The Fresh Loaf site changes
I've been around here for some time now, and it has been an exceptional experience. But just recently I have found that although I have quite fast fiber optic internet connection speed, the experience is now pretty much impossible to bear. Between the google-analytics and the ads.foodfuzz loading times, navigating from one page to the next takes what ever fun there might have been in participating in the discussions clean away. I understand the time and headache involved in running a site like this, and the desire/need for compensation or support, and I am all for it. I hope that after all the selfless efforts by Floyd to get this up and running and keep it going that he gets significant capital from the venture in addition to the kudos and pure shear fun. But are the rest of you finding this same problem? If so, there must be an answer so satisfy us all. I can't believe I am the only one, although if there is another thread for this topic I haven't seen it. What say y'all?
Lee
I have a mere 1 MB/sec satellite connection, and that's on a good day, being too remote for anything else but dialup.
I can't say that the loading times generally have been oppressively slow, which is what I take to be your main dissatisfaction. Sometimes slower than others certainly, as can be the case on other sites, but nothing approaching "impossible to bear".
Most pages load for me in three or four seconds, five or six in a slow patch, and in my case almost two seconds of that is connect time for the satellite link, and nothing to do with TFL's server or page content. Every once in a blue moon it will hang for several more seconds, but it's rare.
You don't say what your load times are, but with a fiber optic link you have no connect time delays as I do, so you should be quite a bit faster, unless something else is amiss.
Patience, grasshopper, patience. :)
best
david
with a 3 Mbit dsl line the site is very fast here. have you checked your computer i sugest you go to my web site www.nbicomputers.com and in the download section and get malwarebytes Auto Remove Ms -Xp Antivirus from download page 2 http://www.nbicomputers.com/ehelp11.htm it might help
Hi Lee,
I'm experiencing the same speed issues that you mention. I'm not sure for how long... perhaps a week or two?
What browsers are you using? I'm running firefox and never have any problems. Perhaps you're using IE6/7, which are (I think) supposed to be slower under many conditions. It could be it's waiting for all the page to be received (including ads) before it displays anything...
I'm running Iceweasel 2.0.0.18 (GNU project version of Firefox).
Have a Mac, and in the last few days it is getting progressively slower. I now walk away from the computer because it takes so long. Sometimes I don't see the pictures. hmmmm
(edit) and there are only 30 souls lurking....
This site was mentioned on Peter Reinhart's blog. Perhaps there has been an increase in traffic?
I haven't had any problems. I have a cable modem and a wireless router. Even when I get too far from the router and my signal strength goes down, my pages load fast.
...For the past few weeks the Google AdSense servers have been burping.
TFL is currently using:
Google Analytics
Quantcast
Google Adsense
OpenAds
DoubleClick
Google Custom Search Engine
...If any of those servers burp the load time will be affected.
Full disclosure...
Yes I'm in the Microsoft camp so I am indeed partial. ;-)
Salute,
Mark
I haven't noticed any slow down of late and it's never seemed slow, except once or twice where the foodbuzz ad was slow to load but even that's extremely rare.
Pages load quickly here, I can't say I'm experiencing any speed issues you are so it's unlikely the site itself is to blame or we'd all be having the same slow load problems.
iMac G5, running Safari on Leopard, through cable modem.
I'm connected to Time Warner Cable system in the Mid West US and I haven't seen any slow down at all. Is this a caching issue perhaps?
Eric
I too am having trouble today with the forum speed. Every other section of this site load quickly. I have DSL. When I click on Forum at the top of the page though the top bar loads quickly but the Forum content doesn't load.
From my home system (XP SP2) TFL now refuses to let me log in. I use Firefox (3.0.5). It loops. Prior to that I could log in, but TFL didn't load properly without being refreshed. All the graphics and text were bunched up on the right half of my screen; the left half was all brown. This all started a few weeks ago. I have DSL; speed not an issue.
I did a clean reinstall of Firefox and got the same results. Only way I can access TLF from home is through Chrome.
My firewall is ZoneAlarm Pro, cache regularly cleaned. TFL is the only site presenting such conflicts for me.
Maybe Venus isn't properly aligned with Jupiter at my house.
Try turning the Zone Alarm FW off. ZA is known to be a thorn in the side for connection issues.
Eric
Server performance is fine. 95% of the time the machine is idle.
I've seen occasional slowness recently too, but, as Wisecarver points out, it has been Google ads, Google analytics, or Foodbuzz scripts that have slowed it down. Which means it isn't the TFL server that is slow, but one of the other servers that your browser needs to contact to load a full TFL page. The slowdown has been intermittent. At the moment it is zooming.
Sorry, Wisecarver, but I will scratch my eyes out before I will move the site to Microsoft technology.
Amen to that. It's Micro$oft, right?
...I did not imply that you should move to Msft technology. ;-)
The disclosure part was my being open with you, no attacks.
Microsoft has listened and you will find all of these work with PHP now:
Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, IIS7, Expression Studio. etc.
btw, my role as an Evangelist for Msft is providing everything for free, not for $.
Salute,
Mark
Yeah, I know they do. And I'm not a open source zealot... SQL Server is very good (though yesterday I was griping about about how it needs to add a LIMIT function) and I know they have other solid products. But I have lost more hours of my life debugging IE rendering bugs than just about anything else I've done in my career. If I and every other web developer out there could reclaim those lost hours... imagine the things we could have done.
Here at work I have IE6 and have not had any problems.
At home, on my DSL, I am running Firefox 3.0 and also having no problems.
Bob
What Lee said.
It's his story, and I'm sticking to it.
Oh. The same problems occur on my Dell XPS with Firefox and my Macbook Pro with Safari. There seem to be more problems in the evening.
DSL connection to the house.
David
I'm on macbook with Firefox and havent seen any slowdowns at all - if anything the site's been faster since the server upgrade.
Occasionally the foodbuzz ads take longer to load than the rest of the page or they simply dont load at all. Once in a while, I go to look at a post and find myself waiting and rather than wait I just refresh and almost always it has then loaded fine - so perhaps it's intermittent but very intermittant, not like a "during peak hours" sort of thing..
Those Foodbuzz banners are the single biggest contributors that pay for the server so I wouldnt suggest removing them, and we have no way of controling the servers that those ads are served from....
It actually has been Google that has been having issues lately, at least the ones I've noticed. I've seen performance issues w/ both Analytics and Adwords. I hope they'll get their act together.
I'm using Firefox on Vista, wireless router, Comcast cable modem, HP laptop. Just got on this morning, but haven't noticed any slower responses. Accessed the site yesterday some, using MAC 10.3 and Safari, same network. Didn't notice any problems with that set-up either.
I'd suspect your ISP. I'd call and complain.
Dave
At least for me, when the TFL site is loading pages slowly, it is because of the ads loading slowly. At those times, other sites' pages load normally. It's not the ISP.
I'm not in the business of running a web site, but I'd think that you could complain to your sponsers that they are creating "bad will" by slowing down your site. And that the bad will is toward them, not you!
David
Thanks, but am too much of a coward to go out on the Net with my firewall disabled, Eric. Plus I've used ZA Pro for years with no issues.
TFL is up and running with Chrome on my home system. No problems at my office using ZA free and Firefox 2.
Firefox 3.0.5 loads everything but TFL. I might try rolling back to version 3 or 2 to pacify my own curiosity. Till then, Chrome will do.
No Problems XP SP3. IE6
Well, those problems were at work on a slow DSL line, Firefox, XP pro, and I understand the other-guy's server problem.
At home here with 5gig FIOS and Firefox on XP pro this problem doesn't seem to exist so I am happy again. Besides you guys are the best and who could stay away for long?
Lee
PS
I too have long been a Microsoft man. But the more web development I do the less I like IE. It's high time they fix the bugs, even if they don't want to implement the industry standards the way the rest of the world does. Now Firefox is my default browser. BTW, I also acquired my first entry into the Mac world. We'll see how that goes.
I signed up last week and have not experienced any slowdown. So far so good. I also switch between IE and Firefox. I have a cable connection. That's probably why I don't have problems (yet!).
I have been experiencing intermittent and severe download times for the last two weeks or so. I've experienced this type of problem before. Seems to occur just before the site crashes. Hope this is not the case for TFL.
+Wild-Yeast
I occasionally (several times a day but I'm a heavy user) experience a slow or delayed load, but no crashes. I usually use Safari but have checked Firefox when this happens and it is the same there. I'm a cable user.
--Pamela