I don't know about everyone else, but I would definetly spend more time on the LiveModern.com web site - read more, post more, etc. if it was faster. I rarely get a page that loads faster than 5 seconds and sometimes when I post it can take 15 seconds to reload the page.

I am on a 6 mbps DSL at my house and use a number of other message boards (most of them are vBulletin) and they typically page loads under 1 second.

Live Modern is a great site to exchange ideas and learn. It is just to painfully slow to spend a lot of time on it.

Jason,

I assume that you are logged in when you are experiencing slowness with the site, which is a documented problem. We are working on it. It is likely not related to the server, per se (CPU power, RAM, etc), but probably the software. As such, we will be upgrading the software this summer, but may also upgrade components of the server. But, yes, it is a problem. 

The advertising revenues that we are able to generate to date are modest, and we'll look to ways to increasing them to expedite the upgrade process.

Marshall

Actually that is correct. I logged out of the site and the speed was great. Hopefully the update will fix this.

Might be a catch-22...you won't get more ad revenue until the site is faster. Site won't be faster until you get more ad revenue.

Haven't been around in a while, but yea, seems to be back to the same ol' sluggishness.

Might be time to dump plone--at least for the discussion forums. It just doesn't seem cut out for it.

Might be a catch-22...you won't get more ad revenue until the site is faster. Site won't be faster until you get more ad revenue.

Haven't been around in a while, but yea, seems to be back to the same ol' sluggishness.

Might be time to dump plone--at least for the discussion forums. It just doesn't seem cut out for it.

ALso, just got this error when trying to post:

---------

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request POST /forums/website/277215645/307357958/add_comment_form.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

These problems are probably related to DNS issues that we are clearing up.

MArshall

Marshall,

I doubt it would be DNS. If DNS were the problem, people wouldn't be able to get to the site in the first place. I think the errors have to do with the Ploneboard application and/or SQL database.

I have run some vBulletin sites in the past and they are lighting fast. That is not to say Ploneboard is slow - I have been on their site and demod their application and it is pretty quick. If I were a betting man I would say there is something wrong with the SQL query or if you haven't modified it from the "stock" query it could be the hardware you are running on (i.e. not enough RAM or CPU horsepower).

Actually, all content types on the site are too slow if you are logged in. If you are not logged in, Ploneboard is as fast as any other content type (blogs, news items, etc.).

We're still exploring the DNS problems, mainly because of a network change we made a while back. There are other network options that we are exploring as well. I hope we can make the logged in experience much better this month.

MArshall

Sarah,

I can't read your writing. But I know enough that it sure looks like you are spamming our site. If you have something relevant to say, without the URL, you're quite welcome. Otherwise, you are treading on thin ice.

Marshall

Yes. She has misspelt the url, which results in a dead link and a lower google page rank for our site.

I think we've solved some problems with the site upgrade. The site seems much faster, which means that we're getting many more forum posts. Still a few tricks to apply, but we're going in the right direction.

MArshall

Hmmm . .  still seems slow to me. I just tried a couple of forum pages. It pauses for about 3 to 5 seconds before it even gets to the page load. The page load speed is fine. It feels like the database server is the drag.

Jason,

Were you logged in when you tried those pages?

MArshall

Marshall - I was logged in when I viewed the pages. I know it goes faster if I am not logged in, but the site shouldn't slower because I am logged in (I know this one is, but it shouldn't be).

As I suspected. The problem is that we can't easily cache all pages for logged in members all the time, because there are so many pages and so many members. 

We're looking at ways to minimize the wait time, and until we do the same rule applies: only log in if you want to add content. We are able to cache almost all pages for visitors who are not logged in.

Marshall

You shouldn't have to cache pages for logged in members. If this is the only way you can get performance, there is something else wrong. I have used other Plone sites in the past that are really fast. Again I suspect it is the database server, database index, or other related database item. I have worked on some large scale websites that handled millions of unqiues a month. When we had performance problems, 98% of the time it had to do with the database stored procedures, indexes, or database architecture. Very rarely it had to do with not enough hardware.

This has been a problem for a long time. I suspect alot of people (myself included) don't participate in the community as they used to because it is too painful to wait 10 secs everytime you want to look at a page. Or log out and log in all the time.

I would spend a couple thousand to get a Plone expert / database expert to track down the problem. You will get it back in increased page views / ad revenue over time and increase the participation of the community. I would love to participate more, but it takes too long.

Jason,

I've had the database checked by experts (which is object oriented, not SQL), and they can't find any obvious problems, except for its size. There are ways that we can reduce its size (putting images on the filesystem), and we'll explore those over the next few weeks.

One thing we could do right away, is to open up the forums to allow you to add comments without logging in. There are some trade-offs, but the upside is that speed is much faster if you are not logged in. We'll chart this course and implement if the downsides are solvable (i.e., preventing spam).

Marshall