# PB navigation and display problems



## Southern Presbyterian

Okay, I've been having this problem for over a week now. When I visit the PB site it is incredibly slow loading, and it seems to only be this site. It takes up to a minute after I click on a thread link for the thread to load. In addition many graphics refuse to display (including smilies, avatars, and navigation buttons).

It happens on both my laptop and my desktop. I have not changed any settings on either computer. I have updated the firmware on my router, but that wouldn't affect my laptop when using it at work, because it is just as slow or if possible slower using the connection at work.

I can visit other graphics intensive sites like foxnews.com, cnn.com, yahoo.com, or ebay.com and these sites load and navigate normally. I am only experiencing a slow down on the PB.

What could be causing this?


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## VictorBravo

Some of us are having similar problems. Rich is checking into it, in his copious free time.


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## rjlynam

What are you using for virus/internet security software? Alot of the virus software now on the market attempts to rate sites (safe/not safe/not sure) and that might make a difference.

Just thought it might be something of note to help figure things out.


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## Southern Presbyterian

victorbravo said:


> Some of us are having similar problems. Rich is checking into it, in his copious free time.



Glad to know that it's not just me. 

However, I am a bit distressed to discover just how impatient I've become due to my high speed internet usage. How quickly we begin to take things for granted.


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## Southern Presbyterian

rjlynam said:


> What are you using for virus/internet security software? Alot of the virus software now on the market attempts to rate sites (safe/not safe/not sure) and that might make a difference.
> 
> Just thought it might be something of note to help figure things out.



I use Bsafe Online Security for both internet security and antivirus. But I have had that in place long before I even was aware of the PB.


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## rjlynam

Southern Presbyterian said:


> rjlynam said:
> 
> 
> 
> What are you using for virus/internet security software? Alot of the virus software now on the market attempts to rate sites (safe/not safe/not sure) and that might make a difference.
> 
> Just thought it might be something of note to help figure things out.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I use Bsafe Online Security for both internet security and antivirus. But I have had that in place long before I even was aware of the PB.
Click to expand...



Doesn't necessarily matter. Your conclusion is generally reliable, but the most common cause of this problem is going to be 3rd party related. And especially with virus/malware software, huge performance fluctuations can be traced directly to vendor pattern updates, algorithm changes, etc. PB is pulling up very well for me. 

This may also clear up with a new algorithm/pattern update from the virus/malware software provider. 

Hope this helps.


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## Semper Fidelis

Right now is a bad guage. It's when the backups are scheduled for the server. Traffic is light(er) this time of day so it's scheduled now.

I have been noticing some spikes in server activity and am trying to work it with my free time (such as it is).


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## rjlynam

SemperFideles said:


> Right now is a bad guage. It's when the backups are scheduled for the server. Traffic is light(er) this time of day so it's scheduled now.
> 
> I have been noticing some spikes in server activity and am trying to work it with my free time (such as it is).





Your free time is gone, there Mister. You now have 4 kids. Welcome to the club.

I think most PB'ers have the notifier alarm gizmo that Bob V. is selling. It notifies them when he's online. I'll bet that's when your spikes are occurring. Just an edumacated guess, though.


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## Southern Presbyterian

Still slow at this hour of the day, as it was earlier this morning. I don't think it's time related, at least not on my end. (Just an FYI update - I know Rich has truly important things to deal with right now that don't envolve the PB).


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## Semper Fidelis

Still slow now? Mine varies from quick to slow depending on different times.

Is it always slow for you?


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## Southern Presbyterian

It started about a week and a half ago. But since then it has pretty much been slow all the time. I experience the same result whether at home on my desktop or at work on my laptop.

I've been using Firefox (instead of IE) this evening and have noticed some slight increase in speed, though it is still not a fast as it used to be. Also, with FF all the graphics load. Perhaps I just have an IE problem.


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## VictorBravo

joshua said:


> It is for me.



Me too. Literally 4 minutes to load a thread just a few minutes ago. Then the next one loaded in seconds. The smilies I've almost given up on because they usually take about a minute to load. It's very strange.

But I'm about to try firefox again because now I'm starting to have problems with other sites too.


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## VictorBravo

Even slower in firefox. And the images take a long time to load, even things like font icons haven't loaded yet.

I'm getting a headache from the smilieys jumping slowly into view. 'nite, everyone.


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## Semper Fidelis

Ugh!


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## Semper Fidelis

I don't know if it's slow for you guys right now but it is really quick in my browser at work but I'm starting to wonder if it's because my work computer blocks some scripts.

I'm working on trying to re-host with another company that provides a bit better managed hosting.

For what it's worth, I've noticed a decrease in performance recently too and have been trying to figure out what's causing it but have had trouble putting my finger on it.


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## NaphtaliPress

Really slow for me this AM.


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## Southern Presbyterian

I'm using Firefox at work this morning and it seems a bit faster, by comparison, to load a thread, but it is still slow. The graphics are still very slow in loading. I gave up on IE this morning after waiting about two minutes for the home page to load.


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## Semper Fidelis

I'm beginning to wonder if this is a DNS issue. I don't understand how some people can experience a completely different experience than I. I never have a 2 minute load time.

Very odd.


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## Semper Fidelis

Do me a favor and see if anything changes. I just disabled a plugin that I'm suspecting might be causing some of the issue.


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## NaphtaliPress

Seems faster and the icons and smilies load faster.


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## VictorBravo

Much better than last night. Still a bit slow for comments to post.


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## VictorBravo

Rich, don't put too much stock in my complaints. I just tried loading lexis.com, which is usually pretty fast--it took over a minute. 

Confounding variables on my end.


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## Southern Presbyterian

Still incredibly slow in IE, but faster in FF (though not as quick as I'm used to). Most smilies, etc. don't load in IE and they come in very slowly still with FF.

I hope this is helping narrow things down. I don't me to be the "squeaky wheel".


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## JonathanHunt

I have found the PB to be almost too slow to use for at least 2 weeks now. It takes minutes to load up each thread and at least a minute or more to get a reply screen up.


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## Southern Presbyterian

JonathanHunt said:


> I have found the PB to be almost too slow to use for at least 2 weeks now. It takes minutes to load up each thread and at least a minute or more to get a reply screen up.



So it's not just me. Good to know that.


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## VictorBravo

I just noticed that for some reason, IE keeps checking to see if this is a phishing website. There's a little warning that keeps coming up. When the scan is done, the page loads.

I wonder if there was some MS update that has reset security for some of us.


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## VictorBravo

Never mind. It seems entirely random. I disabled the phishing filter and there was no change. Then a few minutes later things were loading fast. Now back to very slow.

I'm out of time for any further experiments for today.


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## NaphtaliPress

victorbravo said:


> Never mind. It seems entirely random. I disabled the phishing filter and there was no change. Then a few minutes later things were loading fast. Now back to very slow.
> 
> I'm out of time for any further experiments for today.


This is my experience as well now.


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## greenbaggins

For what it's worth, I am experiencing none of these issues.


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## Semper Fidelis

Here has been my experience when it is slow. It seems to load the top part of the page and then hang for a bit while it's trying to load the rest of the page.

Similar experience for others? Different? I'm trying to find any offsite things that might be causing this (i.e. I removed the Amazon "Featured Book" thing to see if that's part of the problem).

If anybody is really smart at this stuff can you check the page source of the threads and figure out if there are any scripts or other things that you believe might be causing the sluggishness. I think I might have ruled out server performance as the factor.


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## Southern Presbyterian

SemperFideles said:


> Here has been my experience when it is slow. It seems to load the top part of the page and then hang for a bit while it's trying to load the rest of the page.



This is exactly what's happening for me, but it is all the time, not intermittent.


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## VictorBravo

It's working much better now with FireFox, still abysmal with IE. I've tried disabling script functions, etc., with no help.

To make matters worse, now IE is hanging up on many sites and then locking. I have to use the "end task" function to get out of it. I wonder if there is some kind of virus or script hitting some of us. I have three different applications for virus protection (McAfee is mandatory by work, the others I run manually). 

When IE was working, it would hang on *this* thread the most--that is, it would not load for minutes. But if I restated IE, the other threads would load (a bit slower than normal, but at least there was progress).

I'm not sure if I can add any more data, I hope this gives a hint at what is going on.

An addition: I should mention that Firefox works, but I just tried other threads and it is taking over a minute to load. An improvement over not loading, certainly, but more like the old bulletin board days with those blinky modems that were measured in bauds.


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## Southern Presbyterian

I've been using FF all day and it does seem to be getting faster at loading the threads. The smilies and other graphics though still pop in one at a time. They used to just all show up more or less at the same instant.

I also just checked IE again a few minutes ago and it is still incredibly slow. I haven't experienced it hanging though.


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## Southern Presbyterian

SemperFideles said:


> If anybody is really smart at this stuff can you check the page source of the threads and figure out if there are any scripts or other things that you believe might be causing the sluggishness. I think I might have ruled out server performance as the factor.



Would it be helpful if I copied and pasted the source code to a word document and emailed or pm'ed it to you?


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## VictorBravo

Southern Presbyterian said:


> SemperFideles said:
> 
> 
> 
> If anybody is really smart at this stuff can you check the page source of the threads and figure out if there are any scripts or other things that you believe might be causing the sluggishness. I think I might have ruled out server performance as the factor.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Would it be helpful if I copied and pasted the source code to a word document and emailed or pm'ed it to you?
Click to expand...


heh. I just tried that and it's 99 pages for this thread. 

I wonder if the tags are causing problems. I noticed a subtle decrease when they became functional. Of course, that was about the time the quotes started appearing on the home page too. It could be a number of things.


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## Southern Presbyterian

victorbravo said:


> Southern Presbyterian said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SemperFideles said:
> 
> 
> 
> If anybody is really smart at this stuff can you check the page source of the threads and figure out if there are any scripts or other things that you believe might be causing the sluggishness. I think I might have ruled out server performance as the factor.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Would it be helpful if I copied and pasted the source code to a word document and emailed or pm'ed it to you?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> heh. I just tried that and it's 99 pages for this thread.
> 
> I wonder if the tags are causing problems. I noticed a subtle decrease when they became functional. Of course, that was about the time the quotes started appearing on the home page too. It could be a number of things.
Click to expand...


99 pages.




That's a lot of code to sort through. Any idea what one would be looking for to spot a potential problem?


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## jaybird0827

I was trying to post around 4:00 p.m. EST. Response time could have been measured in minutes. I worked a SuDoKu puzzle in between while waiting for the pages I needed to load.


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## Semper Fidelis

Can a few of you that are having this problem do me a favor.

Can you download the Opera browser: Opera browser: Home page

See if it's any faster there.

Also, could you tell me if the forum is faster using the Mobile or the Mobi theme?

Right now performance for me is pretty snappy.


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## Southern Presbyterian

SemperFideles said:


> Can a few of you that are having this problem do me a favor.
> 
> Can you download the Opera browser: Opera browser: Home page
> 
> See if it's any faster there.
> 
> Also, could you tell me if the forum is faster using the Mobile or the Mobi theme?
> 
> Right now performance for me is pretty snappy.



Okay...

I'm using Opera now. The threads load faster than with IE and pretty much the same as they do with FF (though still not as fast as I'm used to them loading in the past), but it still takes a very long time for the graphics to load (one at a time). Also, there were a couple of code strings on the home page when I first signed in.

I also checked the Mobile and Mobi themes. They load fast no matter where I navigated on the site.

Hope this is helping.


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## VictorBravo

SemperFideles said:


> Can a few of you that are having this problem do me a favor.
> 
> Can you download the Opera browser: Opera browser: Home page
> 
> See if it's any faster there.
> 
> Also, could you tell me if the forum is faster using the Mobile or the Mobi theme?
> 
> Right now performance for me is pretty snappy.



Rich, I don't have time to download Opera right now, but I can say that Firefox is working fine, just like the old days, at this moment. 

The themes don't seem to make a difference.

IE still doesn't do very well, for whatever reason. Trying to open new threads is a bit slow and graphics are even slower.


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## VictorBravo

OK, I downloaded Opera. It's actually slower than Firefox at this moment. It's tolerable, but the smilies on the right of the comment box take about 10 seconds to load.

When I clicked on the "more" for smilies, it took 35 seconds for all of them to load.


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## VictorBravo

Sorry to keep jabberin', Rich, but I noticed one difference between IE and Opera right now. Opera saves the images so they don't have to reload. I went to a different thread that I hadn't visited with this browser, clicked on reply and then on "more" for the smilies. They loaded instantly.

IE has to do it all over again, reloading the images every time you tell it to do something.


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## Semper Fidelis

I noticed the same thing Vic. I just removed a couple of things that load with every thread that are superfluous. Please let me know any change in performance.

BTW, I removed the tags hack. It's going to be rolled out in VB 3.7.0 and the VB version is incompatible with the installed hack.


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## ReformedWretch

I'm on Firefox and everything seems pretty good to me.


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## VictorBravo

SemperFideles said:


> I noticed the same thing Vic. I just removed a couple of things that load with every thread that are superfluous. Please let me know any change in performance.
> 
> BTW, I removed the tags hack. It's going to be rolled out in VB 3.7.0 and the VB version is incompatible with the installed hack.



Things work pretty well now, even with IE.


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## Southern Presbyterian

No change here. IE is still horribly slow. FF is acceptable and I will be using that for the foreseeable future.


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## JonathanHunt

Performance has improved some. When I select a thread and open it in a new tab (as I do) each thread takes about 30 secs to open as opposed to 1-2 mins a week ago.

Still slow though!


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## Semper Fidelis

I'm beginning to suspect that the slowness has to do with the fact that I allow images in signatures. I'm going to remove that and see what happens.


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## Southern Presbyterian

Made no noticeable difference for IE. Still as slow a steam off of cold oatmeal.


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## Semper Fidelis

I just removed another thing. Check it now.


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## Southern Presbyterian

Well, it took 1 minute and 8 seconds to load the thread page and 53 seconds to fully open the "Reply to Thread" page. On up side, all of the graphics are visible with the exception of one smilie. That is with IE.

Almost the exact same results with Opera.

FF is still "almost normal" and all of the graphics load 100%.


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## Herald

Happening again. 10:47 Pm EST and it's taking forever to load. I had to use Mobi in order to get the PB to load. Even then it's taking forever.


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## Semper Fidelis

I've been tweaking a couple of things. Is it better now?


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## Southern Presbyterian

I'm now beginning to get a little lag when first loading a thread. But it is nothing like it was before. FF and IE are loading about the same.

Thanks for all your efforts on our behalf, Rich!!


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