Our new home - post your opinions here

[Jon]

I could but I prefer no underlines, as was the designers choice.

 

[AccessBlaster]

You could put the under line in yourself like > Yahoo I kinda like the new look Yahoo

 

[Jon]

I've just tweaked the Latest Posts widget to show the last 7 posts, up from 5. Currently thinking about wiping out the Staff online widget. Whilst it looks good, I am not sure it helps users much.

 

[Jon]

I'm testing caching again today, so if things go a bit funny, you know its because I'm no good at this tech stuff!

 

[moke123]

@Jon
Still cant get the avatar right. I waited over 12 hrs. Tried it again and it reverted back to the original avatar.
Just tried again and still the original avatar shows up

 

[Jon]

That is odd. I've no idea what is causing that. All I can suggest is that eventually some kind of cache will clear itself. (I hope.)

 

[Jon]

It looks like this caching thing has defeated me. I've spent all day on it, made little progress, and now feel guilty from not having much output for the day. I've found a guy in London who has 15 years experience in Linux Administration and I will possibly pay for some consultation with them, and to get them to do some work. Otherwise, I will be stuck in quicksand forever.

 

[Galaxiom]

Do the avatars have to all be round?

 

[Minty]

Do the avatars have to all be round?

It would appear so, I'm slightly disappointed I can't make mine transparent background?

 

[Jon]

I am back working on the cache again. Checked with the Linux engineer and I don't think I need him for his optimisation service, since I get charged full price for the tune up, even though many parts of the tune-up checklist is already done. So, back to DIY!

 

[Jon]

I am also looking into a DNS service that a) has the fastest dns speed in the industry, and b) 18 pops around the world, which means when the dns server is closer to you, there is slightly less lag. I hope this adds slightly to site speed. It is a small improvement but lots of small improvements add up!

Here are the locations of all the pops (point of presence).

 

[Jon]

Ok, I've checked the stats back from 2019 to now. I've managed to halve the page load time after the recent changes here. Hopefully that provides a bit of a nicer experience for you guys. There is nothing more frustrating than hanging around for the page to load. Still working on the caching, as the solutions are coming in drip by drip at a slow pace. Will get there eventually!

 

[Jon]

Just got the cache working. Googles speed checker says this:

I can't get much better than that!!

 

[MajP]

The more I use it the more I like it. The bookmark feature is great. Now when someone asks a question, and I know it has already been answered somewhere I can quickly post the link. This would have been a pain in the old format. On my end it is super fast.

 

[Jon]

@MajP As a regular poster and great contributor, I value your opinion. I'm pleased you like the bookmark feature. When I first saw it, I thought there are many innovative ways you can use it. e.g. tagging things "todo", "to research" and so on. Does the extra speed make things more enjoyable, or did the old site seem similar in speed? What kind of internet connection speed do you have?

 

[MajP]

Not that I would every use this site at work, because I should be working, but with the old site and our firewall the site was unusable. Now it is fast, and thus my work productivity is decreasing. So if I get fired it is your fault. In truth all of your speed tweaks were unnoticeable on my end. It was fast on my end once it was deployed. The additional speed tweaks were not really noticeable because it was fast already.

 

[Jon]

And thus my work productivity is decreasing

You're not the only one!

There is the law of diminishing returns kicking in. The recent cache will affect guests more, although it reduces the load on the server too, which affects logged in members during busy times. If guests like our zippy site, they are more likely to come back or join. If Google likes the speed, it might reward us with higher rankings.

 

[Minty]

I'd agree with MajP once the upgrade was done the whole site was lightning fast at work, (100Mb fibre) and Home (60MB Fibre).
If I think I'm seeing any difference in speed I think it's a placebo effect.

 

[Jon]

So nice to have a fast connection. I was on 10mb until about 6 months ago. Now it is about 34mb.

When we are dieting, we look in the mirror each day and it looks like nothing is happening. Six months later, this happens: (it is meant to represent very thin, not dead!)

The accumulation of small changes over time lead to a profound difference in the end. Although if you are already starting from fast, then that is like starting your diet while underweight!

Edit: I did a poll and the feedback said the site was fast, not super quick. I don't know what the perception would be now. Might be the same, might have shifted, who knows!

 

[Jon]

If we consider the difference in tech between the old host and the new one, it explains a lot. The old host had 1 CPU. The new one has 4 CPUs and faster ones at that. The old host had 2.5GB RAM and the new one has 6GB RAM. I do not believe the old host was fairly allocating server resources, because quite often the site was reaaaaaal slllooooooow, even though the number of visitors at that time was low. Other times, it was zippier despite the visitor count being high.

The new host probably has faster SSD drives and more recent motherboards - less bottlenecks to hold you back. Their pipe to the internet is likely to be a lot fatter too.

I am so pleased I made the move. It provides a nice stable platform for many years ahead. No more headaches!