slow page load times

[tshile]

This was mentioned in the new BGO thread, so I wanted to take a look and post my results.

If you're curious about looking at this yourself, you can do the following:

In internet explorer (version 9 and later, I believe) go to Tools -> "F12 Developer Tools", you can also just hit F12 on your keyboard. Choose the network tab and click start capturing, then refresh the page, when it's finished hit stop capturing.

In firefox (there are many ways) download the add-on called 'firebug'. I like this the best for this sort of thing. Then go to Tools -> Web Developer -> Firebug and open firebug. In the window go to Net tab across the top.

These two tools show you many things, but the net/network tabs will show you what is loading, from where it is loading, and how long it is taking.

I'm located in VA - so people further away from or closer to the server may have different load times.

Average load time is about 10 seconds - that's from the time I hit F5 to the time the 'reloading' wheel stops in the browser. For my test I go into a thread, scroll down to some point, then hit refresh. This is because the forum auto-scrolls you to where you were last, and I wanted to make sure that was included in the loading.

For the very lazy I've attached 3 screen shots of the results I got. Sorry my start bar is in the middle of it but I had to stretch it across my two vertical monitors to avoid it being 10 pages They're in order by how long it takes to load.

Two things I noticed:
- you're loading a lot of stuff
- The longest loading stuff is related to either facebook, google ads, or the chat feature.

The rest of it are small images and some of them certainly do take longer to load than others, mostly the GIF's take longer. I'm not really sure what you can do about that other than clean up the GIF's - you probably wont want to do that though.

I have no idea what you can do about facebook, google ads, and the chat feature other than get rid of them - which may or may not be an option. I would wait until the site is updated as that may or may not fix it.

Let me know if you have any questions or if I can be of any help.

 

[tshile]

oh crap, I thought you could click on attachments to enlarge them. You'll probably have to right click->save them to open them up and zoom in to read it.

 

[Boone]

When you say 'Facebook', what are you referencing? I'm not seeing (nor have I) anything like 10 seconds. 5-6, maybe...Not to shoot the messenger We will no doubt have a leaner site with the upgrade and we'll see how that goes. The flash banner, which we are pretty fond of, is probably the biggest load issue.

 

[tshile]

Sorry Boone, just saw you posted. I'll get back to you when I have a computer available

 

[tshile]

I was planning on Monday but I can't sleep so here I am...

Anyways - it's definitely on average about 10 seconds for me.

The two facebook things come back as this:
http://static.ak.facebook.com/connect/xd_arbiter.php?version=18
2.69 s load time
https://s-static.ak.facebook.com/connect/xd_arbiter.php?version=18
2.73 s load time
http://static.ak.facebook.com/conne...ession.com&relation=parent&error=unknown_user
2.44 s

Now the thing is, they're loading at the same time. So don't add them together and think that's majority of my load time. that only accounts for 2.73 seconds of my load time (roughly 1/3).

The google ads load roughly about the same time, it's a little off by like 1/4 of a second. The chat loads separately and takes 3 seconds.

So chat, facebook, and google compbined accounts for somewhere between 6-7 seconds of the load time for me.

As for what that facebook stuff is... I have no idea. Something in your site is making calls to those facebook links. I'm assuming it's related to some sort of sharing or like feature? I don't have facebook so I don't pay attention to those things. Do you not have any facebook features/plugins enabled?

 

[tshile]

Yeah, there are definitely two iframes making calls to facebook just before the footer on the page. I can see it in the source code.

<IFRAME aria-hidden=true title="Facebook Cross Domain Communication Frame" style="BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none" src="http://static.ak.facebook.com/connect/xd_arbiter.php?version=18#channel=f9a1f7afebe87b&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bgobsession.com&channel_path=%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D60874%26fb_xd_fragment%23xd_sig%3Df36a14fe11555e8%26" frameBorder=0 allowTransparency name=fb_xdm_frame_http scrolling=no tab-index="-1"></IFRAME>


<IFRAME aria-hidden=true title="Facebook Cross Domain Communication Frame" style="BORDER-TOP: medium none; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none" src="https://s-static.ak.facebook.com/connect/xd_arbiter.php?version=18#channel=f9a1f7afebe87b&origin=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bgobsession.com&channel_path=%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D60874%26fb_xd_fragment%23xd_sig%3Df36a14fe11555e8%26" frameBorder=0 allowTransparency name=fb_xdm_frame_https scrolling=no tab-index="-1"></IFRAME>

It's in a DIV tag that looks like this:

<div class=" fb_reset" id="fb-root">

They're hidden from view in the browser, but they're there, and they're the last thing making calls as the page loads.

edit: I see there's a facebook icon in the chat bar. I'd be curious if whatever adds that adds the rest of it (probably is required by facebook.) If you're interested in finding out the easiest thing is to turn off the facebook button and see if it goes away, then turn it back on.

Of course... this all may be a huge waste of our time if the new site loads faster without any tweaking

 

[Boone]

I'm sure it's the Facebook app (not the link in the chatbar). We have a shadow site on Facebook via the Facebook app. We thought it would be a good way to tie the sites together, but the truth is, it's really a flawed concept. Anything posted here will show up on our Facebook app site. Anything posted there will show up here. I'd love it if the Facebook app actually worked to help promote our site, but when you share a post or thread from the app, it doesn't even identify the title of the thread, you just end up sharing a generic www.bgobsession.com link. Totally pointless. Many have complained to vbulletin.com about the shortcomings and they haven't done anything in the year since it's been released. We may well decide to disable the damn thing. I'm certain that's the issue.

 

[Burgundy Burner]

I've been having the facebook problem too. When I try to back out of a page, the web adresses for facebook appear. Nothing loads, but nothing else happens too.

Lately, I just "right click" on my browser's back arrow and go all the way back to the main forum. It's not a big deal, but it is there.

 

[Neophyte]

I can't seem to replicate this. Maybe some of this has to do with bandwidth?

 

[HOF44]

Not sure why but since the upgrade my load times have been really slow compared to any other site I go to. I am using Firefix 26.0.
I hoped in time it would just go back to normal but it has not.

 

[Boone]

Are you on a laptop or PC or portable device

 

[Boone]

We could develop a BGO 'lite' skin with none of the bells and whistles - we haven't done that yet but it's an option.

 

[HOF44]

Actually Tapatalk on my phone is great, it's on my desktop I experience the slow loads. It's an XP machine.

 

[Lanky Livingston]

Load times have been fairly slow for me recently as well, I'm on Chrome.

 

[Boone]

Not seeing any issues Mike but if it persists or if we hear it's occurring to others we'll check it out.

Btw, on general slowness, we discovered our hard drive space was almost 100% committed and it turns out our server had been saving daily full site backups since the upgrade. We've removed those and things seem a little bit more perky since then.