Forum Topic

Forum/Computer Problem

When I click on a topic on this Forum, I am finding it really slow for any thread to appear.   Then when I click on a post, it takes an age again for the content to appear.Is this due to the amount of photos, and cutting and pasting that is taking place recently on the Forum?  Or is it a problem with the device?   I have no idea.

Martine Guy ● 2724d11 Comments

Lately it's been running slower for me as well Martine. Personally I think it's all the photos and articles that contain graphs etc that's causing it.

Sue Hammond ● 2724d

Hello Martine,I have found the forum incredibly slow, even before the new website was put up.Having said this, I answered your post a few minutes ago and the whole thing went to sleep!!

Ivonne Holliday ● 2724d

Me again!!It could be the fact that there are so many threads that are so incredibly long.

Ivonne Holliday ● 2724d

Thank you both.  I clicked on the posts in order, so Sue’s first and it took a long time to appear, Ivonne’s appeared straight away.Perhaps Neighbourhood Net could comment, if it’s to do with the photos and cutting and pasting onto the Forum.  It didn’t used to be like this and it’s the only thing I could think of.

Martine Guy ● 2724d

Ivonne, I don’t think so, because this is only a short thread so far, and as I said, Sue’s post took ages to appear.However, I am grateful for the replies.

Martine Guy ● 2724d

I've found big variations in the time it takes for a post to load. Perhaps (maybe Michael Ixer would know?) it depends on how many people at a time are accessing the site?

Richard Carter ● 2724d

Thanks Richard, you're throwing doiwen the gauntlet there! 🙂 I've never bothered to look into what software is used for this forum. I find performance various so I assume it's affected by the number of people on the forum and possibly the concurrency control if two people or more are trying to update the same thread simultaneously so none of them lost (again, I've no idea what system is used for that but other users may be briefly suspended while it commits one of the updates to a thread). My perception was the large threads often seemed to load slowly onthge old interface, and that (not surprisingly) seems to be true of the new interface. As one can still use they old software I'm guessing (and it is just a guess) that the new interface is just a new layer of software on top of the old application and has to reformat the data in the thread to present it in the new format. I would image that now it's easier to add large items such as images that may also cause performance issues. I've noticed that it seems to sense whether I'm running it from my Android phone  or tablet and work slightly differently to cater for differences in screen size, formats, etc. On my tablet I sometimes have difficulty opening the text editor box: I had to close the app and reopen it to get an edit box to post this! (I don't use my Windows Netbook for this these days.) What I don't know is if additional hardwares has been added to cater for the additional resource required for the new interface or whether its perhaps  been/being moved to a new platform such as Amazon Web Services.  (Flicks have just completed that process.) Also the browser seems to open another session on the device so I'm not clear what additional processing takes place centrally and how much is done on the devicc. Dunno if that helps? Perhaps Matt knows more as he's probably more hands on than I am these days?

Michael Ixer ● 2724d

Still, it's a free to users service, so should we complain?

Michael Ixer ● 2724d

I live in Melbourne, Australia, and have no problems whatsoever with the site, which suggests to me that it is a local issue.

James Slade ● 2724d

Thanks, Michael. I'd assumed that the new version was somehow linked to the old because you can, for example, easily post an image or a link for it to appear on the old, with the link being live. As well as the site reacting faster or slower at different times, I notice that it also varies betwen different devices (android, tablet, computer).That said, I think the new version is a big improvement in the old - but one further change they could usefully make would be the ability to edit or even delete posts for a limited time after posting (as, for example, the Times does) to avoid typos and similar mistakes committed in the heat of the moment.

Richard Carter ● 2723d

I agree an edit feature would be useful. As I've had to get some new glasses for long distance vision because of the onset of cataracts and often can't be bothered to swap to my varifocals for close work, my rate of generating and not spotting typos has increased significantly! However,  I suspect that if my guess is correct - that the new user interface is just a bolt on to the older, original software - then the only way of doing that would be to reengineer the older software to incorporate that. I would think that is probably a much more complex and expensive exercise than adding the new interface - it's possible the new interface has been done mainly using tailored, cheap, off the shelf, or is even based on some "free" open source software ... 

Michael Ixer ● 2723d