Craftster's is just to slow

[Mike Jordan]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed it as much as I have, but Craftster has been getting slower and slower over the last few months. It's got to the point that I rarely come on any more because it takes forever to just get into the Glass Crafts area, let along view the threads.  I know it's not me because I have a fast fiber connection and other forums I'm on that are very photo intensive do not have the same slow down problem. I don't know if this site is just experiencing server issues with too many users for the bandwidth and hardware they use or if they are on a slow link.  Or if it's because they have too many pop up ads all over each page. 

It's too bad since it does drive people away, even those that just want to view and don't even post. Although it probably wouldn't do any good, I'd post a comment to the site owners if I knew where to post it, but the site is too slow for me to even bother trying to find if there is such a place on here.  I'll check back from time to time, but that's why I've not been on very much lately.

Mike

[Feast Your Eyes]

I haven't noticed this problem. What time of day do you usually log on? I know there are peak times, so if you are getting on when it's busy maybe that could affect loading speed...? Anyway, you may want to have this thread moved here, Discussion about Craftser Itself: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?board=69.0 If you can't move the thread yourself you can ask a mod to move it.

[HSG]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed it as much as I have, but Craftster has been getting slower and slower over the last few months. It's got to the point that I rarely come on any more because it takes forever to just get into the Glass Crafts area, let along view the threads.  I know it's not me because I have a fast fiber connection and other forums I'm on that are very photo intensive do not have the same slow down problem. I don't know if this site is just experiencing server issues with too many users for the bandwidth and hardware they use or if they are on a slow link.  Or if it's because they have too many pop up ads all over each page. 

It's too bad since it does drive people away, even those that just want to view and don't even post. Although it probably wouldn't do any good, I'd post a comment to the site owners if I knew where to post it, but the site is too slow for me to even bother trying to find if there is such a place on here.  I'll check back from time to time, but that's why I've not been on very much lately.

Mike

Mike
Thank you for your input and comment. We take all concerns and try to address them, so please do not feel it would do no good.

Personally I have not noticed a slow down here, but that does not mean there is not some reason you are experiencing a slow down.

Not to seem condescending because it seems you have some knowledge of computers, but can I ask a couple of questions to perhaps try to help?

*What browser do you use? Version?
*Have you any means of disabling some of the ads you are seeing? If you use Mozilla you can lower the quality of the flash ads, too.
*Have you tested your internet speed?

jungrrl and/or sweets4ever will have other ideas for means of solving the issue you are having.

We certainly value your input and would not want to have you stop visiting Craftster.

[sweets4ever]

Hi, Mike!  Could you please answer the questions HSG listed, and we'll do our best to assist.  To my knowledge, we do not have any extremely slow loading issues at this time.

[Mike Jordan]

To answer some of your questions, I use to get one a number of times from early afternoon (Pacific time) till about 11 pm.  I'm seeing the slow downs all the time, it's just worse at different periods.  For instance, right now, to get from the Glass form to read my personal mail telling me this message was moved took over 20 seconds. When I hit home it took me 40 seconds to get the home page and then 15 seconds to get back to my private mail so I could click on the link to come here.  Once I clicked on the link for this message it took almost 15 seconds before the screen changed and another 10 seconds before this message came up.  I have the same results when I try to go into the Glass threads in the glass forum.

Yes, I know a bit about computers and networking (I've been using computers since 1979), which is why I know it's not my link. I did a speed test right after I sent the original message and I was getting 15 MBps on both upload and download and right now while I'm typing this, I'm getting between 12MBps and 13.5 MBps upload and download.  Right now, I'm also on another very image intensive photo site in another window and it's opening and closing threads and images at a normal rate. 

I use Mozilla 4.0.1 for all of my browsing except when I have to use IE because it's programmed only for that browser.  But when I tried it on here, it was just as slow. So it doesn't appear to be browser dependent (well, everything slow with IE). 

If I'm the only one having the problem and I know it's not my link, then it could be what ever link my fiber link (I am with FIOS) uses to get to the hosting site gets to where Craftster.org is hosted at.  Or it could be something else. I do know that it's gotten worse over the last few months and really agonizingly slow the last few weeks.

Thanks for letting me know it's not the site.

Mike

[HSG]

The Mozilla has had an update to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17), which I've been using for about a week. Seems to be doing good for me. And I agree Internet Exploder is bad.

For speed test I got 21ms in PING, 25.54mpbs download and 10.04mpbs using: http://www.speedtest.net/, and I've got cable.

Again, Mike, not trying to talk down cause you have the same amount of PC experience as my hubby. Have you cleared out your cookies and history? Crap Cleaner is great tool for doing that.

When the pages are slow loading what is in the title bar on the bottom left? Does it have the Crafster url or ads? If it is ads which ones?

Between all of us we will get this problem noodled out, Mike!

[Mike Jordan]

Yep, I keep my cache and cookies cleaned out... in fact I block a lot of them.  When I change pages I see about a half dozen different adware, google analyitical and several cookie monster programs that read and write cookies.  So there is a lot of activity before a page even gets to load. 

I tried from another computer that I use pretty much to only VPN into my work through a secure tunnel and which I rarely do any open browsing with, so it's not as heavily protected against internet nasties as my normal computer.  I did the speed test and got over 25 MBps upload and download on it and accessing this site was faster, although still not up to par with other glass and photo forums that I frequent.  So it appears that it might be all the adware that is hitting my computer and my firewall and intrusion protection programs are working extra hard to block.  Most people that don't run a firewall don't realize just how much information gets pulled off their computer and the number of tracking cookies that get deposited to be read by other cookie monsters.

Come to think of it, I think I started really noticing the slow downs about the time the Oscar Myer hot dog ad started appear.

Mike

[HSG]

LOL on the Weiner ads!

Do you do wireless?

[Mike Jordan]

No, I'm wired in directly to a CISCO router which is connected to the Fiber router coming into our house. If I was, that would be one of the things I'd check to make sure someone in the neighborhood hasn't been able to hitch a ride on our wireless router

I notice that it is almost back to normal right now. A lot of people must be watching TV or doing other things rather than browsing the site... or if your hosting site is back East, it's after midnight there while it's still daylight here in Oregon, so maybe a lot of your normal users have gone to bed. 

Oh well, maybe it will fix itself over time.  I've seen that happen on some sites before. Someone will upgrade something somewhere and that improves the whole link. Although there is something going on from this site that just causes my firewall, intrusion protection and forcefield shield to just into hyper drive and kick my CPU usage sky high. I'll have to get on the system from work so I can trace what's going on from the firewall I have on our company network. That firewall will give me a lot more information as to what I'm having to fend off when I connect to this site. Although fend off may be a bit strong, it's obvious stuff that I don't let in on a normal bases.

Mike

[HSG]

Mike
Just curious about one last thing since you mentioned where you live, and I'm on the east coast.

Have you done a PING test?

My results from the cmd done just now: Low 83ms, High 105ms w/ average 88ms 4 packets sent with 0 loss.

Another from http://network-tools.com :

Code:

Hop (ms) (ms) (ms)      IP Address Host name
1    0   0   0      8.9.232.73 xe-5-3-0.edge3.dallas1.level3.net 
2    2   0   0      4.69.145.126 vlan70.csw2.dallas1.level3.net 
3    0   0   0      4.69.151.146 ae-73-73.ebr3.dallas1.level3.net 
4    20   20   20      4.69.134.22 ae-7-7.ebr3.atlanta2.level3.net 
5    33   34   33      4.69.132.86 ae-2-2.ebr1.washington1.level3.net 
6    33   33   33      4.69.134.138 ae-81-81.csw3.washington1.level3.net 
7    33   33   33      4.69.149.144 ae-3-80.edge2.washington4.level3.net 
8    43   33   33      4.53.114.30 cox-communi.edge2.washington4.level3.net 
9    39   39   39      68.1.0.25 nrfkdsrj01-ae0.0.rd.hr.cox.net 
10    Timed out   Timed out   Timed out         - 
11    39   39   39      68.10.14.134   - 
12    Timed out   Timed out   Timed out         - 
13    Timed out   Timed out   Timed out         - 
14    Timed out   Timed out   Timed out         - 
15    Timed out   Timed out   Timed out         - 

Trace aborted.

I know FIOS is supposed to be excellent, but I am just not that familiar with it. Hubby says it is not available in our area yet.

Just don't like that you're having issues and that it may keep you from visiting as often.