Slow Again?

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Is it just me or is the site running slowly again? I’ll let Admin know if others are being affected.

[AStroudParticipant @astroud]

Using MS Edge, painfully slow for me.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

As I was waiting for the first page to appear, I was thinking “bet I’ll see a post about slow running when something eventually appears.”. Yup, slow here as well.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Seems to have got back upto speed for me, let me know if anyone is still finding it slow as of 8.28

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

seems OK now Jason, it did it on me about a week ago, then picked up. Noel.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, mine was very slow at 6.30 this morning, and I had white blank pages two or three times. So maybe someone was doing a bit of maintenance.

Regards Nick.

[VicParticipant @vic]

Very slow for me at the moment. I wasn’t sure the home page would actually load.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Normal here, but I started late – 9:30 ish, and haven’t been actively exploring.

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

It’s at it again as of 22:20 VERY SLOW. Noel.

[Simon CollierParticipant @simoncollier74340]

Taking forever to load.

[jim1956Participant @jim1956]

2254 logged in on MS Edge – very very slow

On Opera at the same time, not logged in, no Javascript enabled – this thread URL loaded instantly.

Regards  Jim

 

[jim1956Participant @jim1956]

This is a quick screen capture of where my MS Edge window paused for a long time when trying to load the page.  Might be related to the advert service, note the URL at the bottom of the screen.  Regards Jim

[jim1956]

On jim1956 Said:

… Might be related to the advert service, note the URL at the bottom of the screen.  Regards Jim

 

Normally, in moderator mode, I access the forum with my AdBlocker ON.   (In normal user mode I switch AdBlocking OFF, because Ads are useful, but often forget!)

AdBlockers tell the browser to ignore links to adverts.  Ads are typically served by a third party, who may retrieve them from elsewhere.  In Jim’s example, it appears the forum sends a link to advintage, who then connect to Warco.   So if advintage, warco or the network are wonky, there will be delays.    Maybe the forum is OK for me because my browser doesn’t follow links to adverts.

I would describe the forum as advert heavy.  A common mistake in my opinion, due to advertising managers naively assuming more is better.  Not so, too much advertising leads to most of it being ignored, and anyone with a slow computer and/or network is annoyed by delays caused by the additional payload.   Counter-productive, and liable to result in users blocking ads entirely.

I also run “Privacy Badger”.   It zaps 5 calls the forum asks our browsers to make to tracker sites.   Though I block trackets because they breach my security policy, not calling them also improves performance.

Anyway, to test Jim’s hypothesis I’ve switched ad-blocker off.   Result: I confirm ads are slowing the forum down, but by less than a second or so, not awful.  Ads don’t make the forum unacceptably sluggish here in so far as I’ve been able to test it.   Unfortunately I won’t have time today to test it properly.

Are those suffering delays AdBlocking or not?  Might help pin down the problem.

9:30AM and I’m out of time.  No more Model Engineering for me today. sigh…

Dave

[Stuart Smith 5Participant @stuartsmith5]

Dave

The site isn’t slow for me all the time, just at the times others have reported it.

It was very slow late last night, so much so I gave up.

It looks like it is linked to the adverts loading or not though.

 

Stuart

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I had it a bit slow again last night around 8.30 but other sites were also not loading at their usual speed. Has been OK for me today.

Yesterday morning I was getting similar to Jim’s screen shot and it took 20seconds for the railway sleeper ad to load and a further 30 for the rest of a page.

[SillyOldDuffer]

On SillyOldDuffer Said:
[…] In Jim’s example, it appears the forum sends a link to advintage, who then connect to Warco. […]

I have made no conscious effort to block Ads on the iPad, but [as I have mentioned before] my ‘Prime Suspect’ would be advintage itself.

I don’t have the skills to analyse it, but the code looks very bloated.

MichaelG.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

I have no idea how to run ad blocker, but last night the forum was so slow I just gave up

[John MCParticipant @johnmc39344]

Haven’t noticed any slowness lately, the page, for me has always been a little “sluggish” to load, a bit like me first thing in the morning!

What it has started doing is, after loading and scrolling down the page to get to the latest replies, is, after a few seconds, jump back to the top of the page.   I have seen this with other pages, not just this forum.   The excuse(?) is that its the page is still loading  while I’m scrolling down.   Not sure that’s the case here.  I can leaves the page for a minute or so and it still does it.

I read the page with either Edge or Firefox, does it with both.

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

I’ve noticed the jump phenomenon, and it only seems to be when there are photographs involved,

Speedwise, no issues.

Rob

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Slow again this morning – 50 seconds to fully load this page so I have let the backroom boys know.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

Seems ok for me at the moment

10 minutes later – spoke too soon. Very slow again.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, was extremely slow at 6.15 this morning, and has just took about four minutes to log in and get this page with all the avatar’s showing.

Regards Nick.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

This morning, with AdBlocker switched OFF, I am experiencing slow loading.

Turning Firefox’s Web Developer tool ON shows instantly that it headlines “Waiting for advintage.net” repeatedly.  (i.e excessive delay waiting to download an advert.)

Using the developer tool to dig deeper into how long each element of a page takes finds examples like this,  note “unknown duration” and status “waiting for response“, all advintage.net, everything else reasonably quick:

 

After turning AdBlocker back ON my performance returns to normal.   It’s because AdBlocker tells the browser to ignore links to adverts found inside a webpage, so my view of the forum isn’t delayed by advintage, and the forum flies.

The evidence against advintage.net is strong.  A problem with advintage.net, either server or network.

Of course, SOD’s Law being what it is, possible this is a double fault.  Something out-of-spec done by the forum that upsets advintage.net.   Although the calls look ok to me, the code is complicated!

Dave

 

 

 

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Hopeless this morning – and just as bad flitting between threads ‘inside’ as it was getting through the door, so to speak.

I can see that Adv. is ‘do it’s thing’ upon first entry, but it’s still just as bad after something like 20 minutes..

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Slow – Apple Mac Sonoma 14.6.1  1st March 2025 08:20  CET

Bob

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