New forum problems

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:

On Keith Rogers 2 Said:

For two days now I have been trying to view the latest posts with no success. Even though last week I had no problem.

I come to the website, log in, click on the latest activity blue box and up comes a page telling me to log in to view the latest activity. At first I thought I had done something wrong, so I went through all the rigmarole of logging in again, clicked on blue box latest activity and guess what? it tells me I have to log in to view the latest posts.

I’m getting fed up! For all it’s faults I could at least participate in the old forum without too much agro.

Keith.

ps. I can’t even add a sad smiley!

………………..

It’s unusual for latest activity to fail consistently for two days.   For me it fails intermittently, up to about 20% of the time.  Sometimes works for hours with no problem, occasionally I get 3 or 4 failures in a row.  It’s annoying!!!

…………….

Dave

Dave, this seems odd, as you’ve obviously noticed, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the forum, due to a spectacle prescription problem, meaning I’m not safe in the workshop.
I’ve been replying, quoting, including screenshots, posting and testing hyperlinks, re-posting different image sizes and resolutions etc, so I’m probably one of the more intensive forum users since the re-launch; mods/admin excepted of course.
I’ve been intermittently active from about 10.30 am through to 02.00 am the following day on a regular basis, seven days a week (I have been doing other stuff too )

I’ve only had this Blue Button/forced logoff problem once; it was entirely consistent, and I’ve not been able to repeat the issue.
My faults and wishes spreadsheet is now up to 29 lines, though I think some problems may have been sorted, or at least starting to be addressed.

Also been having a few thoughts in a different post, though I may be barking up the wrong tree completely.

Almost everything I’ve done, other than specific testing, has been on this desktop PC,  Windows 10, two monitors, one landscape & one portrait.
i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz 32GB memory, 8GB Video Card. FTTC broadband.
Browsers used; Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Pale Moon, Avast, and very occasionally Edge.
I’ve been trying to keep an eye on Task Manager, to look for anything odd.
The only specific local problem I’ve found was Opera sometimes failed to play videos, so at the suggestion from their forum, I’ve disabled hardware acceleration within Opera, which has cured it.

Bill

[Keith Rogers 2Participant @keithrogers2]

Bill (Peak4).

Sorry for the late reply. I previously used Edge to log in, but this time I used Chrome.

Same result!

Keith.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Like Peak, I’ve only had the log out when clicking “Latest” once and I tried it about 10 times. Reported it straight after. W10 & Chrome.

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

Like Peak, I’ve only had the log out when clicking “Latest” once and I tried it about 10 times. Reported it straight after. W10 & Chrome.

If my theory the performance problem is causing internal failures is correct, it’s not surprising our experience differs.

Most software bugs are logical, that is doing A and B always causes error 1.   But there are other situations, normally caused by programming or configuration errors, that cause ‘undefined behaviour’.

Undefined behaviour is likely when a computer is overloaded, which can happen because insufficient resources were allocated to a process.   For example, if a queue grows beyond the memory allocated to store it, best case is the oldest item in the queue is dumped, and worst is the queue breaks entirely.   Dumping is more likely.  So when 20 members are queuing for service, what happens to an individual when the queue overflows depends on where in the queue his request is.

This type of bug isn’t predictable.  Error 1 is like winning the lottery – random, not related to what the user does or his equipment.  Undefined behaviour explains why unlucky Keith sees the login problem much more than I do, whilst lucky Bill and Jason think it’s rare.   We’re all correct – a good or bad experience is a matter of luck.

Easy to fix once the cause is identified, but often tricky to diagnose.

I predict several bugs will disappear as if by magic when Mortons nail whatever is slugging the server.

Dave

 

 

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, out of curiosity I’ve just clicked on that blue button, and, well I didn’t win the lottery, just got logged out.

Regards Nick.

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

I predict several bugs will disappear as if by magic when Mortons nail whatever is slugging the server.

Dave

since I can still use an old firefox browser set to no style which removes 99% of the fancy css formatting I get near instant response, no adverts and an almost usable listing of posts and can click on any image to see it if I desire – I strongly suspect that all the fancy script work combined with fetching large adverts from another server make it as slow as treacle in winter and not as sweet.

 

 

[Frances IoM]

On Frances IoM Said:

I predict several bugs will disappear as if by magic when Mortons nail whatever is slugging the server.

Dave

 

 

As I understand it, the main thing that has been slugging the server is constant attention from bots scraping the site,  treating it as an entirely new site and trying to download everything everywhere all at once! Policy has been to try and limit them.

There are also issues with indexing, especially how the latest posts are compiled as the default method searches and sorts the whole database every time it is generated, so a bespoke alternative is being developed.

Neil

[Frances IoMParticipant @francesiom58905]

Neill – I suspect the Bots have nothing to do with it – as i said getting rid of the images, adverts and the fancy formatting gives always a near instant response – I suggest you experiment with eg removing the off site adverts + links to off site entities as I also block all those

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

Ok, I’ve just tried accessing the site with an ad blocker enabled. Response was almost instant. This doesn’t bode well for morton’s income stream to defray the cost of hosting the forum…

[Neil Wyatt]

On Neil Wyatt Said:

On Frances IoM Said:

I predict several bugs will disappear as if by magic when Mortons nail whatever is slugging the server.

Dave

 

 

As I understand it, the main thing that has been slugging the server is constant attention from bots scraping the site,  treating it as an entirely new site and trying to download everything everywhere all at once! Policy has been to try and limit them.

There are also issues with indexing, especially how the latest posts are compiled as the default method searches and sorts the whole database every time it is generated, so a bespoke alternative is being developed.

Neil

I’m not sure bots can be blamed, but the way latest posts is working is seriously bad – there are over 600,000 posts!  Other plug-ins may be doing the same:

Not clicking ‘Latest Activity’, just this page, my browser tools show “/forums/topic/new-forum-problems/page/3/”, took 3.1 seconds to download 41.89kb of HTML (decompressed to 240kB).

Then a shower of calls to other sites, mostly taking 0mS, the most tardy taking only 90mS, not a problem.

The page finishes with two calls to admin-ajax.php, both taking just over a second each.  That’s a 5 second wait.

All three calls to www,model-engineer.co.uk are flagged with the tortoise alert icon and a warning such as “Slow server response time (3s).  The recommended limit is 500mS”

The network time is good – server responds to a ping in about 8mS.

My email Re: Suggested latest topics sent 11:08 31 Oct covered WordPress and bbPress performance, noting that by default they do not cache.  Their performance is improved by adding plug-ins, which dramatically reduce the amount of work done by reusing previous results.

Dave

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Dave

The fact that you are doing these checks is very encouraging

… The fact that they are [first?] being done  at this stage of the project, is worrying.

 

MichaelG.

.

.

May I also note an oddity in your post :

To this reader; the quotations appear to be wrongly ascribed

The quote from Frances is signed Dave

… this is probably just down to the editing in earlier posts, and the terminology used by WordPress

[ i.e. Frances didn’t “say” it … Frances quoted what Dave had said ]

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

Dave

The fact that you are doing these checks is very encouraging

… The fact that they are [first?] being done  at this stage of the project, is worrying.

 

MichaelG.

.

.

May I also note an oddity in your post :

To this reader; the quotations appear to be wrongly ascribed

The quote from Frances is signed Dave

… this is probably just down to the editing in earlier posts, and the terminology used by WordPress

[ i.e. Frances didn’t “say” it … Frances quoted what Dave had said ]

Yes I’ve been having similar issues when quoting quoted posts; I’ve tried to partially edit out some of the quoted stuff, to avoid “Bloat-Quoting” but ended up with fairly unpredictable results.
The edit pane doesn’t always show how the final edit displays when submitted.
What I have notices is this bottom line appears; the content varies depending on the position of your cursor in the quoted section, but I don’t seem to be able to do anything useful with it

Bill

[peak4]

On peak4 Said:

… this bottom line appears; the content varies depending on the position of your cursor in the quoted section, but I don’t seem to be able to do anything useful with it

Bill

.

My limited understanding understanding is that the bottom line is a sort-of ‘display terminal’ and is showing where you are in the HTML

… rather like a directory path.

I’m sure Dave can explain it better than that.

MichaelG.

[John Doe 2Participant @johndoe2]

One thing that might help speed things up is that when I select a new thread topic, the software briefly loads and displays a directory of the whole forum before loading the page.

If this unnecessary display step could be removed, it would help.

Secondly, every time I click on a new thread, the whole page is reloaded, including all the advert panels and magazine covers etc. around the edges. If this could be avoided, and just the forum text changed to the new required thread, this would save a lot of loading time.

The advert panels etc, can be refreshed in the background after the thread portion has been loaded – as they are anyway on the animated ones – rather than waiting until the entire page has been assembled from scratch.

This would save a lot of loading time.

 

[Ches Green UKParticipant @chesgreenuk]

Just for info.

This Saturday morning (9.45am) I accessed the website – access was very fast, I fast-clicked through a few pages and then decided to Log In, which again was fast. However, on clicking the ‘forum here‘ link shown below, it then took many seconds (20?) to make further progress.

So good progress is being made, up to a point.

Ches

W10 desktop, Firefox, fast internet wired connection, 1920×1200 display.

 

[David-Clark 1Participant @david-clark1]

That developer is absolute crap. Should have followed the existing format. It has worked since about 2005. I think that is when we started the forum.

We had a few minor problems when we set the original site up but nothing like this. Very hard to navigate and find stuff on here.

I can understand having to upgrade the original software as it was written from scratch but changing the layout and format that worked was a big no, no.

And sentences not being capitalised when you first type them in is ridiculous. Delete the first word and it will be capitalised when you type it again just like the old site so did the developer change the original site or just tinker round the edges?

Please change the layout back to the original, it can’t be that difficult.

Whoever heard of switching a live site off for 10 days while an incompetent developer buggered about with it? Has he not heard of a staging site where you prove out the site before taking it live?

done it again, no capitals.

this is really irritating.

There is to much emphasis on banner ads. I know they are needed so the company can make the forum pay for itself but if all the members stop using it because it is rubbish, there will be no revenue anyway.

Need more subscribers, easy. Give a decent free subscription gift. I gave a great gift in return for a two year subscription payment to Model Engineers’ Workshop and got over 200 new subscribers.

[David-Clark 1]

On David-Clark 1 Said:

…
And sentences not being capitalised when you first type them in is ridiculous. Delete the first word and it will be capitalised when you type it again just like the old site so did the developer change the original site or just tinker round the edges?

…

done it again, no capitals.

this is really irritating.

…

Well, given what else needs attention, the editor not capitalising the first word of a sentence is surely the least important!   Top of my list  is the sluggish and erratic response time.

I don’t even agree the feature is wanted!   As a time-served keyboard basher, I prefer to type what I want, without automatic ‘corrections’.   Computer programmers and other technical typesetters have to turn automated formatting off because it mangles our work.  Therefore I never noticed the old forum auto-capitalised, and don’t miss not having the feature here one jot.

Literary members will be pleased that forum renders the poet ee cummings correctly:

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

🙂

Dave

 

[speelwerkParticipant @speelwerk]

I wonder why is the total number of posts a forum member made no longer displayed?  Niko.

[David-Clark 1Participant @david-clark1]

The non capitalising is irritating because almost everybody does it. But they are irritating to because I normally press shift and end up with a lower case instead of a capital.

[David-Clark 1Participant @david-clark1]

I just timed the time for this response to post, it takes about 15 seconds on a wireless speed of 500gb.

[David-Clark 1Participant @david-clark1]

Perhaps I will start my own website? Model-engineer.com ? I already have the domain name. Unless someone would like to buy it from me?

[Darren Hendley 1]

On 30 October 2023 at 08:54 Darren Hendley 1 Said:

Morning everyone,

Thanks for bearing with us during this transition. We know it’s not ideal.

We are looking at what we can do and I’ll be back with an update later.

We’ve been a bit let down by the developer who did this work, so appreciate all of your frustrations.

Hi Darren,

Can you advise IF or when you are likely to remove CLOUDFLARE from the site?

As it stands, variable time delay IS caused by CLOUDFLARE, which IS a great cause of frustration.

If this situation carries on, it could mean loss of members to:

• other forum sites, or
• creation of a new better non-wordpress site

Ketan at ARC.

[David-Clark 1Participant @david-clark1]

Hi Ketan, my thoughts exactly. I have model-engineer.com and I may well set up an alternative model engineer website. Either that or sell it to a model engineer trader so they can redirect it to their own website. That would take me about 10 minutes to redirect.

Depends if I get a good offer for it. As it is a top level domain (.com) if someone types in model-engineer it will probably default to the .com version but even a simple site would probably more than earn its money back in a few weeks.

This new website is built on a free WordPress theme. They may well be using a free cloudflare account. All about profit. Never mind 20 years of loyal visitors.

John Stevenson must be turning in his grave.

 

The domain name is up for sale at £2,000. Are there any takers?

[David-Clark 1Participant @david-clark1]

The new forum is built on bbpress which is a free forum software.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

David, if you visited the site more you would see we all know it is WordPress and BBPress so no need to tell us all again

Also please watch your language.

[Author]

Posts