V5 uses up more memory/processing?

[My Name is Billy Moonstone]

Hi, I'm having some complaints from people that V5 is slow to load (they're not on dial-up btw and no connection difficulties)

Here's one posted today:

one of the problems I've been having is the site seems to use up vast amounts of memory / processing so it's really difficult to use the site as responds so slowly. I'm using Firefox but had the same problem in IE. i tried logging out but it hasn't helped. Any ideas? or similar concerns from anyone else? Can anyone shed any light on this or suggest how I might best repond - does V5 use "vast amounts of memory/processing"? I've noticed myself that the page loading seems very much dependant on the adverts - in that it all seems much more ad-heavy with V5 so slows down pretty much everything else. I just put it down to using Safari though, as I've had a few Mac/Safari issues but can live with it Any ideas most welcome

[Brian]

Hi, My Name is Billy Moonstone.

After messing around on your page for a bit, it seems that flash ads are the most common culprits of performance hindrance, although this is only when scrolling and when they're within visible view on your page.

I'll see what our options are.

[My Name is Billy Moonstone]

Mar 10, 2013 8:49:38 GMT -8 Brian said:

Hi, My Name is Billy Moonstone.

After messing around on your page for a bit, it seems that flash ads are the most common culprits of performance hindrance, although this is only when scrolling and when they're within visible view on your page.

I'll see what our options are.

Thanks Brian, I'd really appreciate that. Sure my users will appreciate it too

Look forward to what you come up with

[Brian]

I had a meeting with Martyn and Michael and we decided that any ads that impede browser performance (if it was bad on my work PC it'd be pretty bad on an older PC ) will need to be looked into. So hopefully your performance will improve over time as we deal with these.

For now, I'd like to test something on your end. First, are the ads affecting general loading or is it the scrolling that's affected? Your member mentioned high CPU usage, which implies that their scrolling will more than likely be affected (I know mine was). If it's the latter and the ads are offscreen, is their scrolling still affected?

[My Name is Billy Moonstone]

Mar 11, 2013 9:25:52 GMT -8 Brian said:

I had a meeting with Martyn and Michael and we decided that any ads that impede browser performance (if it was bad on my work PC it'd be pretty bad on an older PC ) will need to be looked into. So hopefully your performance will improve over time as we deal with these.

For now, I'd like to test something on your end. First, are the ads affecting general loading or is it the scrolling that's affected? Your member mentioned high CPU usage, which implies that their scrolling will more than likely be affected (I know mine was). If it's the latter and the ads are offscreen, is their scrolling still affected?

Thanks Brian, and I really appreciate you looking into this. I'll post and email my members who have complained about this and try provide some more specific feedback. For myself, it's the general loading that's an issue (I'm on a Mac using Safari mostly) - you can't necessarily click through anything until all the ads are loaded, also sometimes some of the template mods/plugins don't kick in until after the ads have loaded so you spend a few seconds seeing things like the ads appearing inside the forum as opposed to outside as per the mod, the sidebar appearing on other pages even though it's set to just the home page etc.

Will get back to you about the scrolling etc. Thanks again bud 

[My Name is Billy Moonstone]

Hi Brian here's some more detail from one of the people who has been having issues:

Hello - yes, a couple of answers: 1. loading of the page seems to be all right but it's the scrolling that's a noticeable problem.  2. the scrolling speed does seem to be worse when the ads are showing. when the ads aren't on screen, scrolling isn't too bad, although the memory usage is still high. Memory usage is much higher when ads are showing, compared to when they're not showing, without me doing any other activity or scrolling  Thanks for looking at the problem. For myself it's as I said previously plus I occasionally get what looks like perpetual loading of the page - the page comes up ok but the thing in the browser bar keeps spinning as if it's still loading (I'm on a Mac using Safari) Thanks again for looking into it

[Brian]

My Name is Billy Moonstone, do you experience any of these performance impacts yourself?

If so, can you try disabling your plugins one by one and reloading the home page after disabling each one to see if it improves performance and reduces scroll stuttering?

[My Name is Billy Moonstone]

Hi Brian sometimes I do, usually when the page first loads it hangs until the adverts start displaying

You said yourself that it was the ads that were causing the problem - any chance there is a fix for this or something I can tell my members?

[Brian]

Not that I know of. I have two flash-based ads showing on your forum now and they don't seem to be impacting my performance.

Did you try my previous suggestion?

[My Name is Billy Moonstone]

Mar 31, 2013 8:14:29 GMT -8 Brian said:

Not that I know of. I have two flash-based ads showing on your forum now and they don't seem to be impacting my performance.

Did you try my previous suggestion?

Nope. I haven't had time. Also, as I said Safari is notoriously glitchy with anything that uses flash on-screen anyway so I don't think my own experience (which I can live with) is going to help me address issues with Windows users who use my V5, which is why I started this thread

Earlier you said:

I had a meeting with Martyn and Michael and we decided that any ads that impede browser performance (if it was bad on my work PC it'd be pretty bad on an older PC ) will need to be looked into. So hopefully your performance will improve over time as we deal with these.

For now, I'd like to test something on your end. First, are the ads affecting general loading or is it the scrolling that's affected? Your member mentioned high CPU usage, which implies that their scrolling will more than likely be affected (I know mine was). If it's the latter and the ads are offscreen, is their scrolling still affected?

Can you give me a bit more info - this would be useful to tell my users at least. Have the types of ads now been changed in anyway or will be changed in anyway? Any timescales?


When I get time I'll go through the plugin stuff and let you know anyway

Cheers Brian

[Brian]

I'm not sure of any ad changes we've done. I don't personally manage that, but I don't believe we've made any changes to the ads.

I've been investigating your forum further and tried running it with the layout templates disabled, then the headers and footers, and finally, the plugins. It seems that running it without plugins aided the performance and got rid of any stuttering issues I had.

[My Name is Billy Moonstone]

Apr 7, 2013 10:30:15 GMT -8 Brian said:

I'm not sure of any ad changes we've done. I don't personally manage that, but I don't believe we've made any changes to the ads.

I've been investigating your forum further and tried running it with the layout templates disabled, then the headers and footers, and finally, the plugins. It seems that running it without plugins aided the performance and got rid of any stuttering issues I had.

I'm getting confused Brian. You said earlier that even you had issues on my forum and indicated it was down to the ads and that performance would improve over time as these got looked into

I appreciate you taking the time to look at my forum, honestly. But what are you saying? That I don't use any plugins?

Someone else emailed me yesterday saying that it was a nightmare with Chrome too - I haven't tested it yet so don't know if this is a PB issue with Chrome or something specific to my forum

Any idea what my options are? Or which particular plugin is the problem (if not all of them) in the hope something can be done?

It just seems a bit bizarre that there are all these plugs for V5 being able to use plugins but then the plugins cock up the forum. I only have 7 of them:

 

In terms of the ads, I use Realplayer downloader, which kicks in automatically when my browser comes across video files, giving me the choice to download them or not. It keeps coming up when I navigate my forum offering to download the adverts and gives basic info on them - are the adverts PB is serving up really 1.8MB each? If they are, I'm not surprised that loading is slow and stuttering!

[Jordan]

You should try running a profiler on your site to see what exactly is taking so long as well as looking at the network communication times. I don't know what your forum URL is, but Chrome has these tools built in which are easy to run. They're in the developer console.

Also, it's possible for a plugin to cause a site to be slow so it wouldn't be a bad idea to try disabling one at a time. It's also possible for the plugin to be fixed if discovered. Later today I may look at the source of those plugins to see if one of them could use some improvements.

[Brian]

Apr 7, 2013 10:58:45 GMT -8 My Name is Billy Moonstone said:

Apr 7, 2013 10:30:15 GMT -8 Brian said:

I'm not sure of any ad changes we've done. I don't personally manage that, but I don't believe we've made any changes to the ads.

I've been investigating your forum further and tried running it with the layout templates disabled, then the headers and footers, and finally, the plugins. It seems that running it without plugins aided the performance and got rid of any stuttering issues I had.

I'm getting confused Brian. You said earlier that even you had issues on my forum and indicated it was down to the ads and that performance would improve over time as these got looked into

I appreciate you taking the time to look at my forum, honestly. But what are you saying? That I don't use any plugins?

Someone else emailed me yesterday saying that it was a nightmare with Chrome too - I haven't tested it yet so don't know if this is a PB issue with Chrome or something specific to my forum

Any idea what my options are? Or which particular plugin is the problem (if not all of them) in the hope something can be done?

It just seems a bit bizarre that there are all these plugs for V5 being able to use plugins but then the plugins cock up the forum. I only have 7 of them:

 

In terms of the ads, I use Realplayer downloader, which kicks in automatically when my browser comes across video files, giving me the choice to download them or not. It keeps coming up when I navigate my forum offering to download the adverts and gives basic info on them - are the adverts PB is serving up really 1.8MB each? If they are, I'm not surprised that loading is slow and stuttering!

I'm saying that it slows down when I reach the ads with plugins on, but when the plugins are disabled the ads are no longer a hindrance and the forum offers no performance impacts. So the ads are fine. They just don't work in conjunction with whichever plugin is currently causing the slowdown (the identity of which I do not know). I'm not telling you that you should flat out remove any sort of plugin from your forum until the end of time.

As Jordan has already stated, a single plugin can cause problems on a forum if not scripted efficiently. Don't forget that the plugins in our database are user-submitted and do not go through any sort of professional coding review.

[My Name is Billy Moonstone]

Thanks Jordan and thanks Brian for replying. I get it - still think the ad-serving throughout V5 is OTT but, I get it. I'll try the plugin route and see what I can throw up and hopefully we can narrow it down. I'll also have a bash at that Chrome profiler thing Jordan said too and report back

I appreciate the help guys, thanks for bearing with me