Why is Phil stealing my time?

[JohnM31499]

this site has gotten agonizingly slow lately.

Trying to read all the responses to a post is virtually impossible lately.

-John

 

[j-a-s-o-n]

A Microsoft technician would tell you to adjust your expectations.

If you want realtime feedback; go to a friend's house and talk about photography or go to Yahoo chat. Call somebody on the phone. Or wait 20 years and come back, maybe the website will be faster then.

I don't mind putting in my two cent and coming back later. Sometimes I read and post all over and check back in cycles. Sometimes I watch TV, check on the kids, or do some work, and then come back to the forum.

 

[Phil Askey]

I'm not sure what ISP you guys are using but I'm on the other side of the pond from our servers and I'm getting less than one second delay between messages, which is pretty much instant in my book. Our servers are running at 50% load each with plenty of spare capacity. POSTING a messge will take maybe a second or two longer as there's a lot more involved in the post process but shouldn't take the 15 seconds reported at the beginning of this thread.

There's a lot going on between your PC and our servers.

A Microsoft technician would tell you to adjust your expectations.

If you want realtime feedback; go to a friend's house and talk
about photography or go to Yahoo chat. Call somebody on the phone.
Or wait 20 years and come back, maybe the website will be faster
then.

I don't mind putting in my two cent and coming back later.
Sometimes I read and post all over and check back in cycles.
Sometimes I watch TV, check on the kids, or do some work, and then
come back to the forum.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[Justin147789]

John Kim wrote:

In Mozilla, that keyboard combo makes the new window pop up in
back. So you can merrily click every post in one sitting, then go
about reading. With IE, each new window pops up in front, so you
have to mouse over and click to get the first window back on top
before you can click the next link.

With Mozilla this doesn't pop up the window in the back for me.
It opens up the new window and makes it my current window.
I then have to click back to the original Window. This is somewhat annoying.

 

[John Kim]

Under Edit-> Preferences-> Navigator-> Tabbed Browsing

Turn on the "Open tabs instead of windows for Middle-click or control-click of links in a Web page."

John Kim wrote:

In Mozilla, that keyboard combo makes the new window pop up in
back. So you can merrily click every post in one sitting, then go
about reading. With IE, each new window pops up in front, so you
have to mouse over and click to get the first window back on top
before you can click the next link.

With Mozilla this doesn't pop up the window in the back for me.
It opens up the new window and makes it my current window.
I then have to click back to the original Window. This is somewhat
annoying.

 

[JohnM31499]

I'm not sure what ISP you guys are using but I'm on the other side
of the pond from our servers and I'm getting less than one second
delay between messages, which is pretty much instant in my book.

I would agree, that is pretty much instant. I am using Roadrunner cable & it can take 30 seconds to open postings at times & I am talking about reading posts, not posting

-John

 

[Phil Askey]

It's taking 30 seconds NOW?

I'm not sure what ISP you guys are using but I'm on the other side
of the pond from our servers and I'm getting less than one second
delay between messages, which is pretty much instant in my book.

I would agree, that is pretty much instant. I am using Roadrunner
cable & it can take 30 seconds to open postings at times & I am
talking about reading posts, not posting

-John

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[Justin147789]

Thanks that did it. -nice feature.

Posting new messages or replies is a little annoying though. The message window is really small even with the Mozilla window maximized.
Got any ideas on that one?

 

[Justin147789]

It's taking 30 seconds NOW?

to open postings at times & I am

talking about reading posts, not posting

-John

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[Buz_DB]

Personally I prefer this style of forum as opposed to phpBB or similar styles. The reason is that I have noticed a lot of DPR threads go into sub threads, and the "threaded" forum style is the only practical way to keep track of who's replying to what. Also, in the Chicago area at least, the site is very fast loading. Just as fast as any other site (and all sites are fast because I'm on a T3 connection). I know that there are +'s to the "flattened" style, but I think the +'s of "threaded" style are greater, at least for this site.

Maybe if Phil could modify his forum software so that we could click a link and have it go to flattened style, but still have the threaded by default. That way, if you get confused about the sub threads, you can just click the link to go back to the threaded style and see how it is arranged.

I really like being able to open a thread that might be interesting and scrolling down to see the subject lines and who's posting without having to load the whole thread, so I can see (to an extent) where the thread is going and I can avoid whole sub-threads dominated by certain subjects or people I usually just avoid.

That's just my take on it, maybe Phil will be willing to at least think about adding a flattened style as an option to his forum software.

Ok, he's not. " I " chose to come here and spend hours reading the
posts.
However, why do I have to wait 1 to 15 sec (and sometimes longer)
just to get from one reply to the next? I must be loosing about
50% of my forum time, just waiting for the text to appear before
my eyes.

The way we know it, we click on a thread and then:
1. text appears, we read it: TIME = 5 to 100 seconds
2. we clik "next" or scroll down to see the meaningless titles and
click the next one anyway (how can you chose what to read when all
you can see is "Re: the same unrelated original title") TIME = 1
to 2 seconds
3. we wait for the darned page to appear. Don't get me wrong, I
have a DSL internet access, its the dpreview's servers we wait for.
TIME = 1 to 15 seconds (most of the time)
4. we scroll through the text lazy posters have left in their post:
TIME = 1 to 2 seconds.
5. the proper post appears. we read it and start over from step 2.

WHAT A WASTE OF TIME!

Can we have a one click post all of the thread, all replies and no
repeated text? Please?
I have a dream: someday, we will all look a twice the number of
front focused cats!!! in half the time we take today!

Tango Man

 

[Mike.]

In a word, ADVERTS......

Time is spent for the advertisements to be loaded....

-Mike.

I'm not sure what ISP you guys are using but I'm on the other side
of the pond from our servers and I'm getting less than one second
delay between messages, which is pretty much instant in my book.

I would agree, that is pretty much instant. I am using Roadrunner
cable & it can take 30 seconds to open postings at times & I am
talking about reading posts, not posting

-John

 

[Andy61557]

Hi Phil,

Thank you for this forum. I am working on Wall Street and work with tons of market data and user requests for it. You say your servers run at 50% load 'with power to spare'. Actually, it's a considerable load. Not all load is visible in Task Manager (assuming you are using Windows). There can be bottlenecs with don't show up as hish CPU load. One of them may be a network card. Try to use ones with a dedicated processor on it (about $300).

Another one is the hard drive. If you don't have a lot of memory on your SQL server (I hope you don't run it on the same box as the web server), it always goes to the hard drive for the data. The more search people do, the slower it is.

Please beleive those people, who say that the forum is getting slower in the last couple of weeks. It may be our connection 'across the pond', but the 50% load is high.

 

[TangoMan]

Or wait 20 years and come back, maybe the website will be faster
then.

No need to wait 20 years. Back in 1600's they figured out it was better to use the then new technology (manually squeezed press printers) in such a way as to allow the reader to read every sentence one after another on the same page, rather than having to flip pages after each sentence.

I don't mind putting in my two cent and coming back later.
Sometimes I read and post all over and check back in cycles.
Sometimes I watch TV, check on the kids, or do some work, and then
come back to the forum.

You don't get it, I only ask to present the text in a efficient way: let us see all of the thread at a glance .

--

The best propaganda is not obvious to its people. But, try as it can, it can't fool the foreigners. And the propaganded will soon call the foreigners anti- for simply asking them to think about their automatic thoughts.

 

[Bob Graham rvg]

It's taking 30 seconds NOW?

Some may not understand that they're accessing third party servers when they click to read a post that has embedded pictures, that the pictures are not stored on DPReview's servers.

Still, I must agree that at times, just reading text posts can be agonizingly slow, and I'm using either T1 at work or 1.5mbit DSL at home.

(At the moment speed is fine)

Bob

 

[Phil Askey]

Thanks Andy but I've been building and running webservers since 1992, I know what I'm doing here. I built the servers and all the code by hand myself. We handle 11 million hits per day on our servers, they are running at 50% capacity.

Hi Phil,
Thank you for this forum. I am working on Wall Street and work with
tons of market data and user requests for it. You say your servers
run at 50% load 'with power to spare'. Actually, it's a
considerable load. Not all load is visible in Task Manager
(assuming you are using Windows). There can be bottlenecs with
don't show up as hish CPU load. One of them may be a network card.
Try to use ones with a dedicated processor on it (about $300).
Another one is the hard drive. If you don't have a lot of memory on
your SQL server (I hope you don't run it on the same box as the web
server), it always goes to the hard drive for the data. The more
search people do, the slower it is.
Please beleive those people, who say that the forum is getting
slower in the last couple of weeks. It may be our connection
'across the pond', but the 50% load is high.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[John Kim]

Can't help you. My message composition window is the same size as my message viewing windows. I vaugely recall having your problem when I first tried Mozilla, but it went away with one of the newer versions. I dunno what changed.

Mozilla tends to add double-returns in place to single-returns too (or more likely, something about Phil's site sometimes interprets a Mozilla single-return as a double-return, since I haven't run into the problem elsewhere). Pictures are annoyingly slow to scroll and some of the scripts on this site don't work. I use Mozilla to read this site, but I use IE if Mozilla chokes on something here.

Thanks that did it. -nice feature.
Posting new messages or replies is a little annoying though. The
message window is really small even with the Mozilla window
maximized.
Got any ideas on that one?

 

[Mike.]

I just hit reply and waited for a.tribalfusion.com to do whatever it was doing for about 10 seconds and then the forum came up.... Like I said ADVERTS.....

http://www.f5.com/

The ad's are slow thats all I can see...

-Mike.

Hi Phil,
Thank you for this forum. I am working on Wall Street and work with
tons of market data and user requests for it. You say your servers
run at 50% load 'with power to spare'. Actually, it's a
considerable load. Not all load is visible in Task Manager
(assuming you are using Windows). There can be bottlenecs with
don't show up as hish CPU load. One of them may be a network card.
Try to use ones with a dedicated processor on it (about $300).
Another one is the hard drive. If you don't have a lot of memory on
your SQL server (I hope you don't run it on the same box as the web
server), it always goes to the hard drive for the data. The more
search people do, the slower it is.
Please beleive those people, who say that the forum is getting
slower in the last couple of weeks. It may be our connection
'across the pond', but the 50% load is high.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[John Kim]

Usually the pages load in a second or two, but every once in a while it'll stall halfway through for 15-30 seconds (or sometimes never finishing loading). The most common stall point seems to be after the message text displays, but before the list of followup posts displays. And yes it just happened about 5 minutes ago when I opened this thread. Hitting reload fixed it.

I'm not sure what ISP you guys are using but I'm on the other side
of the pond from our servers and I'm getting less than one second
delay between messages, which is pretty much instant in my book.

I would agree, that is pretty much instant. I am using Roadrunner
cable & it can take 30 seconds to open postings at times & I am
talking about reading posts, not posting

-John

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

 

[Dave Deacon]

Routing might be an issue. I am in the UK and find myself being roiuted through Frankfurt, Germany to get to this site. It is at times very very slow. So much so that I cannot use it. However, StevesDigicams is almost instant but that is a direct route.

There's a lot going on between your PC and our servers.

A Microsoft technician would tell you to adjust your expectations.

If you want realtime feedback; go to a friend's house and talk
about photography or go to Yahoo chat. Call somebody on the phone.
Or wait 20 years and come back, maybe the website will be faster
then.

I don't mind putting in my two cent and coming back later.
Sometimes I read and post all over and check back in cycles.
Sometimes I watch TV, check on the kids, or do some work, and then
come back to the forum.

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

--
http://www.pbase.com/blokey

 

[Phil Askey]

I think it's banners coming from other servers... Unfortunately on a free site like this we have to have advertising... I'll mention it to our ad brokers.

I'm not sure what ISP you guys are using but I'm on the other side
of the pond from our servers and I'm getting less than one second
delay between messages, which is pretty much instant in my book.

I would agree, that is pretty much instant. I am using Roadrunner
cable & it can take 30 seconds to open postings at times & I am
talking about reading posts, not posting

-John

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com