Forum Slow Running?

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

From first selecting the web-site title to opening the “Tea Room” forum, took over a minute and a half. I timed it.

That is even with prompt button-clicking including selecting that “Remember me” one that doesn’t seem to do anything.

I’m sure the previous version ran a lot more directly and rapidly. So is this some problem with my PC or is this site in fact unusually slow?

[Jim Young 2Participant @jimyoung2]

Not just you!
Virtually unusable….fast being driven away.
Such a shame, but they have had plenty of time to get it sorted.

[mike TParticipant @miket56243]

How long would it take to convert back to the previous forum software. We know it had it’s faults but it was quick and an enjoyable, pleasant place to visit.

[peak4Participant @peak4]

No it’s not a problem local to you and has been discussed many times; the developers are aware, and hopefully working on a solution.

If your intention is just to read for a while, try doing so without logging in.
Everything is much snappier, though the Latest Replies list might well be out of date.

This post may, or not, make sense.

I suspect, providing you are using a browser where you can have multiple tabs open, you could open one and log on (slowly 🙂 ) then navigate to “Forums”. That would give you the current  Latest Replies list displayed at the foot of the page.
Duplicate that tab and log off in the second one; the Latest Replies might be out of date in that tab, but the forum is faster.
To navigate to a very recent reply, go to tab 1, but right click and open in a new tab. (on a PC anyway).
You’ll still be logged off in that new tab, but I think it will work faster than awaiting a screen refresh.

Edit; just tried the above and it works fine.
Obviously if you wish to reply or post yourself, or view a user profile, you’ll need to log back in.

Bill

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

At 23:33 tonight took less than a minute so some of it is perhaps time of day and number of people online.

[Nigel Graham 2]

On 13 November 2023 at 22:19 Nigel Graham 2 Said:

…

I’m sure the previous version ran a lot more directly and rapidly. So is this some problem with my PC or is this site in fact unusually slow?

No reason to suspect your PC … the site is in fact unusually slow

[ even on my very fast Mac mini, and full fibre broadband ]

My hopelessly uninformed guess is that there are two fundamental problems:

1. The underlying software is as bloated as can be, and
2. Whatever sorting routine they are using is [shall we say] ‘sub-optimal’ for the large dataset that it is working upon.

MichaelG.

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Ref. __ just to put a toe in the water

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_shaker_sort

[john halfpennyParticipant @johnhalfpenny52803]

This morning ‘latest replies’ are instant on my samsung tablet, but individual topics are taking 20-30 seconds to open. It was better last week.

[Clive Brown 1Participant @clivebrown1]

For me, the speed of the forum depends on whether I’m logged in or not. If the former, then speed is woeful. If logged out then the speed is good. Why should this be so, what extra processes does a logged-on operation entail for the server? I counter this to some extent by having two bookmarks, one automatically logged in, the other not.

This feature is a great discouragement to participation in the forum.

 

[john halfpenny]

On john halfpenny Said:

This morning ‘latest replies’ are instant on my samsung tablet, but individual topics are taking 20-30 seconds to open. It was better last week.

On Clive Brown 1 Said:

For me, the speed of the forum depends on whether I’m logged in or not. If the former, then speed is woeful. If logged out then the speed is good. Why should this be so, what extra processes does a logged-on operation entail for the server? I counter this to some extent by having two bookmarks, one automatically logged in, the other not.

This feature is a great discouragement to participation in the forum.

 

I’ve tried to explain a couple of times why I think that there is a difference, though I may be wrong. See my post on this page, a couple above yours, but particularly the other post I linked to. (Other posts I’ve made include timed screenshots etc.)

Essentially Latest Replies Blue Button links to a Latest Replies list on the same page you’re already viewing, which has already been generated, so all it does is scroll down the screen you’re on.
When logged on, refreshing a forum screen, by viewing a different post, using back button etc, generates a brand new Latest Replies list, which takes time.

When logged out, the list isn’t re-generated, but an older one is displayed.

Bill

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I does vary, and I did consider web traffic generally but my observations last night were quite late in the evening.  So have timed it now, at just past 11 am on a weekday.

I started from my Bookmarks index, times in seconds:

Book-mark to open site: almost instant.

Site to Log-in:               almost instant.

Logging on:                  <5

To reach Forum:            40

Open this Forum:          ~5

To this Thread:              23

I’ll time the Submission, which was very slow yesterday.

I tried to Edit the post for that, but the Edit button seemed to do nothing so I started a new post for it. Then the site suddenly went all wobbly and brought back this, editable, at the line ending “….. slow yesterday”.

Submission (orig, post): ~25

So from selecting the bookmark to posting the above, ignoring typing and button-selecting time, took nearly two minutes!

 

I wonder if one of the worst overheads is the constantly-changing ads: ‘AllMyReads” as the greediest with not only three pages but also displayed twice,  in two identical, simultaneous side-bar panels. Also Sarik Hobbies’: a single window but also three images.

 

[john halfpennyParticipant @johnhalfpenny52803]

Thank you Bill. I can now see that you are correct. What a shambles. (Edited to say that took 20 seconds to load, and 20 seconds for the edit page to appear..Ad infinitum…..

[Nigel Graham 2]

On Nigel Graham 2 Said

… I wonder if one of the worst overheads is the constantly-changing ads: ‘AllMyReads” as the greediest with not only three pages but also displayed twice,  in two identical, simultaneous side-bar panels. Also Sarik Hobbies’: a single window but also three images.

 

The flashing multi page ads are simply ‘gif’ images. They are quite small and only have to load once. I doubt they have much in the way of overhead for the web server. Once loaded the browser copes with all the image changes.

John

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

It would seem from the above and another thread there are two basic problems:

1) Slow operation compared to other web-sites: is that a fault of the site or of an inadequate host that cannot handle it properly? (I don’t pretend to understand how these things work but I don’t want to blame Mortons unfairly – though presumably it is they who selected the host service.)

2) Poor design of the site itself, which might or might not be implicated in the slow running.

 

Having the words Forum and Forums scattered so randomly (3 on the home page alone) does not bode well, worsened as another contributor pointed out, by the web-site writers not knowing that a “Forum” is a place for many discussions, not a specific discussion, which is a “Thread” or a “Topic”).

It does take time to adjust to a new programme that really, is doing just the same thing as its predecessor – you only have to think of Microsoft keeps tinkering with Windows to make it look as if it is Doing Something Useful while offering only what it did three editions ago. Nevertheless, these factors combined have made the ME/MEW site very frustrating, something Mortons seem not to have considered or cared about.

.

Some years ago, my paperwork-hungry employer introduced a blizzard of Intranet form-templates, some in Excel that should have been in Word, and vice-versa, with over-formatting and damaged editing tools making them hard to use, inconsistent titles preventing coherent, alphabetical indexing, and so on. One day in the middle of this I went to my bank with an enquiry. I complimented the cashier on just how simple, direct and clear was their customer-account system.

She replied to the effect, “The bank insisted that the writers test it on at least a hundred staff members of all non-IT roles around the country, and act on improvement suggestions. And they did.”

A lesson there for all commercial web-site designers and publishers…. Think of the users!

.

Anyway it’s Fora, not Forums!

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Just noticed something rather odd; which might possibly have some effect upon the slow performance of the database sorting:

The ‘path’ that I have outlined in red seems illogical to me

… Within that group of 25 there are several which are not Tea Room Topics.

MichaelG.

.

Worth noting, incidentally, that at the bottom of that list there is a link to the full list [!] … which gives some indication of the scale of the sorting task.

 

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[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

That is because you are looking at the list below the last reply to a Tea Room topic.

Not only will clicking the “forums” in that line take you back to the main list but clicking “tearoom” will take you back to the list of tearoom topics.

And yes you have found the 6th way to get to “Forums”

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

………………

And yes you have found the 6th way to get to “Forums”

Or maybe the 7th (I’d missed that one) 🕵🏻‍♂️

It might be going too far off topic, but there’s still a “Forums” on a tab hiding somewhere.

Bill

[Clive Brown 1]

On Clive Brown 1 Said:

For me, the speed of the forum depends on whether I’m logged in or not. If the former, then speed is woeful. If logged out then the speed is good. Why should this be so, what extra processes does a logged-on operation entail for the server? I counter this to some extent by having two bookmarks, one automatically logged in, the other not.

This feature is a great discouragement to participation in the forum.

 

Good question, and one I hope the developers are looking at.  On the 8th I sent an email containing:

Logged in users are a much higher overhead because the server has to keep track of what every individual is doing. For example, when a user is sent a form (such as a post editor), the server has to remember what to do when Submit is pressed, perhaps several hours later. Logged in users also have permissions that have to be checked, quite complicated when roles such as participant, moderator, and webmaster etc have to be managed.

Websites that don’t require a login are super-efficient because the server only has to listen for requests and reply. It doesn’t have to authenticate the user/password, set up a network connection,  check privileges, or do anything clever like remember state.    Logins  provide extra features, but that means maintaining lists of what users are allowed to do.   The way lists are checked by the software matters because many user actions, such as clicking a button, cause the server to retrieve the user’s profile to confirm the action is allowed.  There are good ways and bad ways of doing this!

Very bad if the server reads the whole profile list sequentially to find a particular user and each plugin does this independently.  Server load grows exponentially, often with a square law, so if 1 query costs 1, 2 cost 4, 5 cost 25, 10 cost 100, 100 cost 10000, and 1000 cost 1000000.

Much better if the server has an index into the profile list and stores the result in memory so it doesn’t have to be retrieved again.   Then the server load grows linearly, and 1000 requests cost 1000 or less, not 1000000.  If anyone is interested, swot up on Big-O notation , choosing the right algorithm is important!   A WordPress plugin could be efficient or not…

Dave

 

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Just noticed something rather odd; which might possibly have some effect upon the slow performance of the database sorting:

The ‘path’ that I have outlined in red seems illogical to me

… Within that group of 25 there are several which are not Tea Room Topics.

MichaelG.

Michael; this gets very difficult to demonstrate without including lots of screenshots, since it looks like the iPad’s display is slightly different to what I see in a PC browser window, where I readily see the page’s address.
The content though is the same.

Your own screenshot showed a list/table under the grey Banner of Latest Replies.
This is the most recently compiled Latest Replies list, generated by the site from when you last refreshed the screen.
The blue “Latest Replies” button is a hyperlink to this location on the same overall page to save the user scrolling down.

Any of the six (or seven+) “Forums” shortcuts takes you to a table of all of the site’s individual forums, shown in bold type.

Scrolling down that list and clicking on The Tea Room takes you here /forums/forum/the-tea-room/
i.e. the “Forums” section of the overall site > an individual Forum, called The Tea Room, but still at the head of it; normal typeface I think.

 

Now clicking on a singular topic in that list in The Tea Room forum, takes you here. We are now looking at a specific topic within the Forums part of the site’s structure

Scrolling down that same page, without using the “Latest Replies” blue button takes you here;
Note the address is the same. The Blue Button is just a scrolling shortcut to here further down the page.
This is the banner at the top of the previously compiled list of latest replies.

You are still in the same Tea Room topic, on the same page, but lower down it; now viewing the list of Latest Replies for the whole site, which as you say is huge, and was first generated when you originally viewed this topic in Tea Rooms.
I guess it takes a long time to re-generate.

Whenever you cause a screen refresh, by replying, visiting a different topic, pressing Forums, or the back button etc, this list is re-compiled; bear in mind other users may also be causing a re-compile at the same time as you.

If I view a Latest Replies list to see what’s changed recently, and (on a PC) > right click > open in a new tab, for say five interesting looking posts/topics, I re-generate this list five times at the foot of the page in each tab, and depending on how long I’ve been selecting the five new tabs, the lists may well be different if someone has posted during my selection.

Bill

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Just for clarity,  Bill [and maybe Jason]

The screenshot that I took was from the iPad in portrait mode [so as to get as much of the 25item list as I could in one legible image … and it was produced when I noticed Nigel’s post.

The thing that concerned me was that path: because in normal practice that would be showing where the list is [as opposed to where Nigel’s post is] … but the list contains both ‘Tea Room’ and non ‘Tea Room’ posts.

It may just be a matter of presentation, but I am worried/confused [perhaps unnecessarily] about the structure of the data-set.

It is for greater minds than mine to investigate this, I just noted it as being something odd.

MichaelG.

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Edit: __ although the iPad displays an abbreviated URL in the top bar, the full address is accessible, and this is for what I have just posted

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/topic/forum-slow-running/#latest

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