The Energon Pub

Hey guys,

I'd love to read some feedback from you guys today to see whether or not the site seems to be running faster for all of you. I made a change to how the website connects to the database last night because it's been driving me bonkers how slow the site has been. As soon as I made this change, the website immediately responded and was loading much faster and the server's load average immediately started to drop. I've been looking into why this database change (using persistent connections instead of connections that close at the end of each page load) made such a HUGE difference ... because the method I am using is not the preferred or recommended method. I also turned back on HMW so that I can make sure the server is getting a dose of everything to see if it can handle everything running at the same time. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

So far I haven't noticed a difference from the usual speed. =( But at least it hasn't been taking 15 minutes to load a page like it does sometimes.

I am at work on a T1 and the connection speed has not changed for me.

everything works great with speed..the only problem i have with the site is when i hit the back page button i get the "web page not found" screen and then i gotta reload the page again for it to finnaly show up...this is the only site that does it and has been doing it since the site got upgraded a month or so ago(or when ever that was). its no big deal, just annoying.

It's running noticably faster for me, although it's still kind of sluggish.

I think you might possibly benefit from a less image-heavy layout for the forum and HMW, if you're really having problems with speed. Right now Opera's telling me that there's 143 inline elements at 580K on this page (only about 50K of which is avatars)... that's going to slow things up no matter how fast your server is or isn't. More connections = slower loading.

It's fast, but every 5 pages it will go a little slower, but I can live with that.

Edit:
As soon as I posted that, the site went like a **** Ferrary!
It's never been so fast!

A bit better...

I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't mentioned.

Jeysie wrote:It's running noticably faster for me, although it's still kind of sluggish.

I think you might possibly benefit from a less image-heavy layout for the forum and HMW, if you're really having problems with speed. Right now Opera's telling me that there's 143 inline elements at 580K on this page... that's going to slow things up no matter how fast your server is or isn't. More connections = slower loading.

The speed I'm referring to doesn't have anything to do with the images on the page - Seibertron.com has always been image heavy and with most people using high-speed internet and with the way the common images on the website should cache in your browser's temporary folder, the number of images shouldn't be an issue at this point.

The speed I'm most interested is the speed at which the server sends the page to your computer. You can see the load average for the page at the bottom of the page in the footer. It'll say something like this:

There have been a total of 2,933 pages viewed on Seibertron.com in the past 15 minutes including this page which loaded in 0.12916 seconds.

I'm most interested in the number of seconds it took for the page to be built, which is in bold text above.

0.11548 seconds
Looks like I beat you Ryan, you slowpoke

0.17264 seconds

I'll have to check again around 2-3pm, when all the kiddies get out of school. See what it's like for me then. Usually I can't even get to the site around then.

Senor Hugo wrote:0.17264 seconds

I'll have to check again around 2-3pm, when all the kiddies get out of school. See what it's like for me then. Usually I can't even get to the site around then.

12pm Central to 5pm Central is the busiest time of the day on the website. I'll be watching the server's load average throughout the day to keep an eye on it. The server's running a little warm right now (load average for past 15 minutes is 2.20 for you Linux gurus) but the pages are still loading relatively fast (0.13257 seconds).

Seibertron wrote:The speed I'm referring to doesn't have anything to do with the images on the page - Seibertron.com has always been image heavy and with most people using high-speed internet and with the way the common images on the website should cache in your browser's temporary folder, the number of images shouldn't be an issue at this point.

Maybe it shouldn't, but *something* is. I have a DSL connection and make use of my cache and this website still loads sluggishly and tends to "freeze" my browser a bit (this happens with IE7, Opera 9, *and* Firefox 1.5). The only other sites that I have any similar issues with are ones like DeviantArt's galleries... where you're pulling multiple large images per page. And even those don't load as slowly. :/

Seibertron wrote:The speed I'm most interested is the speed at which the server sends the page to your computer. You can see the load average for the page at the bottom of the page in the footer. It'll say something like this:.

Right now it says for me, "There have been a total of 3,760 pages viewed on Seibertron.com in the past 15 minutes including this page which loaded in 0.16818 seconds."

Jeysie wrote:

Seibertron wrote:The speed I'm referring to doesn't have anything to do with the images on the page - Seibertron.com has always been image heavy and with most people using high-speed internet and with the way the common images on the website should cache in your browser's temporary folder, the number of images shouldn't be an issue at this point.

Maybe it shouldn't, but *something* is. I have a DSL connection and make use of my cache and this website still loads sluggishly and tends to "freeze" my browser a bit (this happens with IE7, Opera 9, *and* Firefox 1.5). The only other sites that I have any similar issues with are ones like DeviantArt's galleries... where you're pulling multiple large images per page. And even those don't load as slowly. :/

Seibertron wrote:The speed I'm most interested is the speed at which the server sends the page to your computer. You can see the load average for the page at the bottom of the page in the footer. It'll say something like this:.

Right now it says for me, "There have been a total of 3,760 pages viewed on Seibertron.com in the past 15 minutes including this page which loaded in 0.16818 seconds."

It probably has more to do with how the HTML is rendering. That's an issue that I'd really like to tackle. I'm still using traditional HTML with tables. The content won't display until all HTML has rendered within an HTML table. You can read more about this issue here:

http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/load_no19.htm

I'm waiting for Microsoft to force IE7 on everyone in the next couple of weeks so that I no longer have to worry about the IE6 legacy code. IE7 renders more like Safari and Firefox whereas IE6 is just a plain pain in the ass. For those of you still using IE6, please read and upgrade as soon as possible.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/21/0652248

7.5553 seconds

** Sigh ... **

Just changed some settings in the mysql configuration file for those of you who know about this. Not sure if this will work or not, but what the heck at this point?

max-connections = 200
interactive-timeout = 300 seconds
wait-timeout = 600 seconds

I got... "There have been a total of 3,618 pages viewed on Seibertron.com in the past 15 minutes including this page which loaded in 0.11945 seconds."

0.09306 seconds... not bad.. not bad...

0.10145. It's like Road Runner on crack!

My work won't upgrade to ie7 for a while, am I going to be screwed on the site?

Seibertron wrote:It probably has more to do with how the HTML is rendering. That's an issue that I'd really like to tackle. I'm still using traditional HTML with tables. The content won't display until all HTML has rendered within an HTML table. You can read more about this issue here:

http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/load_no19.htm

I'm waiting for Microsoft to force IE7 on everyone in the next couple of weeks so that I no longer have to worry about the IE6 legacy code. IE7 renders more like Safari and Firefox whereas IE6 is just a plain pain in the ass. For those of you still using IE6, please read and upgrade as soon as possible.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/21/0652248

Yes, perhaps "displayed" would be a more accurate term than "loaded" here. Basically, Opera and Firefox behave similarly: I can see the surrounding table layout and background images pop in, then the content displays unstyled with its images, then finally the CSS layout pops into place. IE7, meanwhile, skips the "unstyled content" part - it doesn't display the content at all until the CSS is loaded.

But yes, IE6 sucks. Considering that all the major browsers are now free and all but IE7 run on Windows 98 even... people should just suck up, do themselves a favor, and upgrade. (Of course, my company's website's logs show a not-insignificant number of people who visit with *Netscape 4*... *shudder*)

I've noticed it's been a little faster than in the past. The main page loaded in 1.05869 seconds. While the forums were faster at 0.12674 seconds. But the database in signifigantly slower at 2.27749 seconds. The toy review page has been the slowest I've found so far. Once it took more than 5 seconds! Though I don't find these numbers to be accurate. It usually takes 2-3 seconds for a page to fully show and finish. And much longer, like 10 seconds, if it has a lot of pictures on it. Not the fraction of a second it claims.

But I think the site is fast enough. It's not "blink" fast, but I don't find myself looking at other sites in other windows or watching TV while I'm waiting for this one to load like I used to.

Seibertron wrote:

Jeysie wrote:It's running noticably faster for me, although it's still kind of sluggish.

I think you might possibly benefit from a less image-heavy layout for the forum and HMW, if you're really having problems with speed. Right now Opera's telling me that there's 143 inline elements at 580K on this page... that's going to slow things up no matter how fast your server is or isn't. More connections = slower loading.

The speed I'm referring to doesn't have anything to do with the images on the page - Seibertron.com has always been image heavy and with most people using high-speed internet and with the way the common images on the website should cache in your browser's temporary folder, the number of images shouldn't be an issue at this point.

The speed I'm most interested is the speed at which the server sends the page to your computer. You can see the load average for the page at the bottom of the page in the footer. It'll say something like this:

There have been a total of 2,933 pages viewed on Seibertron.com in the past 15 minutes including this page which loaded in 0.12916 seconds.

I'm most interested in the number of seconds it took for the page to be built, which is in bold text above.

I get the page load to say they are fast, but the page it self takes sometimes more than a minute to dsplay.

Jeysie wrote:

Seibertron wrote:It probably has more to do with how the HTML is rendering. That's an issue that I'd really like to tackle. I'm still using traditional HTML with tables. The content won't display until all HTML has rendered within an HTML table. You can read more about this issue here:

http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol4/load_no19.htm

I'm waiting for Microsoft to force IE7 on everyone in the next couple of weeks so that I no longer have to worry about the IE6 legacy code. IE7 renders more like Safari and Firefox whereas IE6 is just a plain pain in the ass. For those of you still using IE6, please read and upgrade as soon as possible.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/21/0652248

Yes, perhaps "displayed" would be a more accurate term than "loaded" here. Basically, Opera and Firefox behave similarly: I can see the surrounding table layout and background images pop in, then the content displays unstyled with its images, then finally the CSS layout pops into place. IE7, meanwhile, skips the "unstyled content" part - it doesn't display the content at all until the CSS is loaded.

But yes, IE6 sucks. Considering that all the major browsers are now free and all but IE7 run on Windows 98 even... people should just suck up, do themselves a favor, and upgrade. (Of course, my company's website's logs show a not-insignificant number of people who visit with *Netscape 4*... *shudder*)

This sounds like the issue, it's not the page load times that are slow, it's how long it takes for it to display the page.

Robinson wrote:My work won't upgrade to ie7 for a while, am I going to be screwed on the site?

Unless your company's server admin knows how to prevent the update, Microsoft is going to force the update on all computers. I'm not sure if "force" means that IE6 will no longer be operable or the next time you do a Windows Update it makes you download IE7 or what. I for one am extremely happy about this because people are being so stubborn about upgrading to IE7. IE6 was a piece of crap browser. IE7 is much, much better at respecting CSS2 like Firefox and Safari do.

UltraPrimal wrote:I've noticed it's been a little faster than in the past. The main page loaded in 1.05869 seconds. While the forums were faster at 0.12674 seconds. But the database in signifigantly slower at 2.27749 seconds. The toy review page has been the slowest I've found so far. Once it took more than 5 seconds! Though I don't find these numbers to be accurate. It usually takes 2-3 seconds for a page to fully show and finish. And much longer, like 10 seconds, if it has a lot of pictures on it. Not the fraction of a second it claims.

It's because we're talking about two different issues here. I'm most concerned about the time it takes to actually generate the dynamic pages on the server. While both issues may ultimately be related because of how Seibertron.com was originally coded, the time it takes to generate the pages on the server every time you load a page is the most significant. When we redesign Seibertron.com later this year, I'll definitely be taking a look at what I can do to help make the pages themselves render faster in your browser, which is very different from a technical stand point than how fast the pages load from the server.