A few improvements at AskWoody

Topic

New Reply

You may have noticed that the site’s faster today. That’s because of some very remarkable programming from our devs at Fantasktic. Highly recommended.
[See the full post at: A few improvements at AskWoody]

14 users thanked author for this post.

columbia2011, Microfix, JDeC, Steve, SueW, Fred, yvrhnl, Mr. Natural, OscarCP, geekdom, Elly, Pepsiboy, MrBrian, bjm

Reply | Quote

Replies

It’s definitely faster.  Nice.

1 user thanked author for this post.

woody

Reply | Quote

Wow! A huge improvement! Thank You and Congrats!

Reply | Quote

Subscribed to “A few improvements”.  We’ll see whether email notifications work.

Thanks

Reply | Quote

Testing your email connections.

PKCano

Reply | Quote

I could do with a new subscription test, too still not getting any emails.

EDIT: not needed now, my Junk folder has suddenly been populated with notifications, looks like the email providers are picking up on the server/IP change.

Reply | Quote

Wow, fantastik indeed! Super fast here.

Reply | Quote

Recently Active Topics are not updating:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/view/topics-freshness/

ADDED: when logged out? When I logged in, topic freshness was updated.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

1 user thanked author for this post.

Microfix

Reply | Quote

Very nice indeed. I bet upgrading that server running Windows for Workgroups probably helped too.

Red Ruffnsore

Reply | Quote

Time for delivery of the base HTML page is now down to between a small fraction of a second for young threads like this one to a little over 1 second for big pages that were yesterday taking between 6 and 30 seconds.

This could be good.

-Noel

3 users thanked author for this post.

SueW, woody, satrow

Reply | Quote

have not received email notifications

Reply | Quote

Keep checking your email Spam/Junk folder, I’ve just had a bunch of notifications clear my provider’s system into my Spam folder after several days without anything from here.

Reply | Quote

Fast? Yes.

As it always happens, there are details that still need to be fixed, but you are already close to full user friendliness.

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

Reply | Quote

Accessing the pages is certainly faster – a lot faster – while doing anything more such as hitting the “submit” button still seems slow.

Refreshing the old home page on my Samsung phone has now brought up the current home page, whereas a day or two ago it did not unless I was logged in.

EDIT: As I think others have noted, the slow functions seem to speed up the longer you’re on the site. The first comment I submitted on another thread was very slow, this next one a  minute or two later was instant. The threads were about the same length.

Reply | Quote

Very nice, speedy now. CONGRATS and THANK YOU!

Group B HP Pavilion-dv6 Win7x64 Home Premium-Intel Core i5-3210M CPU

Reply | Quote

I entered this page just now from the AskWoody.com Home Page…

0.1 seconds to request

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/a-few-improvements-at-askwoody

(note, no trailing slash) then get a response that “the page has permanently moved”, which then causes the next request immediately.

1.4 seconds to request

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/a-few-improvements-at-askwoody/

to get the base HTML page. This will vary in time per server power/load and no doubt get longer and longer as more and more posts are added and the data has to be retrieved from multiple database entries.

In the next 0.2 seconds:

• 7 style sheets are loaded.
• 25 Javascript files loaded, totaling (by a quick estimate) about 784 kBytes of source code.

For the next about 0.5 seconds nothing more is requested. I presume the browser is compiling the scripts that make up the page and getting them running.

This takes us to about 2.18 seconds after the click to follow the link, and so far nothing has shown in the browser.

0.1 seconds to request a number of small graphics files, some of which make up the page and some of which are from secure.gravatar.com. All responses returned within 0.01 seconds with status “304”, which means “your local cached copy is good”.

0.1 seconds another batch of small graphics files is requested, virtually all from secure.gravatar.com and again all are responded to in under 10ms with “your local cached copy is good” status.

0.1 seconds the last batch of small graphics files, most from secure.gravatar.com.

I saw the page get displayed after all the above occurred, at about 2.5 seconds after I clicked the link.

In summary, my observations imply:

That first round-trip redirection requiring 0.1 second could be saved by changing the coding of the site. 0.1 second by itself doesn’t sound like much, but it adds to the subsequent delays – and it will grow longer depending on an individual’s internet connection and the latency time to whatever server is responding.

The time that the server spends preparing data for the base HTML layout is really all in the one big chunk up front, and when it’s tuned up right and firing on all cylinders that’s about a second or a second and a half. When things go wrong this starts to take a long time – I’ve measured 30 seconds or longer (before the current “fix” by the developers), and that’s what people really notice.

The “processing time”, while the browser is crunching away in one big chunk and several small ones, totals about 0.8 seconds. This is dependent on the complexity of the client programming in the HTML page. In my case there are a fair number of things that aren’t run, or even requested, because through several means (e.g., uBlock Origin) I’ve blocked ads, tracking, etc. that would deliver scripts of their own, and make further requests. And this “processing time” will vary further depending on the browser and the power of the computer (I have a pretty fast one). In my opinion the page could be less complex. I blocked, for example, a “Font-Awesome” CSS entirely and saw no visible difference.

Because I have a good fiber optic internet connection with very low latency, the almost 50 requests for small graphics from secure.gravatar.com are being resolved for me in just a few milliseconds – 3 or 4 to be precise. That won’t be true for everyone. If your latency to request data from secure.gravatar.com is significantly longer, this will have a bearing on how quickly your pages fill in.

An overall 2-1/2 second response time is decent and probably acceptable, especially for a fairly complex site that delivers long pages. But I don’t consider it especially interactive – that would take a soup-to-nuts click response more in the realm of about 1 second. I’ve seen other sites respond that quickly.

-Noel

2 users thanked author for this post.

satrow, MrBrian

Reply | Quote

When testing similar using a 2009 Atom Netbook prior to the ‘fix’, your 30+ seconds was 60-75 seconds for the first chunk of data to be returned, since the ‘fix’ full pages were served in the 4-8 seconds ballpark, though I didn’t check any of the really long pages that used to be very slow or trigger timeouts/504s/Database errors.

Reply | Quote

It’s so much faster now that it’s no longer a chore to navigate the site and comment. Thank you once more for providing us this most valuable of services in our hour of need! (^_^)

Reply | Quote

satrow wrote:

Keep checking your email Spam/Junk folder, I’ve just had a bunch of notifications clear my provider’s system into my Spam folder after several days without anything from here.

…my Outlook Mail web account has no AskWoody email notifications in Spam/Junk folder nor Inbox folder.   I’m Subscribed to Forums and Topics.

Thanks

Reply | Quote

Did you look at the spam/trash folder on your ISP? It might have caugut it before it got to Outlook on your PC.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, satrow

Reply | Quote

I’m pretty sure there was a block in place by the security for the ISPs/email providers; when my mail initially began to be restored, it was already classed as Junk/Spam, I marked that first batch as Not Spam and since then the emails that have been delivered from AskWoody have been normal.

Note that my emails (I use non-ISP webmail) have been sporadically delivered since the outage, possibly still blocked or delayed by one of the alt. mail servers of my provider; I had a batch come through about 11 hours ago but none since then.

Reply | Quote

“The Patch Lady” Bradley’s bandaid logo appears on her blog posts, but Woody’s avatar does not appear on his blog posts.

Now that there are two voices of reason to follow, those visual indicators would make reading easier.

(Sorry. This post is probably about a feature, not a site bug; but you asked about problems and I got to thinking…) Scary, idn’t it?)

Reply | Quote

Current posts are not shown unless logged into the site.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

2 users thanked author for this post.

Purg2

Reply | Quote

When logged out, cannot view posts that are still “editable.”

When logged in, can view all posts.

Is anyone else noticing this situation?

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cascadian

Reply | Quote

Yes, but you are the first one to word it in quite that way, geekdom. And I wonder if that is significant.

What I mean is that many have noted recent comments are not displayed when viewing while logged out. It has been a subject of more and sometimes less prominence at least as far back as the SEP~OCT2017 server difficulties. It is often discussed as a cache issue with a mix of explanations and fixes.

I have never been quite sure of the actual time allotted for editing an authored post. Also, I do not know if the cache lag time is a similar value. They may be unrelated, and only a coincidence in your observation. Or your viewpoint may be the link that explains what many have commented on before. It may even be the designed purpose of offering an edit delay.

Whether it is significant or not, I’m glad to have read a new possibility. Thank you.

2 users thanked author for this post.

geekdom, columbia2011

Reply | Quote

geekdom wrote:

When logged out, cannot view posts that are still “editable.” When logged in, can view all posts. Is anyone else noticing this situation?

Precisely why I made a dedicated topic.  In hopes of increasing visibility & awareness of the issue.

Anonymous Viewing Not Showing Current Information

It is still happening consistently.  Perhaps it’s a case of unavailable finances to run down the rabbit hole on this one.  Hard telling.

Win 8.1 (home & pro) Group B, W10/11 Avoider, Linux Dabbler

Reply | Quote