NSC slowing down

[Bozza]

If its really that much of an issue... Firefox, AdBlockPlus and select one/two of main lists or customise your own.
Personally, I remove just about everything thats not essential (Ads, google/facebook/twitter trackers, etc - sorry Bozza!). Makes all my surfing fast and ad free!

S'ok - using the site is about to become like walking through treacle and you won't be able to turn it off. Enjoy!

 

[dadams2k11]

A logged in member still has relatively few adverts (a 'guest' has more) but none should slow down the site.

There was a reported issue last week with Skimlinks which impacted some users, notably those using IE8, and I turned it off and the impacted users reported that this improved things dramatically. I got in touch with Skimlinks who acknowledged the problem and said they'd fixed it. I then re-applied Skimlinks to the site.

Since then there have been a few isolated 'the site is going slowly' reports but nothing in any great volume. I'm happy to turn Skimlinks off again, for now, to see if it improves things for those who are experiencing slowness.

Please note, however, that with NSC costing anywhere up to £500 per month to host, a degree of advertising will remain, but I would never willingly accept a degradation of site performance just to include an advert.

Why does it cost that much to host? I pay £10 per month to host 5 sites and 2 of them take a lot of space....

 

[Woodchip]

Why does it cost that much to host? I pay £10 per month to host 5 sites and 2 of them take a lot of space....

I believe we run on a dedicated server, hence the cost and no drop in performance when 1000+ people are trying to view the signing of Vicente simultaneously.

Dedicated 24/7 servers don't come cheap.

Out of interest Bozza, do you know what size the database currently is?

 

[Bozza]

I believe we run on a dedicated server, hence the cost and no drop in performance when 1000+ people are trying to view the signing of Vicente simultaneously.

Dedicated 24/7 servers don't come cheap.

Out of interest Bozza, do you know what size the database currently is?

We're not on a dedicated server right now, but in the Rackspace cloud. This means we only get charged for the resources we use, but gives us (almost) unlimited capacity to cope with usage peaks.

The amount of space we take up is not an issue - NSC is relatively small, taking up only about 17gb currently as follows:

Data: 7.15gb
Indexes: 3.35gb
Attachments: 6.78gb

Storing a data or a site is dirt cheap. If NSC only had the occasional user then it would only cost pennies to run. However to support the current user base, which often sees us with 1200 concurrent users (peaking at c2500), on a very SQL intensive site with decent performance takes a lot of grunt. This isn't bandwidth, shunting data in and out, but raw computer processing. We also need redundancy so that if something goes 'BANG!' the site stays up. That doesn't come cheap.

(As it happens I have tentatively started to look at a dedicated server again in order to fix monthly costs, but this will only be done if I have confidence that the server can cope with NSC peak usage times. It also won't be cheap.)

 

[Drumstick]

Slow as feck this end, Other sites seem ok I'm on Firefox.

 

[Bozza]

Slow as feck this end, Other sites seem ok I'm on Firefox.

Still slow now?

 

[Monsieur Le Plonk]

Skimlinks is disabled again. I'd appreciate those who have had some slowness replying here as to whether they are still getting it or not.

My work IE seems fine again now these have been disabled.

 

[WATFORD zero]

IE8 working much quicker than this morning

 

[Max Paper]

been using Chrome the whole time and can report no issues at all

 

[Freddie Goodwin.]

Working so much better for me this evening, thanks.

 

[Worthingite]

I use Opera and NEVER have any issues

 

[Freddie Goodwin.]

What, never have the neighbours banging on the wall?

 

[Drumstick]

Still slow now?

Yep not a big issue just annoying. It freezes the whole firefox for a few seconds.

 

[Bozza]

Yep not a big issue just annoying. It freezes the whole firefox for a few seconds.

It will be your end for sure. Shut down your browser and restart, try a force refresh of the page, clear browser cache and all the usual stuff.

 

[Turkey]

Has been a lot better for me today.

 

[Bozza]

Skimlinks has been re-instated.

Skimlinks acknowledged there was an issue last week but it was resolved - we are literally the only site (amongst thousands) who reported an issue this week.

Those who are stuck on old IE versions and Firefox - if you experience some slowness, please clear your browser's cache, close it and restart it.

 

[Woodchip]

27 seconds for The Big Board to load up on IE8.0.6001.18702CO (running on XP SP3 with a P4 3.2 processor and 1Gb of RAM). This compares to 2 seconds on Chrome 19.0.1084.58.

Welcome back Skimlinks.

 

[Bozza]

27 seconds for The Big Board to load up on IE8.0.6001.18702CO (running on XP SP3 with a P4 3.2 processor and 1Gb of RAM). This compares to 2 seconds on Chrome 19.0.1084.58.

Welcome back Skimlinks.

Have you done what I asked above?

It strikes me as curious that Skimlinks are aware they introduced a bug, fixed that bug and since then have only had 1 site report a possible problem - us, and that is with a very small handful of our thousands of users.

I'll never knowingly have anything on NSC that degrades performance for any users, but I need to be sure that something is an issue at NSC's end rather than with the user themselves.

 

[Woodchip]

Have you done what I asked above?

It strikes me as curious that Skimlinks are aware they introduced a bug, fixed that bug and since then have only had 1 site report a possible problem - us, and that is with a very small handful of our thousands of users.

I'll never knowingly have anything on NSC that degrades performance for any users, but I need to be sure that something is an issue at NSC's end rather than with the user themselves.

Everything deleted, refreshed, etc...

Bozza, my current occupation is a Software Test Analyst, so I'm kinda used to handling defects on web applications.

 

[Bozza]

Everything deleted, refreshed, etc...

Bozza, my current occupation is a Software Test Analyst, so I'm kinda used to handling defects on web applications.

I'm not worthy.