# Why is EN World so slow?



## airwalkrr (Apr 22, 2011)

I have visited many different forums over the years. I participate in several on a daily basis. And yet EN World has got to be the slowest site of its kind that I have ever visited. This isn't a client-side issue. I have high-speed internet. 16 Mbps should be plenty. Aside from that I've used EN World at dozens of other computers (friends, neighbors, libraries, etc.) and always experienced the same lag. This is a consistent problem. It ebbs and flows but its always been bad. If I could change one thing about the site, it would be to find a fix for the lag. If I make 10 posts in one day and have to wait 30-45 seconds in between each post for the screen to load again, that's over 5 minutes of my day wasted. Small potatoes you might say. But if you look at my post count you can see I have spent a lot of time here...waiting.

Is this because EN World is based overseas and I happen to live in the continental US? Is it some server issue? I have supported EN World over the years by purchasing some of their excellent PDF products (like War of the Burning Sky), and I would happily become a subscriber TODAY, if I knew this issue were to be resolved. But I can't see how a site as clearly as successful as EN World is continues to lag day in and day out.


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## Rhun (Apr 22, 2011)

I have the same issues, airwalkrr. Definitely not client side, since i have a Fast E connection here at the office, and no other site runs slow for me.

Interestingly, the site was running much faster yesterday for maybe an hour. And then it went back to the same 30+ second page load times.


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## Thanee (Apr 22, 2011)

Well, the site has a lot of visitors and I do not know what kind of hardware it is running on. That could be a potential problem.

Bye
Thanee


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## Umbran (Apr 22, 2011)

From the News Pages of EN World... 

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/304890-connection-issues.html


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## Morrus (Apr 22, 2011)

Yup, it's deliberate.  We make it slow especially to annoy you! 

According to Google Analytics, up until this week we've been whizzing along and have been pretty much consistently since our server upgrade.  We seem to be experiencing some issues over the last two or three days and we're trying to figure out what's going on - but it's ahrd to tell if that's somehting concerning just us, or the general network issues going on on the web this week (which brought some _much_ bigger sites than us down).

Trust me, we don't look at it and think up ways to make it slower!


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## airwalkrr (Apr 22, 2011)

Umbran said:


> From the News Pages of EN World...
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/304890-connection-issues.html



That might explain why the last two days have been abysmally terrible where load times are considered, but this is a chronic problem with EN World. There may be Chaos in the InternetsTM, but it seems to me that this is merely exacerbating a bigger problem. And like I said, I'd be happy to contribute more than buying pdfs. But right now, I'd like to know more about whether there is a solution to the problem first.


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## airwalkrr (Apr 22, 2011)

Morrus said:


> Yup, it's deliberate.  We make it slow especially to annoy you!
> 
> According to Google Analytics, up until this week we've been whizzing along and have been pretty much consistently since our server upgrade.  We seem to be experiencing some issues over the last two or three days and we're trying to figure out what's going on - but it's ahrd to tell if that's somehting concerning just us, or the general network issues going on on the web this week (which brought some _much_ bigger sites than us down).
> 
> Trust me, we don't look at it and think up ways to make it slower!



Sorry, Morrus, I didn't mean to imply that it was ineptitude on your part. I appreciate you are in a difficult position. It just seems that this is not an isolated incident. I've quit EN World briefly over it twice before, only coming back after acute problems seemed to have been addressed, if only partially. I love this site. I would like to love it more, but lag is annoying.


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## Relique du Madde (Apr 22, 2011)

Considering that several features were rolled out just recently, maybe they might have caused a screw to com loose somewhere.


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## Scott DeWar (Apr 23, 2011)

I have an idea. it is one of untrained skill, but an idea none theless. i noticed many blogs here are of spammers just poluting the waters with links. would this be a source of bandwidth hogging to cause this lag?


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## andargor (Apr 24, 2011)

Hey guys. I haven't been around for a while, but I'd just like to fourth (or fifth?) the performance issue. It is chronic, has been around for a while, and very intermittent. 

For example, I'm attempting to post right now, and it has been at it for a few minutes, but in another window I have managed to perform a few searches and post here.

Perhaps the way connections are handled by the hosting machine or the web server are at fault, it doesn't look like bandwidth issues.

My 2 coppers.


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## Rhun (Apr 25, 2011)

Scott DeWar said:


> I have an idea. it is one of untrained skill, but an idea none theless. i noticed many blogs here are of spammers just poluting the waters with links. would this be a source of bandwidth hogging to cause this lag?




I seriously doubt a few (or even many) blogs and spammers are bogging the site down. 

With that said, the site seems relatively speedy today.


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## nedjer (Apr 25, 2011)

There could be several dozen reasons why an sql database glued to complex forum software, plugins and a few millions records is a touch tardy at times. 

It's theoretically possible that the achievements icons could have caused a brief slowdown as they propagated across countless messages. Might be exacerbated by the caching software.

Something vaguely similar can happen with Wordpress related post plugins; which when quickly or poorly written can suck up memory and cpu cycles. Disabling the plugin and checking the difference in the memory and cpu stats usually does it. Must of binned dozens of otherwise cool plugins for this.

It's also likely to be at least in part between the site and the client when the slowdown's regionalised, i.e. I should have been getting slow access in Scotland too if it was specific to Morrus' server.

IT arrives with us all superstyled, but underneath it's mainly derelict fishing boats navigating treacherous reefs in huge waves. Much depends on the captain's skill.


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## airwalkrr (Apr 25, 2011)

If there is some option to view EN World forums in "simple mode" without all the achievements, avatars, signatures, etc. and if this in some way sped up EN World, I'd be all for it. Maybe I will try to muck with the settings and see if something like this exists.


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## nedjer (Apr 25, 2011)

airwalkrr said:


> If there is some option to view EN World forums in "simple mode" without all the achievements, avatars, signatures, etc. and if this in some way sped up EN World, I'd be all for it. Maybe I will try to muck with the settings and see if something like this exists.




switch off load images in your browser settings and everything will go double quicktime


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## RangerWickett (Apr 25, 2011)

Yeah, if the speed is at all related to fancy schmancy stuff, I'd love an option to not see those. Or just have them be on the person's profile, but not loaded with every post. So if I want to see what achievements Piratecat has, I need to go to his profile.


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## Ry (Apr 25, 2011)

I'd love that - just see Poster's name and post, no sigs, trophies, rep, blog, wallaby, none of that stuff.


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## Morrus (Apr 26, 2011)

Ryan Stou'n said:


> I'd love that - just see Poster's name and post, no sigs, trophies, rep, blog, wallaby, none of that stuff.




1990 and Usenet is calling for you!


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## Ry (Apr 28, 2011)

Seriously?  A quip about modern design coming from EN World, home of orange-on-black, different styles for each type of button/reward/trophy/banner/tag and a mottled repeating pattern background?  

Might as well have written it in flashing text.


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## Haltherrion (May 5, 2011)

I've noticed it for years and it is not intermittent. It's during the day. I'm pretty sure it's because I'm from North America and the trans-oceanic links are pretty bogged down during the day. While I do find it annoying by 7PM Pacific Coast, it's quite accessible. If I try accessing it during the day, it's hopeless. My carrier might be worse than others but I've just learned to live with it. Don't think it's a server issue.


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## Dracorat (May 5, 2011)

RangerWickett said:


> Yeah, if the speed is at all related to fancy schmancy stuff, I'd love an option to not see those. Or just have them be on the person's profile, but not loaded with every post. So if I want to see what achievements Piratecat has, I need to go to his profile.




It's not. Images are disabled on one of the computers I use and it makes no difference in the speed.


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## AeroDm (Jun 1, 2011)

Any updates on the speed issues? We're about 5+ weeks past the upgrade and I still get modest lags on any page change. I checked Alexa and it has enworld around the 40th percentile for speed whereas giantitp is around 75th percentile (and I believe handles a larger volume of posts). I get that enworld has a lot of features, but I think the core feature is the ability to participate in threads and that is what the lag hurts the most.


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## RedTonic (Jun 1, 2011)

I very often have problems with ENworld failing to load at all. I also have pretty good broadband at home, as well as a T3 connection when I'm up in Boston.

On the up side, it keeps me from posting silly (of the unfunny sort) things, so it's not all bad for me. Still, I would like to be able to open up the SH forum without reloading four or five times every other attempt.


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## Jdvn1 (Jun 3, 2011)

RedTonic said:


> I very often have problems with ENworld failing to load at all. I also have pretty good broadband at home, as well as a T3 connection when I'm up in Boston.
> 
> On the up side, it keeps me from posting silly (of the unfunny sort) things, so it's not all bad for me. Still, I would like to be able to open up the SH forum without reloading four or five times every other attempt.



No silly for you!


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## pawsplay (Jun 4, 2011)

I have issues with ads. Often, I can fix the issue just by hitting refresh and getting a new ad.


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## Alan Shutko (Jun 23, 2011)

I'm thinking it might be CPU or DB related.

I did some surfing with Charles installed (a web proxy that can log sessions for debugging).  Almost all images, etc came back with very little latency.  On the other hand, text/html responses came back with a 3.5-14 second delay. Since images were fast, and the content seemed to be fast once data started streaming back, it makes sense that it's in the forum software.

Attached is a CSV file (with a .txt extension so I could upload it) with the quick session.  If this kind of information is useful, I could log it during a longer session.


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## ahayford (Sep 13, 2011)

I'm lagging horribly right now. Up to 2 minutes per view/post.


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