Forum running slow this morning.

Edinburghlass_2

Like mince tonight up here :-/

trafalgar_2

The site is like sludge just now and has been most of this evening . :-/


from main chat page to technical...........53 seconds

from technical into this thread ................55 seconds


for reply box to load.................................102 seconds


god only knows how long it will take to actually post ..................probably quicker to use Royal Mail ;D ;D ;D


And I'm on broadband ,I should think dial-up have gone to the pub

loafer_2

One of my jobs is assessing site response times:

Here is the brifest (4 hits) of reports on this place on a good day. (now)

---

Test: testcases.xml - 1
TEST CASE - control http://www.rackspace.co.uk/?
verify page

Verify: "space"
Passed Positive Verification
Passed HTTP Response Code Verification (not in error range)
TEST CASE PASSED
Response Time = 0.312 sec

---

Test: testcases.xml - 2
TEST CASE - normal site http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1099314935,42333,
verify page

Verify: "Bad debt is bad"
Passed Positive Verification
Passed HTTP Response Code Verification (not in error range)
TEST CASE PASSED
Response Time = 1.718 sec

---

Test: testcases.xml - 3
TEST CASE - forum cgi page http://forum.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=Technical;action=display;num=1099561703;start=0#0
verify page

Verify: "miss out get"
Passed Positive Verification
Passed HTTP Response Code Verification (not in error range)
TEST CASE PASSED
Response Time = 3.078 sec

---

Test: testcases.xml - 4
TEST CASE - forum image (not cached) http://forum.moneysavingexpert.com/YaBBImages/home.gif?
verify page

Passed HTTP Response Code Verification (not in error range)
TEST CASE PASSED
Response Time = 0.343 sec

---

Start Time: Fri Nov 5 15:26:25 2004
Total Run Time: 6.765 seconds

Test Cases Run: 4
Test Cases Passed: 4
Test Cases Failed: 0
Verifications Passed: 7
Verifications Failed: 0

Average Response Time: 1.362 seconds
Max Response Time: 3.078 seconds
Min Response Time: 0.312 seconds

rooo

The tip has gone out this morning - and the site is under HUGE load - looks like the 10 Mbps bandwidth still isn't enough  :(

I've done a quick bit of investigation on this, and there is a way you can save down money on your bandwidth, and make the site quicker.

Martin, did you realise that your avatar morph graphic is 159Kb?! That is a huge amount and is a major download on dial up.

Loafers avatar image is 21k, poochy's is 20k, trafalgar's is 22k. So on this page alone, the selected avatars are 220K, and that is before you download any content.

To put it into context, the text and HTML of the page come to 102k - so if you restricted the size of the avatars people could have to say, 5k, you would be saving 200k on bandwidth useage for this page, thats 2/3rd's less bandwidth!

I am a professional web developer and will gladly help out in any way I can (for nothing of course!). From what I can see there is much that can be done to reduce the size of the site, and therefore help your bills!

loafer_2

You miss the point, avatars Etc mostly load from external sites and or static files and are well cached by browsers, they don't get downloaded every time you see them.
My avatar got about 4500 hits last month and I'm dam sure it's been seen on more pages than that!

The major things that slow this place down is the page generation/delivery time.

rooo

You miss the point, avatars Etc mostly load from external sites and or static files and are well cached by browsers, they don't get downloaded every time you see them.
My avatar got about 4500 hits last month and I'm dam sure it's been seen on more pages than that!

The major things that slow this place down is the page generation/delivery time.

Martins isn't, and it still needs to be downloaded at least once. And regardless of where the imagas are downloaded from, they still need to be downloaded by the user, meaning a wait for the page as loads.

Take another example, the left hand navigations is over 50k in all - I've just got it to 19k with no loss of quality, with no effort. That is another 30k saved. I'm sure more savings could be applied throughout the site.

53k

MSE_Martin

If you have a way to condense the left hand bar down to 19k please send it to brendan@moneysavingexpert.com - and we will have a look and try and get it installed

rooo

Okay have done.

I actually got it down to 10k with no noticeable quality degradation.

Hope it helps

loafer_2

Putting this in the site css (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/img/mse.css) and out of the forum template would save you another 3K on every, single page.

<style type="text/css">
<!--
/* General layout */
A:link    { font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; color: #000099; }
A:visited   { text-decoration: none; color: #000099; font-weight: normal; }
A:hover    { text-decoration: none; color: #CC3333; }
A.boldlink:link    { text-decoration: none; color: #000099; font-weight: bold; }
A.boldlink:visited   { text-decoration: none; color: #000099; font-weight: bold; }
A.boldlink:hover    { text-decoration: none; color: #CC3333; }
BODY     { scrollbar-face-color: #AFC6DB; scrollbar-shadow-color: #000000; scrollbar-highlight-color: #DEE7EF;
        scrollbar-3dlight-color: #FFFFFF; scrollbar-darkshadow-color: #AFC6DB;
        scrollbar-track-color: #F5F5F5; scrollbar-arrow-color: ##DEE7EF; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; 
        font-size:12px; margin-top: 0; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; padding-top: 0; padding-left: 0; 
        padding-right: 0; }
text     { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 11px; }
TD      { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; color: #000000; font-size: 11px; }
input     { background-color: #f3e7d2; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; }
textarea   { background-color: #f3e7d2; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 9pt; color: #000000; }
select    { background-color: #f3e7d2; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 7pt; color: #000000; }
.copyright  { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 10px; }

/* YaBB navigation links */
a.nav     { font-size: 10px; text-decoration: none; color: #000000; }
a.nav:link   { font-size: 10px; text-decoration: none; color: #000000; }
a.nav:visited { font-size: 10px; text-decoration: none; color: #000000; }
a.nav:hover  { font-size: 10px; text-decoration: none; color: #660000; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; }

/* YaBB alternating bgcolors */
.windowbg   { background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana; color: #000000; }
.windowbg2  { background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana; color: #000000; }
.windowbg3  { background-color: #ffffff; font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana; color: #000000; }

/* Misc./title/category colors */
.hr      { color: #6394BD; }
.titlebg   { background-color: #f3e7d2; color: #000000; }
.text1    { font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 12px; color: #000000; }
.catbg    { background-color: #f3e7d2; color: #000000; font-weight: bold; font-size: 13px; }
.bordercolor { background-color: #660000; }

/* Image fonts */
.imgbg    { font-style: normal; font-size: 10px; color: #330000; }
.imgcatbg   { font-style: normal; font-size: 10px; color: #330000; font-weight: bold; }
.imgtitlebg  { font-style: normal; font-size: 10px; color: #FFFFFF; font-weight: bold; }
.imgwindowbg { font-style: normal; font-size: 9px; color: #005177; }
.imgmenu   { font-style: normal; font-size: 11px; color: #B22222; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; }

/* Post quote/code colors */
.quote    { font-size: 10px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; color: #000000; background-color: #f3e7d2; }
.code     { font-size: 10px; font-family: Courier New; color: #000000; background-color: #CCCCCC; }
.smalltxt   { font-size: 0.3px; color: #FFFFFF; }
-->
</style>

loafer_2

Martins isn't, and it still needs to be downloaded at least once. And regardless of where the imagas are downloaded from, they still need to be downloaded by the user, meaning a wait for the page as loads.

Take another example, the left hand navigations is over 50k in all - I've just got it to 19k with no loss of quality, with no effort. That is another 30k saved. I'm sure more savings could be applied throughout the site.

53k

Only once though. Say 10000 people view 30 pages on the forum site a day when the tips mail goes out, Now saving 6K of html from every page saves 1.6Gb of martins bandwidth. ans makes the forums faster. As many of the avatars and sigs are not hosted on Martins servers they can load seperately once the connection to the forums is over and done with.

Your other example is very valid, those seperate images are well bloated - good spot.