Forum is slow

Accent · 2014-12-04T07:16:34.000Z

The other day, Sebastian from the Audiobus forum posted that they may have some outages as a result of updating their servers to account for the increase in visitors they’ve had. I literally LOLed. Of all the synth based forums I visit (primarily Gearsluts, a few Reddit subforums, and Elektronauts), the Audiobus forum is lightening quick and never gets errors. I can load and read three threads on the Audiobus forum in the time it takes me to load one thread on Elektronauts, if it even loads at all.

I had better results on the Litany (Skinny Puppy and related) forum in 1998 than I do with this forum. I hang around here because Elektron gives me wood, but the user experience is a joke.

As an aside…if there are any Litany-ites hanging around these parts, we should get in touch. I don’t frequent that place any longer since I stopped being a mod, but I’m always down to converse with like minds.

yeshuah · 2014-12-04T09:41:49.000Z

It’s ridiculous!

In mornings (EU time) the forum is “acceptable” - still slow, but usable.

Then as the day goes on and more people check it + US wakes up it becomes unusable and 504 starts happening.

So it’s obviously only a load problem. This is literally a problem that easily can be fixed by money!

[ol]
[li]Hire a guy who knows about caching. [/li]
[li]Setup caching[/li]
[li]If still slow - buy some bigger server instances - super cheap and easy now with services like Digital Ocean or EC2.[/li]
[/ol]

Not solving it now is just undermining any pretense about caring about “the community”.

Accent · 2014-12-04T10:10:56.000Z

[quote=“” yeshuah""]
Not solving it now is just undermining any pretense about caring about “the community”.
[/quote]

I think this might be one of the biggest issues-I can understand that Elektron is relatively small, and I don’t expect them to quaver to every little user request.
But they have the benefit of a massive international user community that is more than ready to jump in to help solve issues from users that would otherwise bog them down in specific questions that would require paid manpower to address. We love Elektron gear and use it daily, so tech support is a non-issue for most of us.
But an inneficient platform for handling these issues is a problem. I’ll help solve anything I can, but 504s for a night mean I’ll quit refreshing. I rarely look past page two of the forum activity because it is such a PITA. I’ll gladly be unpaid tech support because I truly love Elektron, but Jesus guys, give me something to work with. Of every forum I’ve used in the last 20 years this is the worst by far. If the WELL has you beat, you’re doing something wrong. Just make it work in 2014, and as a community we will back you.

avantronica · 2014-12-04T11:38:39.000Z

""Accent"":

But they have the benefit of a massive international user community that is more than ready to jump in to help solve issues from users that would otherwise bog them down in specific questions that would require paid manpower to address. We love Elektron gear and use it daily, so tech support is a non-issue for most of us.
But an inneficient platform for handling these issues is a problem. I’ll help solve anything I can, but 504s for a night mean I’ll quit refreshing. I rarely look past page two of the forum activity because it is such a PITA. I’ll gladly be unpaid tech support because I truly love Elektron, but Jesus guys, give me something to work with. Of every forum I’ve used in the last 20 years this is the worst by far. If the WELL has you beat, you’re doing something wrong. Just make it work in 2014, and as a community we will back you.

^ my sentiments exactly. It’s a win win for Elektron

TrabanT · 2014-12-04T11:41:11.000Z

""Accent"":

[quote=" yeshuah"]Not solving it now is just undermining any pretense about caring about “the community”.

I think this might be one of the biggest issues-I can understand that Elektron is relatively small, and I don’t expect them to quaver to every little user request.
But they have the benefit of a massive international user community that is more than ready to jump in to help solve issues from users that would otherwise bog them down in specific questions that would require paid manpower to address. We love Elektron gear and use it daily, so tech support is a non-issue for most of us.
But an inneficient platform for handling these issues is a problem. I’ll help solve anything I can, but 504s for a night mean I’ll quit refreshing. I rarely look past page two of the forum activity because it is such a PITA. I’ll gladly be unpaid tech support because I truly love Elektron, but Jesus guys, give me something to work with. Of every forum I’ve used in the last 20 years this is the worst by far. If the WELL has you beat, you’re doing something wrong. Just make it work in 2014, and as a community we will back you. [/quote]
+1 well said ! … the only problem is: elektron wont read this, and if they do, they wont do anything about it … anybody open a /r/elektron with proper mods, ban bitchy users, no feature request threads, and decent tech … i am in (sorry elektron, but you had your chance)

KOTARE · 2014-12-04T14:30:51.000Z

""TrabanT"":

[quote=“Accent”][quote=" yeshuah"]Not solving it now is just undermining any pretense about caring about “the community”.

I think this might be one of the biggest issues-I can understand that Elektron is relatively small, and I don’t expect them to quaver to every little user request.
But they have the benefit of a massive international user community that is more than ready to jump in to help solve issues from users that would otherwise bog them down in specific questions that would require paid manpower to address. We love Elektron gear and use it daily, so tech support is a non-issue for most of us.
But an inneficient platform for handling these issues is a problem. I’ll help solve anything I can, but 504s for a night mean I’ll quit refreshing. I rarely look past page two of the forum activity because it is such a PITA. I’ll gladly be unpaid tech support because I truly love Elektron, but Jesus guys, give me something to work with. Of every forum I’ve used in the last 20 years this is the worst by far. If the WELL has you beat, you’re doing something wrong. Just make it work in 2014, and as a community we will back you. [/quote]
+1 well said ! … the only problem is: elektron wont read this, and if they do, they wont do anything about it … anybody open a /r/elektron with proper mods, ban bitchy users, no feature request threads, and decent tech … i am in (sorry elektron, but you had your chance)[/quote]
Thumbs up

mezz303 · 2014-12-04T14:57:23.000Z

A real shame. The community here is one of the best and most helpful you will find anywhere in any gear related Forum. Yet we are all cursed with one of the worst user experiences.

Not to get all whiny about Elektron but this kind of annoyed me as well. Check out the description for the Anniversary MD and MM…

The Red Machinedrum and Blue Monomachine are limited to 50 units each. All the Anniversary Edition machines have been thoroughly inspected here at the Elektron HQ. We have made sure they are perfect in every single detail!
A hand signed Certificate of Authenticity accompanies every unit. This certificate underlines the fact that the unit has passed a rigorous test procedure. The Anniversary Editions are hardened and ready for action!

Am I to understand that they will only do really good QA on 50 units every 10 years?

Zymos · 2014-12-04T16:19:32.000Z

It actually does seem better this AM…

image.jpg1024×768 175 KB

FmSafari · 2014-12-05T19:19:48.000Z

Since yesterday it feels faster for me too

Accent · 2014-12-14T03:53:51.000Z

The forum has been much faster recently for me. Maybe a couple of seconds to load instead of 30+ seconds/504s like crazy. Maybe Elektron are paying attention to our bitching after all

Now they just need Forum Activity in page view or to remember continuous scroll, but hopefully this is a sign of better days ahead.

TrabanT · 2014-12-15T20:40:21.000Z

i think this was only because Dataline was on Reddit for a AMA and a lot of people bitched there … i am happy about the positive change and the speeeeed up …(was probably a simple server reset in some basement)

Dtroy · 2014-12-26T20:02:03.000Z

Why is this forum so slow? It varies day to day, with the load times being longer depending.

Zymos · 2014-12-26T20:12:26.000Z

They’ve pretty much fixed it, as far as I’m concerned…

Dtroy · 2014-12-26T20:50:38.000Z

Still a bit sluggish at times, especially on iOS.

olsner · 2015-06-27T15:45:05.000Z

I think a major cause of the slowness is that all caching is explicitly disallowed by the forum - that’s why e.g. simply going back to the index from a post will cause a full reload of everything.

This is how much the forum is asking the browser not to cache each page:


Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT

In addition, the response time for loading each page is quite slow, particularly the HTML bits seem to simply take a lot of time to render on the server (while images, scripts, etc from the same server are not that slow).

In any case, if the caching headers were set somewhat sanely (like, at least allowing one minute of caching), I think it would make the forum feel a lot faster by letting the browser cache at least something. Less unnecessary reloading should also mean less load on the server and possibly faster responses overall (perhaps).

bauer · 2015-07-03T10:31:04.000Z

i just got an email notification of a PM. pretty sure this has not been working previously.

?!!?!?!?!

Dtroy · 2015-11-18T19:31:37.000Z

The forum is still slow for me, and it’s the only forum that feels sluggish to me. Sometimes it takes 8-10 seconds for a page to load, on average it’s around 2-4 seconds; whereas other websites and forums are instantaneous.

Libertine_Lush · 2015-11-18T23:24:02.000Z

""Dtroy"":

Sometimes it takes 8-10 seconds for a page to load, on average it’s around 2-4 seconds; whereas other websites and forums are instantaneous.

I have a similar experience here. Original post is quite old; perhaps this won’t be resolved any time soon.

darenager · 2015-11-18T23:58:11.000Z

I think maybe Elektron should just scrap the (awful) platform they are using and switch it over to something like phpBB.

Elektronauts has a very custom look at the expense of performance and user engagement, and I know that they are looking into sorting it, but it seems that so far very little progress has been made.

If people did not give a shit about participating here then they would not complain, so it seems counter productive not to listen to and act upon the complaints in a more timely fashion, it has been around 2 years now hasn’t it?

I conservatively estimate that I have abandoned over 200 posts because of forum performance issues and giving up, and I know of other users who simply do not come here anymore. The old EU forum was a much more lively and engaging place, so it would be nice to have the same level of participation here, not to mention it would be better for Elektron, whose products people want to discuss.

TrabanT · 2015-11-19T08:48:00.000Z

""darenager"":

If people did not give a shit about participating here then they would not complain, so it seems counter productive not to listen to and act upon the complaints in a more timely fashion, it has been around 2 years now hasn’t it?

this !!!