Experiencing site difficulties

While I can load the other pages, I cannot load http://www.csscreator.com/forum
(Most of the time I have a blank page and I sometimes have a MySQL error or a message about wrong login/password on localhost)

yeah I think that's my problem as well. That's what I have as one of my starting pages and often it just remains blank.

Same here in fact, also when loggin in the page appears to update but I am still not shown as online.

Just noticed this Googlebot (114) There must be a way to restrict multiple visits at the same time surely, it's making the site really dificult and slow to use.

Hi Guy's
Usually you get a blank page when the server can't keep up with demand. Give the poor server a break he has been up for 327 days without sleep. Occasonally he nods off and services need restarting.
There are also other sites on this server and processes that run to manage these sites that sometimes take up a lot of resources.
I have also been having a minor annoyance with someone attempting a dos attack.
Googlebot is one of the many bots that don't follow the time delay setting in robots.txt.

I have a cache system running so that when you are not logged in you see a cached version of the page. Then when you login you get the uncached version. Unfortunately you need to login then refresh or go to another page before you show up as logged in.

I have just blocked out a Russian ip range that was sucking down a lot of pages.
Not really sure what they are after.

all your bases are belong to us

Seriously though, I've been having the same problems as above. It's only been since the new layout. For me, it's unusable and that's a crying shame. This was my favorite site - I was on here a couple of hours a day. Now I'm lucky to get an hour a week. I know you've put in a tremendous amount of time and effort both before and after the change, and I thank you for that. Hopefully things will improve so I can return to my previous viewing (and maybe reach guru status).

My sentiments

entirely.

The site

is now just

so

slow

that for me

it is

no longer

any

fun.

Sorry

That post just took about a minute to action (and it closed up all my huge spaces). I shall submit this post but will probably be in bed and asleep before it finishes and displays the page again!

Hi Guy's,
I experience occasional problems but most of the time I can view or post content without problems.
It may be to do with the time difference as most of my site visits would be while you guys sleep.
The server is also set up to do updates, backups etcetera while I sleep.
I will look at changing the time these things run to see if that helps.

Sorry but I have to agree with Wolfcry - it's an enormous shame as this is undoubtably the best forum that I've been to with regards the sheer range of knowledge available.

I still visit, but I only go further than the home page if there's a relevant post in the active topics list. I still find it slow and difficult to actually reach the main forum list (and I'm logged in permanently).

I find the site quite useable as long as I avoid the "CSS Forum" link. That particular page seems to time out most of the time.

So I use "recent posts" instead and it works fine as far as I can tell.

There are times when it seems faster and times when its so slow - but I wouldn't say its ever as responsive as the old forums.

I don't have any stats to back this up, but I think the number of new questions posted is way down on what it used to be.

I will look at what I can do to lighten the load on the forum and posting pages.

Agree with the other guys. I used to post here fairly often but rarely visit. I find it difficult to move around and find what the new posts are. That's sad because I felt like this was home base for the smartest guys on the web as we ventured out to save the world from bad code.

Yeah I have the same about looking at where a post starts and where it ends. I think it's something I need to get used to, but it's hard to get used to it when it's not working that smooth.

I don't know who handles the code, but I'd gladly take a look at it to see if there are some performance issues. I'd recommend a zip-file with the files instead of giving me passwords to the server.

On what kind of server and bandwidth is this site hosted? What is the visitorcount and traffic generated a day?

I have access to a high-performance-high-bandwidth server. Depending on what it is you'd require, there might be something we can work out so the overall site experience would improve. Like I said, I don't know who to contact on this matter, so I'll just ask him (or her perhaps!) to contact me.

Have a few comments on the site... don't kill me guys, just some suggestions/comments!

1. definately alot less messages posted on here than before.
Maybe cause forums are slower people are going to other avenues?
not sure whats cuasing it, from csscreator.com to forum it takes me 23.8seconds (wowie zowie?!). and from forum to CSS Layouts, it takes another 4.5seconds.
its sad cause i find this the best site for CSS. I posted soemthing in 'CSS Layouts' 1 day ago, yet only 2 other posted new questions in that amount of time, that forum used to be filled with fresh stuff to keep you busy?

2. theres some stuff about the new layout that i like, some stuff i dont.
a. the forums only show last 10 posts, 'CSS Layouts' forum only 7 since 3 of those 10 are stickies... I'd prefer 15-25, or allow user to set a preference up to a certain max number like 25.
b. when I post code, it doesnt convert the tabs and spaces (at least when i paste), into their equivalent htmlspecialchars so no indentation.
c. not sure entirely about the layout for a thread.
the thumbail pictures are too big, id like to see half that size, cause that header part seems too big to my eyes compared to comment portion and that image seems to be the culprit. also the borders only on the top throw me off for some reason. i like when a message is completely contained by a border, but thats just me.

Lets get this board back to full power,
army

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.
I have bumped up the number of forum topics shown on a page to 25.
When I get a chance I will look into adding more contrast so that posts can be easily distinguished.
I am also investigating a new server this one is getting a bit on the old side now.
These and other suggestions will be looked at as soon as I have a chance.
I am really busy at the moment.

Maybe it's me but all of a sudden the forum seems a lot faster. I can get to the list of fora from the front page using the CSS forums link in under a second where a few days ago it was taking 10 seconds and then often failing completely.

Ok - slightly odd.

I typed out my previous post and when I hit submit it took about 20 seconds, then eventually timed out - but the post is actually there.

When I tried to look at the forums again, it was back to it's old slow ways.

Yeah well that's called tempting fate Helena

This link took 47 sec to complete last one 113 secs that aint funny and a complete breakdown trying to edit a long post with total lack of response.

edit/Well I beat you on posting time 2 mins 16 secs and then unable to return to url

I've been having a lot of trouble getting to the forum page as well... it just times out every single time. Unfortunately with the layout changed, I've yet to figure out how to get into a desired area to post a question (since I can't get to the forum page to find my way from there). It's a bit of a bummer, since I need help with something I've been struggling with for quite a while now, but so far have been unable to get to a spot (css layouts) where I can post my question.

And I wonder where my avatar-image-thingie went? It's loaded into my profile, but previewing my comment just showed me the generic "new" image. Very odd.

As always, I appreciate the efforts of everyone that works on this site. Each of you are technical blessings to someone like myself. I really hope that these site problems are able to be sorted out soon so that I can get back to learning and helping in return whenever I can. In the meantime, I'll remain patient and grateful for all efforts that you offer.

You can try taking a circuitous route by say selecting a topic from the active topics list on the right then checking the top right of the page for the breadcrumb trail hopefully you will be able to click on the 'ask about discuss' link that should take you to the forum group containing 'CSS Layouts'

Hugo.

I have been getting a lot of feedback via email, pm, feedback form and topics like this one about the slow response and bad forum design.
I am listening or reading at least, and I will be doing something about it but please go easy on me.
I used to get similar coments about the old site, and although I prefer this new one I can see that the bulk of the community prefer the old forums.
So I am looking at redsigning the forum to look and act more like the old one and upgrading the server.
By the way this server is over three years old now and has been up for 341 days. Now moving to a new server will take time and money and unfortunately I am short of both of those at the moment.

Please don't think that we're having a go at you - I think we all know or possibly have an inkling of how much time and effort you put into this place and we're all grateful.

Certainly on my part, reporting issues like slowness etc are more a case of trying to give you more information to help you get it all working how you want it.

Given that the phpBB forum was usually plenty fast enough and followed all the standard forum interface conventions, would it be too much of an insult to suggest that you switch to a proper forum application for this forum? I mean like switching back to phpBB or the vastly superior, cleaner and leaner SMF system, or one of many others that are built for the purpose (CSS-P or not)?

This drupal blogging system is just not cut out for the job of a small forum, let alone an internationally renowned one that gets as many visitors as this used to! You could still use the drupal CMS for your main site, but linking to a proper forum as a sub-site with links back to the drupal site.

I know you run all this from the goodness of your heart; I know you've already spent countless hours trying to improve this system; and I really, really don't want to offend you Tony, but this new forum is nowhere near up to the job. It's not a usable system. Even if you sort out the speed problems, it's still horrible to use. It's a blogging system, not a forum system and it's blogging well driving me and others like me away in despair!

I'm sorry to be so brutally frank to someone so selfless; but I hate to see something so good go to ruin

Try SMF - it's really very good you know, and a breeze to migrate from phpBB if you've still got a db copy from the day you switched (even if it means losing everything new since)

csscr (or tony? is it?), I think everyone on this forum is willing to help and I think most of the ones who were loyal on the old forum will stay loyal until the issues are fixed.

For as far as I can tell, a newly released project always has some minorities and bugs and the like. It takes time to get them all out. We'll wait and try to help you where we can.

I assume the layout is just something we need to get used to.

I echo roytheboy's comments... don't know about using any other system, but it certainly appears the current one is just not up to the task as compared to the old one. Why that is I don't know. I appreciate the amount of work that went in and continues to go into this new interface, but it really is not functioning in a manner that is community friendly. I can live with the new design, without some of the bells and whistles of the old forum etc; but really hope the issues with speed, blank pages etc can be solved... at the moment this forum is just not as enjoyable an experience as it has been in the past. Thanks for all you do and please keep it up.

One way or another, Tony, we all know you'll get this forum up to speed. The amount of time and energy that you dedicate to this forum is so hugely appreciated by so many people. Some can offer helpful ideas (as shown above) and the rest of us can offer our patience and support (also shown by many).

This forum is an absolute gift to those of us who are trying hard to learn the ropes of CSS. Thank you for all of your hard work.

Thanks for your support, and suggestions.
I really don't want to manage and maintain two systems so I will be working to improve the user experience with the current system. In the forum sections I will remove the right side boxes and re-style the content so that it looks more like the old forum.
I will also get another more powerful server set up.

Yes, csscr and Tony are the same person, csscr is my administration account.

Just wondering if anyone noticed an improvement since I optimized the dayabase about this time yesterday.
Pages seem to be loading slightly faster.

It seems faster for me today - it usually takes at least 20 seconds to reach the main forum page if it appears at all. Today it's taking just a few seconds for me anyway.

Seems MUCH zipper today, thanks

Yes, it does. I managed to make two posts in under three minutes

The weekends aren't normally busy, the true test will be during the week at times when both uk/europe and north america are active.

certainly feels faster, even for a weekend, but as Chris says the proof of the pudding will be tomorrow onwards, but things bode well methinks.

Well it's Tuesday and... weeeeee! Still much faster!

It's back to being a usable forum again - thank you for your perseverance Tony.

(edit: it's still quite slow between the point of clicking "post comment"and the actual post appearing)

That Hellsbells , never happy. You just can't please some folk.

If it's not zipping along at Mach 2.0 , then it's a slug, suppose she'll be complaining that the sidewinders aren't armed next.

Oh spell checks tediously slow

I'm still looking at the improvements mentioned before, new server and I will style it more like a forum.
You will all be lost again once that happens.

I will also try and improve the speed of posting if I can.
I just need time to get it all organised.

I have just turned off the word filter to see if it makes any difference to the posting speed.

What so you mean I can say *beep* and *beep* and even *beep* *beep* *beep*

TBH I don't find the posting speed that slow there's a delay but somewhat expected with things like the word filter and the other main filters at work.

Edit/ I take all of the above back that was a very slow response just then, @~ 35 secs

The improvements are holding up well. I still wouldn't call it zippy, but the speed is now high enough, so its reasonable to wait for a response rather than ducking out to some other location.

Just use Firefox 2.0 beta, comes with it's own built-in spellchecker

Nah don't do beta, I'm more of a alpha male

Speed is definitely holding up whatever you did Tony certainly improved matters.

I thought alpha was even earlier than beta, meaning alpha is even buggier than beta. I could be wrong.

Anyway, I'd say just kill the spellchecker, if m$ word can't do it perfectly right I doubt a web-application can. It's way too server intensive since you probably have to explode the words on spaces and compare them with a sort of database somewhere. Unless you'd have all the words downloaded to the local machine and make it a client side application. You can still keep in the word-banner so people won't be screaming insulting things plus this is a one-time action and only a few words have to be found making it less server intensive.

Furthermore.. I'm not sure about this but it seems the pages are saved as a html file. So everytime something is altered (a new post, or even recalculating last post-data perhaps), a new html file needs to be created. Very server intensive. It would be better to get that straight out of the database and presenting it instead of getting it out of the database, writing it in an HTML file, and then presenting it. Again, I don't know for sure if this is how it's handled right now.

I suggest to only retrieve the info you need from the database (only post ID instead of all the data when all you need is the ID for example), and limit the query to make sure it doesn't keep searching any further if you only need one record.

I suggest for the time being you use microtime (in PHP) to set a script starttime and endtime and calculate the time your server needed to create a page. You could paste it underneath every page for your own info, or maybe only show it when user is CSSCR so you won't 'bother' other users. I'd love to see it though

[edit]
and of course, limitting required page switches is a good thing to do as well. I often check recent topics and my recent topics, but when I'm in a topic I have to click css forum first, followed by the link I'm looking for, which means 2 rounds of intensive searches. Once navigation is flawless, you decrease the pageloads.

all the things on the sides should be cached by a cronjob every 3-5 minutes I'd say, this decreases time taken per page load as well and still keeps the user quite active (3-5 minutes is pretty decent. once the forum is a lot more active you could think about decreasing this amount to maybe 1-2 minutes).

I'd suggest setting a target for links posted within signatures and post which would open up a new window. This way the user won't have to hold ctrl or shift (because I forget), and this means there doesn't have to be a new pageload when user clicks back.

Every pageload takes about 0.010+ (I think you can easily say 0.020 to 0.030, or maybe even more) seconds per user on a fast machine. There are 70 people online right now, meaning at least 0.700+ seconds to process if they'd all call a script at once. But like I said, put in the timestamps so you can see how long a page needs to load, this would give you a better estimate.

Desdinova, you're right about the alpha. There may (or may not be) and alpha version of Gran Paradiso (FF3).

I don't think you're right about files. Databases offer no guarantees of higher access speed over the file system - the fact that it has to go through the file system to access its own data should give a pretty big clue that there are a whole host of circumstances where file access will be much quicker than database access. Modern file systems like ReiserFS can be extremely quick, especially for accessing small files.

I don't think you're right about files. Databases offer no guarantees of higher access speed over the file system - the fact that it has to go through the file system to access its own data should give a pretty big clue that there are a whole host of circumstances where file access will be much quicker than database access. Modern file systems like ReiserFS can be extremely quick, especially for accessing small files.

I agree with you, but since a lot on these pages is very dynamic, they are updated a lot causing a lot of disk writing activity. I think it's only faster when content isn't updated every pageload (ie. amount of hours and minutes since last post).

It would be better to just display the last post its time, not recalculating the amount of elapsed time, so the page can be cached. same with the left and right columns. in that way, it could be faster indeed.

The Spellchecker relies uses another server not this one and your browser via ajax. If it takes too long don't use it.

I turned off caching a week or so ago to see if things would improve.
Caching in drupal works by feeding anonymous users a cached version of the page, and sending a dynamic page to logged in users. All cached pages are stored in the database they just use less or simpler select statements to call the page.
I will try turning the cache back on and see if it helps. The biggest improvement so far seems to have come from optimizing the database tables.

Here's one I've been meaning to mention for a while... since my name is so lengthy (Lambinastormtroopersuit), it won't fit into the left-hand column so my left hand column is dumped to the very bottom of the page. I always have to scroll to the bottom to access anything in that left-hand column.

Granted, this is a problem only someone like myself with such a tediously long name would encounter, but I'm unable to change it now (and would kind of prefer not to, as I'm rather attached to it). Maybe future users could be asked to limit their login name to a certain number of digits?

In the meantime though, I'm more concerned about my name throwing the layout of the page off for me. Is there any way to get around this, or will I always have to scroll to the bottom of every page to access the main stuff in the left-hand column? Perhaps you could make it do what it does in the posts, like this: Lambinastormtro...

Or what about the margin on the right? Could it be trimmed? I dunno.

Anything would be much more preferable than having to scroll all the time.

Any thoughts?

Hi Lambinastormtroopersuit,
Is it doing what you want now?
Were you talking about the who's online block?

One suggestion Lamb would be not to browse with IE6 but use a real browser or now that IE7 is final and released to upgrade as the same problem with width and height properties will not occur.

Tony have you got the htmlwrap filter installed ?
edit/ ah table forum section listings is breaking long words so guess it is

It isn't the "who's online" section (for some reason it works fine there)... it's once you log in and it shows your name in a nice little grey bar above "new forum topics". The name in the grey bar (with "my account", "my inbox", and "log out" beneath it) is where it throws things off.

Yeah, it appears to be an IE thing... no surprise there. The layout is still thrown off in IE but it works fine in Firefox. Well, I'll be happy to avoid IE just on principle ~ something I've become more inclined to do since learning CSS.

I'll also check which version of IE I'm using... I thought it was the new one, since I just reinstalled everything, but I'll double-check to be sure.