a pain on iOS. Still annoying as shit that the quote/flag etc buttons don’t work for shit on iOS. Also quite annoying to have to reload the thread list every time you flip back to the forum activity page.
[/quote]

These buttons do work (I’m doing it now). They do have to be tapped twice in order to work.
But I agree with you that the reload of the page when you go back to the previous page is torturously irritating. [/quote]
So you can, thanks for pointing that out. I’d tried that before but just caused the screen to enlarge. Not very intuitive.

the_dreammer · 2014-07-15T19:48:00.000Z

I have a fast internet connection here… upgraded it not so long ago
so i can upload huge video’s and all that… (hooray, takes less then 4 minutes instead of waiting 3hours) …

everything is superquick… except elektronauts.com …

today, I even have connectivity problems… internet explorer telling me
“cant display page” …

so yeah i agree with the rest of you… its just darn slow.

boomzeg · 2014-07-15T19:49:37.000Z

To follow up with some FREE diagnostic:
[ul]
[li]None of the assets are gzipped (even though this is a standard practice on the web these days). [/li]
[li]No far-future expire headers are set (therefore nothing is cached client-side, so on every request the entire 1.5-2MB has to be downloaded - EVEN THE FONTS).[/li]
[li] There are like 5 separate Javascripts in the page, none of which are minified.[/li]
[li]All of the icons are separate PNG files, so a separate request has to be made for each 1KB file, instead of using CSS sprites.[/li]
[/ul]

And then there’s whole thing with CakePHP being slow - and at this point I can’t tell if it’s their database or just an inefficiently designed application.

Not that i’m here to tell their web developers how to do their job…
…but whatever their job is, thems ain’t doin’ it.

Just FYI, the industry standard for web apps these days is “1000ms to glass” - i.e. your page has to be rendered in under 1 second before the user starts getting annoyed.

My suggestion: switch to some good forum software. Even PHPbb will do. It will provide a better user experience than this over-designed slow thing you got going there.

Peace

dimi3 · 2014-07-15T19:51:14.000Z

""the_dreammer"":

I have a fast internet connection here… upgraded it not so long ago
so i can upload huge video’s and all that… (hooray, takes less then 4 minutes instead of waiting 3hours) …

everything is superquick… except elektronauts.com …

today, I even have connectivity problems… internet explorer telling me
“cant display page” …

so yeah i agree with the rest of you… its just darn slow.

don’t use internet explorer… for your own safety!

dimi3 · 2014-07-15T19:52:11.000Z

there are seem to be talk back to google analytics, soundcloud and other places which a fuel to the fire…

poonti · 2014-07-15T22:05:43.000Z

""boomzeg"":

To follow up with some FREE diagnostic:
[ul]
[li]None of the assets are gzipped (even though this is a standard practice on the web these days). [/li]
[li]No far-future expire headers are set (therefore nothing is cached client-side, so on every request the entire 1.5-2MB has to be downloaded - EVEN THE FONTS).[/li]
[li] There are like 5 separate Javascripts in the page, none of which are minified.[/li]
[li]All of the icons are separate PNG files, so a separate request has to be made for each 1KB file, instead of using CSS sprites.[/li]
[/ul]

And then there’s whole thing with CakePHP being slow - and at this point I can’t tell if it’s their database or just an inefficiently designed application.

Not that i’m here to tell their web developers how to do their job…
…but whatever their job is, thems ain’t doin’ it.

Just FYI, the industry standard for web apps these days is “1000ms to glass” - i.e. your page has to be rendered in under 1 second before the user starts getting annoyed.

My suggestion: switch to some good forum software. Even PHPbb will do. It will provide a better user experience than this over-designed slow thing you got going there.

Peace

lol, u DO know your stuff!!

Elektronot · 2014-07-15T22:52:02.000Z

""analogback"":

search function is useless,

This is unfortunate. It could be a great way to search the site, and cut down on recycled belly aching.

subq · 2014-07-15T22:55:55.000Z

Some people may be looking in the wrong spot to fix the problem.

First off, I highly doubt they will be changing the software.

That being said, I would guess that people without speed issues are only those located in .se

I know the site is terribly slow for me (in the US).

Connectivity is likely the issue. Below is a test from one of the best data centers in the industry (meaning their connectivity, even worldwide, is excellent)…this ping was run from one of their data centers in the central US.

ping www.elektronauts.com
PING www.elektronauts.com (212.91.140.142): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 212.91.140.142: icmp_seq=0 ttl=46 time=171.098 ms
64 bytes from 212.91.140.142: icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=169.970 ms
64 bytes from 212.91.140.142: icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=169.628 ms
64 bytes from 212.91.140.142: icmp_seq=4 ttl=46 time=168.653 ms
64 bytes from 212.91.140.142: icmp_seq=5 ttl=46 time=169.161 ms
64 bytes from 212.91.140.142: icmp_seq=6 ttl=46 time=168.711 ms
64 bytes from 212.91.140.142: icmp_seq=8 ttl=46 time=169.692 ms
64 bytes from 212.91.140.142: icmp_seq=10 ttl=46 time=153.507 ms

— www.elektronauts.com ping statistics —
11 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 27% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 153.507/167.553/171.098/5.359 ms

even changing to different software isn’t going to fix that problem

there are ways to speed things up for everyone, regardless of location

natrixgli · 2014-07-15T22:59:38.000Z

Maybe they are hosting it on one of the old sid-less C64s?

Or maybe they forgot to fit the TM-1?

TrabanT · 2014-07-16T07:34:17.000Z

""natrixgli"":

Maybe they are hosting it on one of the old sid-less C64s?

Or maybe they forgot to fit the TM-1?

LOL!

JimmyPulse · 2014-07-30T12:49:36.000Z

Same issue for me, on both Mac OS and Windows, Elektronauts.com is really slow compared to all other forums I use on a daily base. Or put in otherwise, the fact that a forum is fast, allows a better browsing and a real enjoyable user experience (which is reading information BTW). Let’s cross fingers and hope an improvement.

natrixgli · 2014-07-30T13:04:16.000Z

Forums are a bit slow, yes. I agree with the suggestions above of implementing caching and compression.

That said there are some very slick features and the design is solid. If there’s one thing I could point to that really chaps my arse, it’s the search which as others have pointed out is pretty useless.

For it to be useful MINIMUM you need to be able to sort results by date.

In general though the results should be more compact and easier to scroll through. There’s too much wasted space on the page and it makes going through results even more difficult.

I end up using Google with “site:elektronauts.com” for better results and filtering options.

subq · 2014-08-01T02:17:34.000Z

some sites actually have their search form using google anyway

I would rather them work on speed before anything else…I can’t really do much (read/reply/etc) on the forums because it’s so ridiculously slow from the US.

Anigbrowl · 2014-08-01T02:48:42.000Z

Slow for me too, very slow. boomzeq is right, it’s very, very inefficient to be downloading the fonts and everything every single page load, and 45 separate image file calls does not help. I’m also finding long delays with the Soundcloud and Facebook calls.

I went back to elektron-users the other day to look up some old threads and it loads faster than elektronauts

t · 2014-08-12T07:59:27.000Z

[quote=““Dataline””]

Acidfever:

Expecting this to be some early hick-up I never posted this but the Elektronauts forum is still extremely slow.

Hmm, surprising to hear. It works ok for me on Firefox / Safari.

Or maybe I am missing something?[/quote]
I don’t think it’s a browser issue at all; it’s just that the pages load rather slow and sometimes very slow compared to some other forums out there; esp. those that run on Vanilla.