# "features" right-hand sidebars



## CapnZapp (Jan 10, 2015)

Hello,

I browsed the faq's as well as searching them to no avail, so here goes:

Is there any information regarding the "features" sidebars to the right? I'm talking about:  

Headlines!
New Fan Content!
Hot topics of the Week
Advertisement
Subscriber News

Specifically, *is there any way to turn them off?*

They are incredibly work heavy, turning an otherwise reasonably zippy site (yay!) into a cumbersome bogged-down experience. I haven't done any time measurements, but I would say that easily more than half the loading time whenever I click a new forum page is waiting for these sidebars. Probably more.

<rant>Sadly, this makes ENWorld join the ever-growing ranks of sites which push unwanted and often tangential content onto you, often making the page fetch heavy data and ui elements from several unrelated sites, including adware and social spams sites; despite how this can severely degrade the actual experience of the visit.</rant>

Of course, I can and will disable the elements myself, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to 
1) tell the staff these things are painful 
and 
2) ask if anyone thought to make it possible to shut them down?

Thanks

PS. And oh, please don't tell me I can click the little icon in the top-right corner of each "feature". That does not help: while it does hide the information, *it still loads first*, and thus does not help in making my visit experience feel any faster.


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## Morrus (Jan 10, 2015)

You can turn them off with a subscription.  I'm sorry to hear you find the content tangential and unwanted; for me it's relevant and useful.  I'm not trying to "push" anything on you; merely to design a layout which displays the latest site content.  

I'm not clear what unrelated sites you're referring to?  That all comes from EN World, except the ad.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 10, 2015)

Morrus said:


> You can turn them off with a subscription.



Thank you for a speedy reply.

Just to be clear: I know I included the "advertisement" sidebar in my list, but I know and respect that this isn't possible to turn off (without pay membership).

I was wondering about the other sidebars, the ones showing purely EN World stuff.

And to be super clear; when you say "turn off", do you really mean turn off, as in "doesn't load at all, no framework, no divider, no nothing" as opposed to "hiding" the info (which, as I explain above) doesn't help me since it's primarily speed I'm after, not screen estate.



Morrus said:


> I'm sorry to hear you find the content tangential and unwanted; for me it's relevant and useful.  I'm not trying to "push" anything on you; merely to design a layout which displays the latest site content.



Well, I realize the info is useful to some. 

And to be honest, if those sidebars came with zero speed penalty, I would probably think so too.

However, since surfing with the entire sidebar element thingy turned off is much MUCH quicker to load each page (reading a thread does mean loading a new page pretty frequently), well, for me the cost-benefit ratio doesn't pay off. 

I simply don't need the site telling me about latest news etc on every single page load. If I want headlines, I visit the main page. If I want specific rpg discussion, I visit specific discussion threads. Call me old fashioned  



Morrus said:


> I'm not clear what unrelated sites you're referring to?  That all comes from EN World, except the ad.



I don't remember all calls as they go by, but ads, google analytics, social buttons, "feed Mikle" whatever that is, facebook, as well as a whole bunch of loading to fill those headlines; well I'd guess half a dozen external sites at least. But I could be wrong; after all, it's your site  All that adds up to at least a whole second's unneeded and unwanted wait. 

Again thanks.

Best regards,
Zapp


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## Rune (Jan 12, 2015)

Morrus said:


> You can turn them off with a subscription.




How, specifically?


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## Morrus (Jan 12, 2015)

Rune said:


> How, specifically?




Little right pointing arrow which closes it.


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## Rune (Jan 12, 2015)

Ah, that. I was (like the OP) looking for a way to actually disable them, instead of just hiding them. Just a minor thing, for me, though.


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## Umbran (Jan 13, 2015)

A whole second?  This will add up to an entire minute of your day over the course of 60 pages, right?

How long does it take you to read an entire page, or write a post?  How is that single second not negligible compared to the time actually interacting with the content?

I'm not being sarcastic with the question.  I would honestly like to know how that one second becomes meaningful to your site experience.


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## SkidAce (Jan 13, 2015)

Different things annoy different folks, and sometimes the little things poke just so after repetition.

That said..usually the site is fast enough that I don't notice any lag.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 17, 2015)

Umbran said:


> A whole second?  This will add up to an entire minute of your day over the course of 60 pages, right?
> 
> How long does it take you to read an entire page, or write a post?  How is that single second not negligible compared to the time actually interacting with the content?
> 
> I'm not being sarcastic with the question.  I would honestly like to know how that one second becomes meaningful to your site experience.



Right now, I would say the site is at its snappiest (for me). Loading a page takes roughly six seconds, and my best guesstimate is that about one of those seconds is spent on waiting for "mikle", "static facebook" and a few other calls I haven't been able to shut down. This is still a vast improvement.

This is very much a best case: At the opposite end, I'm reading the site from my phone, where I can't install any of this. Loading each page takes easily 15-18 seconds, more than half seemingly waiting for the sidebars to fill after the actual content has already been loaded.

In-between would be accessing the site in the evenings (my time, it's morning now). 

I was polite when I didn't bring up "exact" numbers (I'm afraid it's all guesstimates, but still), and I was polite when I didn't want to spell out how absolutely vital it is for my general internet experience to be able to outright deny you and other sites the possibility to push unwanted crap onto my browser.

I'm trying not to be sarcastic here. I came here honestly trying to make it clear to you that you have a serious bloat issue. Not everyone is tech savvy enough to fix this themselves. But more importantly, nobody should need to be. I guess I need to spell this out for you.

You should have tested your own design and arrived at the conclusion "there really needs to be a way to shut down this extra information for times when you don't need it, for times when you have a slow internet connection, when you're stick at an old computer, et cetera".

Just hiding it is a poor man's design solution. Those little arrows do very little in my opinion: the screen estate is still wasted (they replace the feed bars with empty space, rather than something useful, like, say, a wider forum reading area), and they certainly don't cut off the web requests to actually speed up the page loading. 

Thank you for reading, Umbran. I sincerely hope you appreciate me being direct and forthcoming, just like you.


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## Umbran (Jan 18, 2015)

The thing is, as I already noted the pages take about three seconds for me, and it isn't like I am loading any less than you are.

Moreover, you speak of the design as if Morrus is a software engineer, and coded it all himself, or had it all coded specially for this use, as opposed to using mostly stock functionality.

While Morrus may correct me, telling us there is a bloat problem in the forum software is kind of like complaining to an organization that theMS Word they use is bloated. Maybe, but rewiting it really isn't an option.


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## Morrus (Jan 18, 2015)

Yeah, I have no way to alter the way the vBulletin 4 sidebar works. I just installed the software; I don't write it.

I'm given to understand vBulletin 5 works a little differently, but that software is generally regarded as being pretty awful in most other areas.

We are having some slowdown issues at the moment, generally due to the database and very high levels of traffic.


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## Lanefan (Jan 20, 2015)

Umbran said:


> The thing is, as I already noted the pages take about three seconds for me, and it isn't like I am loading any less than you are.



It's fairly quick for me on this particular machine using IE, on another slightly older machine (but using a newer IE version, I think) at work it's a bit slower but not bad, and on a third - much older - machine (which is the one I still use for most things other than browsing) the site basically won't load at all; and nor will most others.

So, it could depend on browser if your hardware isn't antique.  [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] - what browser and-or machine are you using?

Lanefan


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