Improving Website Speed

[Rawhide]

In case anyone browsing here hasn't noticed the news post (http://www.giantitp.com/index.html#7eIJuOle8PfjItkgQMu) made by Rich earlier, here it is:


The Kickstarter fulfillment continues, which has unfortunately kept me away from this News page for a while. It seems like everything I have to say is about my progress on the giant heap of stuff I promised back then, which means there's not much to say here. But I do have one thing: in order to speed up the website, Giant in the Playground will soon be making use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to store its stuff on various servers in multiple locations. The idea is that then when you call up the site, you'll get the pages and images served to you directly from the nearest location rather than from our one set of servers. This should speed things up across the board, especially for our readers outside the United States.

Ideally, this will be an invisible change, unless it messes up somehow—in which case it will be a highly visible change for a very short period of time before we pull the plug on it. The switchover will start in the next few days, but even once it starts, it could take up to 48 hours before any given reader is getting served by the CDN. In the (hopefully) unlikely event that you have an issue accessing the site during the trial period, try the alternate URL of http://alt.giantitp.com. But only if you can't get through to the site normally. With luck, no one will notice anything is different except for getting faster service.

[Jarian]

Whoo!

Will this only affect page loading time, or will it also decrease the number of server errors?

Either way, whoo!

[Rawhide]

Directly, all it will do is deliver the static content (images, etc.) from the CDN. Static HTML pages will still come from the server, not the CDN, unless the server goes down, in which case a backup may be delivered to your browser from the CDN. Dynamic content (i.e. the forum pages) will always come from the server.

Indirectly, it will free up some resources from the website for the forums, as well as allow us to reshuffle some behind the scenes stuff.

[Killer Angel]

In case anyone browsing here hasn't noticed the news post (http://www.giantitp.com/index.html#7eIJuOle8PfjItkgQMu) made by Rich earlier, here it is:

Yep, I missed it. Tnx. :smallwink:

In case there's need of using the alternate URL, it will be just a temporary inconvenience, right?

[Rawhide]

Yep, I missed it. Tnx. :smallwink:

In case there's need of using the alternate URL, it will be just a temporary inconvenience, right?

If you need it, we will fix it. The URL itself is only temporary and will be removed in due course.

[Reinboom]

If there's been other issues with website stability in general, has there been any consideration to changes such as switching from apache to nginx?

This would especially be important to an inefficient beast such as vBulletin where the simultaneous thread generations matters more and where you don't need to load PHP for every single instance.
(After all, you don't want to load this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?=PHPB8B5F2A0-3C92-11d3-A3A9-4C7B08C10000) in to memory with every page call like you're currently doing.)

[Rawhide]

Thank you, but this isn't a thread where we're soliciting suggestions and we haven't volunteered any information about the specific resource usage requirements or future plans.

[Seerow]

So this change is affecting the forums? For some reason when I first read it I thought it was an upgrade for the main site. I seem to remember an earlier claim that fixing the forums would require several days of downtime for the upgrade.

[Rawhide]

So this change is affecting the forums? For some reason when I first read it I thought it was an upgrade for the main site. I seem to remember an earlier claim that fixing the forums would require several days of downtime for the upgrade.

It's a change for the entire site. It will affect the forums. It won't fix them. It will indirectly help them. They will go down for several days in the future.

[Seerow]

It's a change for the entire site. It will affect the forums. It won't fix them. It will indirectly help them. They will go down for several days in the future.

Okay, thank you for the clarification.

[Trog]

Hey uh... just a thought here about improving website speed and such, so I'll just post this here rather than start a new thread. Any chance that a simple menu across the top with access to all the same things that one can see on the main forum page could be added to the forums?

Right now, in order to go from, say Friendly Banter to SMBG, or any other of the main choices there on the main page, involve me clicking back to the main forum page and then going to the next part I want to get to. Having links with those choices across the top of the forums page would mean going from one section to another directly, meaning one less page to load for anyone switching sections of the forum. Which would reduce the load on the server as well as being a more ergonomic method of navigation.

[Yora]

The last two days I've encountered a couple of "server bussy" and other page loading errors.
I think I havn't seen those for a couple of weeks.

[Dark Elf Bard]

Hey uh... just a thought here about improving website speed and such, so I'll just post this here rather than start a new thread. Any chance that a simple menu across the top with access to all the same things that one can see on the main forum page could be added to the forums?

Right now, in order to go from, say Friendly Banter to SMBG, or any other of the main choices there on the main page, involve me clicking back to the main forum page and then going to the next part I want to get to. Having links with those choices across the top of the forums page would mean going from one section to another directly, meaning one less page to load for anyone switching sections of the forum. Which would reduce the load on the server as well as being a more ergonomic method of navigation.
I like this idea a lot.

[The Giant]

The last two days I've encountered a couple of "server bussy" and other page loading errors.
I think I havn't seen those for a couple of weeks.

I'm pretty sure the CDN is paused until further notice due to some issues that were preventing some readers from accessing any part of the website at all. Better for us all to have slower forums than to deny some readers any access to the comic at all.

[Anarion]

I can anecdotally confirm that it's either paused or fixed. I haven't encountered a DNS error since Rawhide made the post saying he had taken it offline.

[Rawhide]

As Rich mentioned, the CDN is currently disabled. I will be re-enabling it soon to see if the issues have been resolved, but I wished to keep it disabled during the release of the latest comic in case it wasn't.



Hey uh... just a thought here about improving website speed and such, so I'll just post this here rather than start a new thread. Any chance that a simple menu across the top with access to all the same things that one can see on the main forum page could be added to the forums?

Right now, in order to go from, say Friendly Banter to SMBG, or any other of the main choices there on the main page, involve me clicking back to the main forum page and then going to the next part I want to get to. Having links with those choices across the top of the forums page would mean going from one section to another directly, meaning one less page to load for anyone switching sections of the forum. Which would reduce the load on the server as well as being a more ergonomic method of navigation.

Having a drop down menu to quickly switch between forums is a feature of vBulletin. It was disabled because it was more resource intensive to display it on every single page rather than just switching to the main page when you need to.

[Trog]

Having a drop down menu to quickly switch between forums is a feature of vBulletin. It was disabled because it was more resource intensive to display it on every single page rather than just switching to the main page when you need to.

Not a drop down menu, just do it as a list of static html links.

Friendly Banter (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=29) | Media Discussions (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=24) | Board/Site Issues (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=25) | etc.

or

FB (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=29) MD (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=24) B/SI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=25) | RPG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=30) 3.x (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59) O (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=60) | HD (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15) WB (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=57) G(O) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=26) | OotS (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22) Game (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=12) WC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=17) Erf (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=47) A&C (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=27) FC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=54) | PbP-OG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=13) FP (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=51) OOC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=21) Dice (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=43) SMBG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=34) SG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=50) FFRPG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=32)

for a smaller list that is still just as functional. :smallsmile:

[Rawhide]

Not a drop down menu, just do it as a list of static html links.

Friendly Banter (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=29) | Media Discussions (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=24) | Board/Site Issues (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=25) | etc.

or

FB (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=29) MD (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=24) B/SI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=25) | RPG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=30) 3.x (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59) O (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=60) | HD (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15) WB (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=57) G(O) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=26) | OotS (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22) Game (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=12) WC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=17) Erf (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=47) A&C (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=27) FC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=54) | PbP-OG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=13) FP (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=51) OOC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=21) Dice (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=43) SMBG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=34) SG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=50) FFRPG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=32)

for a smaller list that is still just as functional. :smallsmile:

A drop down menu doing just that in a far smaller space is available but has been disabled because any such menu, drop down or not, is not what these forums need right now. When reenabled, it will be a drop down menu.

[Trog]

A drop down menu doing just that in a far smaller space is available but has been disabled because any such menu, drop down or not, is not what these forums need right now. When reenabled, it will be a drop down menu.
Again this isn't a drop down menu, it's a simple line of html code with links. Placed at the bottom of the page it would give anyone access to the main parts of this site from any other page, saving a lot of page loads and making navigation easier and faster.

*shrug* Oh well.

In that case I'll just be sticking this list of links in my own signature to accomplish the same thing from any of my own posts. It only takes up two lines for a signature and gives me access to everything right at my fingertips - no site redesign needed. Not the best for surfing around considering I don't post everywhere but if enough of us were to add these links to our signatures it may amount to the same thing I suppose.

EDIT: Whoops, too long. *sigh* Oh well. Can't say I didn't try.

EDIT2: Nevermind. Got it to work. :smallcool:

[Rawhide]

Again this isn't a drop down menu, it's a simple line of html code with links. Placed at the bottom of the page it would give anyone access to the main parts of this site from any other page, saving a lot of page loads and making navigation easier and faster.

*shrug* Oh well.

In that case I'll just be sticking this list of links in my own signature to accomplish the same thing from any of my own posts. It only takes up two lines for a signature and gives me access to everything right at my fingertips - no site redesign needed. Not the best for surfing around considering I don't post everywhere but if enough of us were to add these links to our signatures it may amount to the same thing I suppose.

EDIT: Whoops, too long. *sigh* Oh well. Can't say I didn't try.

EDIT2: Nevermind. Got it to work. :smallcool:

Again, I know exactly what you're asking for, and we are not going to implement it. There is absolutely no difference between a simple drop down menu and a spread of links, except that the spread of links looks ugly and takes up too much screenspace. In short: The drop down menu fills every requirement you have asked for.

What you are asking for can and will be reintroduced as a drop down menu. We will not be making this collection of widely spread out links.

This list has been disabled because we do not want it on every page (or several times per page) at this stage - it would be better for the time being if people just went back to the main page when they needed to, rather than including any such menu on every page.

[Trog]

Again, I know exactly what you're asking for, and we are not going to implement it. There is absolutely no difference between a simple drop down menu and a spread of links, except that the spread of links looks ugly and takes up too much screenspace. In short: The drop down menu fills every requirement you have asked for.

What you are asking for can and will be reintroduced as a drop down menu. We will not be making this collection of widely spread out links.

This list has been disabled because we do not want it on every page (or several times per page) at this stage - it would be better for the time being if people just went back to the main page when they needed to, rather than including any such menu on every page.
Well not having access to what vBulletin has available for a menu option and just going off of that you had said that vBulletin's version was too bulky to load I figured a list of links could be a easy and convenient, if ugly, workaround that would still reduce the server load.

But now I'm just confused. :smallconfused:

Again, I know exactly what you're asking for, and we are not going to implement it.

What you are asking for can and will be reintroduced as a drop down menu.
Does this mean a menu of some sort will be added... or won't? :smallconfused:

[Rawhide]

But now I'm just confused. :smallconfused:

Does this mean a menu of some sort will be added... or won't? :smallconfused:

We will not be including a spread out list of links. We will be reintroducing the drop down list, when the time is right.

[Trog]

We will not be including a spread out list of links. We will be reintroducing the drop down list, when the time is right.
Sweet! :smallbiggrin:

[Dallas-Dakota]

Hey Trog, would you mind quoting the make-up of your GITP Fast Menu so it'l be easy to add to my signature?:smallsmile:

[Elder Tsofu]

Isn't it a bit early to spit in the eye of the admin who didn't want to implement the links on every page since they were both ugly and server intensive by asking for the way to do it? :smalltongue:

Having a drop down menu to quickly switch between forums is a feature of vBulletin. It was disabled because it was more resource intensive to display it on every single page rather than just switching to the main page when you need to.

There is absolutely no difference between a simple drop down menu and a spread of links, except that the spread of links looks ugly and takes up too much screenspace. In short: The drop down menu fills every requirement you have asked for.

Edit:
@V Well, apart from blowing or looking someone in the eye the alternatives seem worse or as bad. It is not as I said he'd lick him in the eye. :smalltongue:

[Trog]

Hey Trog, would you mind quoting the make-up of your GITP Fast Menu so it'l be easy to add to my signature?:smallsmile:

Isn't it a bit early to spit in the eye of the admin who didn't want to implement the links on every page since they were both ugly and server intensive by asking for the way to do it? :smalltongue:
"Spitting" seems a bit extreme way to put it. :smallconfused: I thought this was a place to discuss just these sorts of things. I know I'm certainly not doing so in a defiant manner at all. I came here to try and help out everyone, mods and users alike, with my suggestions.

I'll leave that decision up to the individuals, just like everyone can decide what to put in their own signature, provided it fits within the limits of the forum rules, naturally. Having html code for a bunch of links takes up no more server time to load than a bunch of html code for a bunch of other stuff, honestly. And less time than, say, loading a bunch of pictures in one's signature.

As to the aesthetics of the list I find my signature to look better than some, even with all the links. For if we getting into a debate over what is ugly and what is not and if it is decided that a long list of links is verboten due to aesthetic reasons I invite you all to look to the long list of links along the left hand side of your screen. *shrug* My list isn't precedent setting. If it's aesthetically good enough for the Giant, it's good enough for me.

However...

It should be known that the ability to have this within your signature is not without some sacrifice. The character limit of a signature is 1,000 and this list, shortened though it is, takes up the vast majority of that limit. Only because the elements of my signature were minimal to begin with can I fit this in there at all. Doubtlessly DD would have to cut out a lot of his current beloved signature to make it work.

But, then again, if there's one or two places on the forum you find you frequent more than others perhaps just linking to those few might do the trick for most.

Also, clicking on the link opens up a new tab in your browser, so there is that too. Again, this isn't the best solution, as Rawhide has pointed out. The best one would be implemented across the forum. But as with all ergonomic solutions each person will use what works best for them. This will either die out due to the inconveniences of being in a signature or it will slim down to only the ones you use. Or it will be implemented and found to be more of a pain than hitting the back arrow a couple of times. *shrug*

Either way I look forward to the day when a more accessible navigation eases the workload of the server and on the forum users. :smallsmile:

Here is the code:

GitP Fast Menu:
FB (http://goo.gl/TPzxv) MD (http://goo.gl/4p28G) B/SI (http://goo.gl/Peljq) | RPG (http://goo.gl/2QJcI) 3.x (http://goo.gl/t7Th4) O (http://goo.gl/4n94L) | HD (http://goo.gl/NJ3CF) WB (http://goo.gl/fWxIT) G(O) (http://goo.gl/BmPMV) | OotS (http://goo.gl/RlRWx) Game (http://goo.gl/leMMp) WC (http://goo.gl/GgBJC) Erf (http://goo.gl/u2bSR) A&C (http://goo.gl/QmU3j) FC (http://goo.gl/zj74E)
PbP-OG (http://goo.gl/m5AR9) FP (http://goo.gl/nAUzq) OOC (http://goo.gl/ySBaV) Dice (http://goo.gl/odspN) SMBG (http://goo.gl/cNAdT) SG (http://goo.gl/ZsxaF) FFRPG (http://goo.gl/HrktL)

[Zherog]

You might be able to save a few characters by using the "forum" tag in place of the URL tag. For example, instead of:

FB (http://goo.gl/TPzxv)

you could instead use:

FB

Your method appears to be 35 characters; the forum tag cuts that down to 20.

[Trog]

You might be able to save a few characters by using the "forum" tag in place of the URL tag. For example, instead of:

FB (http://goo.gl/TPzxv)

you could instead use:

FB

Your method appears to be 35 characters; the forum tag cuts that down to 20.
O:

I never knew you could even do that. Learn something new everyday. Thanks, Zher! :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: On further inspection this forum tag does not appear to work for some reason. :smallconfused:

[Zherog]

hmmm... maybe it was something specific to WotC's version of vB. I just assumed it was standard to go along with the thread and post tags. Huh. Looks like I'm the one who learned something new... my apologies...

[Trog]

hmmm... maybe it was something specific to WotC's version of vB. I just assumed it was standard to go along with the thread and post tags. Huh. Looks like I'm the one who learned something new... my apologies...
Oh Guinness... how can I stay mad at you? :smalltongue:

[Dallas-Dakota]

You're right, I do love my signature a lot....I can remove one quote...and for the rest, I think i'l just remove subforums from the fast-menu. Even though that'l make it less fast.:smalltongue: I just love the quotes too much.

[Rawhide]

Trog, you do realise that the forum software now has to parse 22 links (convert the [url] tags to <a href= etc HTML code) for that "quick menu" alone, every single time someone loads a page you've posted on once, multiplied by the number of times you posted (8 on the last page, for 176 total), right?

[crimson77]

Trog, you do realise that the forum software now has to parse 22 links (convert the [url] tags to <a href= etc HTML code) for that "quick menu" alone, every single time someone loads a page you've posted on once, multiplied by the number of times you posted (8 on the last page, for 176 total), right?

Does that slow down the server?

[Arbitrarity]

In that it adds an additional 22 transformations between the DB recording of his signature, and the resulting page render, yes.

Actually, I wonder if the server caches signature html while rendering a page....
I guess probably not. That wouldn't be technically trivial if it wasn't built in, and it probably isn't built in. Ah, the wonders of strained server architecture.

[Douglas]

So, let's see if I understand the recent direction of this thread correctly:
Trog: *suggestion that could save some page loads*
Rawhide: That would slow down the server, and the slowdown would be greater than the cost of the saved page loads.
Trog: *proceeds to implement his suggestion in a way that costs even more server resources than Rawhide doing it would have*

Seriously, Trog, Rawhide refused to use your suggestion because it would make the server problems worse, not better, and any attempt you might make to implement it without his level of system access will just have an even greater negative impact (relative to however widespread it gets). If you're doing this to help server performance, you should stop it - it's hurting, not helping. If you're doing it for personal convenience in your own page navigation, I suggest you start using middle-click (which opens the link in a new tab in most current browsers) more - it's what I do for most of my forum navigation, and it means going back to the main forum page is a matter of switching back to a tab I already have open, which takes almost no time at all. Switching back to the main forum page this way also, incidentally, takes no server resources whatsoever.

Oh, and regarding the difference between a list of links and a drop down menu, as far as server performance is concerned it is literally the difference between the server saying "put these in a list" and "put these in a drop down" (translated to computer language, of course) to the client. There is practically no difference at all in work required from the server; all of the work of actually producing a drop down (or list of links) out of the data is done by the client (aka the computer you're using to view the web site).

[Trog]

Trog, you do realise that the forum software now has to parse 22 links (convert the [url] tags to <a href= etc HTML code) for that "quick menu" alone, every single time someone loads a page you've posted on once, multiplied by the number of times you posted (8 on the last page, for 176 total), right?
Hmm... A valid point. I sort of forgot that the forum software had to translate those things each time. For some reason I was thinking of it like html code.

Withdrawn.

EDIT: Well, not the whole "better menu" thing. We still could use that.