Physics Forums Speed: How Is Site Performance?

[Greg Bernhardt]

I've pretty much optimized everything I can. The only things that are slowing down the site are external services. Overall though, how is the speed performance of the site?

 

[Jimmy]

It works very well for me on my old dual core (Athlon 64 X2 5000+). The only slow-down I see is on pages with lots of Latex and embedded videos but it's not unreasonably slow.

I voted Fast.

 

[jedishrfu]

I do notice an issue with the forums pulldown on my iPad under safari. I touch it and it rolls down and then promptly disappears. I have to do this a couple of times before I can click on the new forums item. It could be my hand is a bit jittery or ios8 performance issue...

 

[Nugatory]

I do notice an issue with the forums pulldown on my iPad under safari. I touch it and it rolls down and then promptly disappears. I have to do this a couple of times before I can click on the new forums item. It could be my hand is a bit jittery or ios8 performance issue...

I'm having the same experience, but also comparing with a system running Windows7 and a VMWare virtual machine running a fairly recent Ubuntu distro. I believe that the iPad problem isn't that PF is slow, it is that it is that the iPad is taking bloody forever to render the pages.

 

[jedishrfu]

I'm having the same experience, but also comparing with a system running Windows7 and a VMWare virtual machine running a fairly recent Ubuntu distro. I believe that the iPad problem isn't that PF is slow, it is that it is that the iPad is taking bloody forever to render the pages.

Ios8 has really slowed down my iPad2. I've been searching for things to turn off.

 

[DataGG]

I voted "Average" but I think it requires an explanation.

PF is no faster nor slower than other forums of which I'm a member. That's why I voted "average". It does not mean it's not fast, it just means that it's not significantly faster than other sites I browse.

 

[Intrastellar]

I voted "Average" but I think it requires an explanation.

PF is no faster nor slower than other forums of which I'm a member. That's why I voted "average". It does not mean it's not fast, it just means that it's not significantly faster than other sites I browse.

I guess I should have voted average too, my use of average is surely skewed.

 

[dlgoff]

It's like lightning here in Kansas on my desktop PC. :thumbsup:

 

[phinds]

Has seemed plenty fast to me since the update, and continues to do so now, but for about 24 hours starting yesterday afternoon, I thought the forum was completely down because on each of a dozen or so attempts at connecting during that time, I was advised of a timeout with the suggestion that the server was probably down.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

We have discovered a problem with one of our security programs. A fix is being worked on.

 

[phinds]

Greg, is that likely to be the cause of my seeing the site as "down" for 24 hours?

I remember I had that issue once about a year ago and you suggested, rightly I think, that it was likely a slowdown in one of the servers between my ISP and your server, but that only lasted about 1/2 hour as I recall ... nothing like the 24 hours or so that I saw this time.

 

[TumblingDice]

Hey there Greg. Your OP asks about the performance of the site, and a few replies so far may be related to the performance of the forum's code on the client side. I'm adding this post on client performance here in lieu of starting a client thread at the moment.

I added this post a little while ago:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/higgs-field-and-mass.773664/page-2#post-4873170

The problem I'm seeing is a degradation of keyboard responsiveness as the post gets larger. By the time I got to the last paragraph the display lagged so much, fighting to key and edit was overwhelming. I had to sit back and wait for the display to catch up.

This was on my development desktop system running IE 11 under Win7 Pro. It's a fast box and I had nothing else running at the time.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

The problem I'm seeing is a degradation of keyboard responsiveness as the post gets larger. By the time I got to the last paragraph the display lagged so much, fighting to key and edit was overwhelming. I had to sit back and wait for the display to catch up.

During the reply creation or edit? The loading was slow or typing into the editor?

 

[TumblingDice]

During the reply creation or edit? The loading was slow or typing into the editor?

Slow display reaction when typing into the editor (original reply entry). I feel I should have done more legwork to diagnose before mentioning, but it's occurred more than just the last time. Been busy, boss. I'll dig more if no one else reports anything similar.

 

[jedishrfu]

Could be an overuse of javascript features?

 

[phinds]

Greg, in post #11 I mentioned an issue and asked you a question. You "liked" the post but did not answer the question and I had the exact same problem again for several hours from about 4am to 9am this morning. I get "database error" in one browser and something along the lines of "site probably down" in another browser (IE and FireFox but I didn't make a note of which got which error msg).

Can you suggest anything? During this time I went on several woodworking forums and several news sites and several other site and had no problem with any of them. PF seems to be the only site I have a problem with.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I had the exact same problem again for several hours from about 4am to 9am this morning

Everyone did :)

 

[phinds]

Everyone did :)

Well, OK, I guess that explains THAT. :p

It wasn't down the last time this happened though, 'cause I checked the posts that had happened during my 24 hour "outage" and there were lots of them, so I though I was having the same problem.

Thanks.

By the way, don't let it happen again :D

 

[TumblingDice]

Everyone did :)

"It's Good to Be Back!" :)

The database demon struck last night and PF wasn't there when I couldn't sleep. I took solace with the thought that I wasn't the only one getting any sleep... Craig may "always be home", but Greg's "always on the job!".