Very, very slow loading today, particularly bad this evening with up to 30-seconds wait to get content displayed after border material appears. Using high-speed cable modem, so...

Congratulations, Randy. All is forgiven for the "slow posting" problems.

I'm guessing that the slowness of the site has more to do with how the newly-arrayed pages load on different computers. Reasonably fast on my office P4 with a T-3 line but slower-than-slow on my home Power Mac G3 with fast DSL. Unless it gets better, I have to revert to the PC for FT which is a hard sell for a Mac fan :(

For me the site has been a lot slower since the silly looking new Olive Oil and Popeye bar was added across top page along with the banner.

The new over-sized (and surely way too large?) addition does not seem to move or jump around, and should not affect speed, but that seems to be the only thing that changed.

I noticed in the past 10 minutes that those horrendously annoying emoticon smileys are apparently gone, (HURRRRRRAH!) so maybe we'll see a pick up in speed?

Man, I'm bummed, or maybe i should be happy. Oz, that's me and Olive Oil at the top of the page. Actually it's connected to the navigationbar and doesn't hang that much at all below the FT logo. The Web site speed was apparent before we loaded the new navigation bar on interior pages, so i think it is more related to the increase in traffic - yesterday was the third highest day ever for new members and the second highest day ever for user activity, All week long we've been hammered with peak traffic. While running some pretty good servers at FT, I'll look to see what we can do to tweak more performance or see what else is new for faster servers since it is likely the traffic will continue to grow on FT.

As for the cartoon characters - when we were in beta for a makeover for FT, we presented to a bunch of members of FT various prototypes for the new look - with and without the Olive Oil graphics and what you see was overwhelmingly the choice of those members (I think about 50 of them at random, long time members, international, US and Canada and even members we picked from new enrollees with us only for less than a month but with several posts, etc) who agreed to test things.

We've gotten a lot of positive feedback from the new front page so let's get used to this and see what the feed back is over time.

Thanks for the observing eye. Now, don't you think the popeye guy looks more like me? HA! Happy New Year.

Still very slow this morning here.

The old problem has returned for me the last couple of days. FlyerTalk sailing smoothly along, punctuated by occasional 3 minute periods of complete non-activity about once every 20-30 minutes.

Just keeps stalling and then restarting for me. When it's not stalled, it works fine.

Regarding the top bar, I think it is an excellent idea to have a consistent navigation structure that integrates the content pages and the forum (I believe a certain someone, probably among many others, might have suggested that in the past, actually ;)).

However, I would suggest to perhaps have a look into how the different elements could be integrated a bit differently from a design perspective - right now, the top banner, the side banner, the navigation bar and the forum elements look disintegrated on a standard 1024 x 768 screen. This could probably be adjusted with a relatively small effort in terms of redesign. Just my 0.000002 cents :). Also, I am not sure if the navigation bar is already 100 % optimized in terms of being "light" (kb) - the different images and elements combined do add up to a few kb.

Randy C'mon even YOU have more hair than that Popeye character. ;)

Great to hear the front page is getting such a good rap - my comment (and others) is why does each internal page need a large FT graphic (as well as paid banner) that takes up most of the screen, when less deep sized navigation tabs worked fine before?

Still very slow today for me, to echo last few posts of Premex and Chuck.

I am not technical minded at all, but do wonder if those smiley/emoticon flash banners are slowing things? You may recall there was a huge sized banner a year or so back that many reported slowing things. When Dan/Mikel got rid of it, reports were things sped up for many users.

Those smileys (apart from being incredibly irritating) seem to take over the screen, and even when you navigate to send an email to members, or similar off board stuff, seem to 'overhang' that page, so I have Little doubt there is a VERY large amount of graphics and code in them compared to the more usual static banners.

If the ad company is paying you many times more than usual for the smileys, and that pays the bills ...... more power to you. But if they are only paying regular rates can someone PLEEZE ask for a change of scenery? :D

Dan/Randy/John,

My experience mirrors PremEx's. Right now again it's taking 30-60 seconds to open any page and that long to post too.

Is there something sporadic in your servers that slows things down somehow?

This site has become very annoying with all the pop up crap on it and those stupid smileys. It is running so slow now it hardly makes it worthwhile visiting as you end up totally wound up at the end.

Makes we wonder who and why, put those pathetic adverts in place.

It's slow AFTER the page has loaded.
 

I have no problem with "olive oil" or "popeye"; I like the short cuts on the navigation bar being available.

It's the flash ads that are slowing the pages down.

The web scripts being loaded for each page, while large, run ok.

I'll use the navigation bar as an example. Without setting the Flash Quality on Each of the adverts to low, If I "mouse over" to, say, "Extras" it takes up to 2 seconds for the 11 options from "blogs @..." to "Town Hall" to appear. After setting the adverts to low quality, the same menu appears in less than half a second.

The same for most other screen activities. It's really most noticable when editing a post. Click the Quote Icon and wait for the disolg box to appear. Sometime, quite often there is a noticable time lag with even simple keystrokes.

I've taken to using Flyer Talk Archives (AKA FT Lite) to get around the problem; but this really is not the solution.

As I wrote in a related post, I will not be using any of these 'smileys' as these ads simply have a negative impact on me.

Agree. Lots on FT simply lurk and browse so it may not impact them.

Those that actually post and edit seem to ber getting slowed up most from my experience, and it does seem to co-incide with the Smiley Emoticon flash ads being on line.

Try using the Firefox Browser (www.mozilla.org) and install the ....... plugin. Then just right click on any ad or image you don't want to see and it's gone. For good.

I really thought ....... was just something for geeks, but it really is a great and simple to use program for firefox.

https://addons.update.mozilla.org/ex...=Windows&id=10

Things MUCH faster for me now those space hogging irritating smiley emoticon flash ads are gone.

Thanks to the techies for moving on this so fast. ^ ^ ^

What he said! :)

When I use a older (but perfectly functional!) Mac (7500 PPC with a 400 MHz G4 upgrade) running on OS 9.1 and use IE 5.1, the new FlyerTalk is painfully sssssslllllloooooowwwwww!!

Fortunately I have other machines, but is there a reason the above machine should have been so hindered by the "new" FT?

If Flyertalk is fast enough for you on a new machine and dog slow on an old machine then the answer is that the older machine is too slow.

I know for example that web browsing on my iBook G3 366 is very slow, while the emac G4 1.25 that I use hear at work is really pleasantly fast.

I think I need a new computer at home! :D

A lot of that is asking the folks in Marketing to contact the ad agency and remind them of the "No Flash Rule" on FT so share you kudos with them!

:D

me also!
 

and I can't afford an upgrade -

and FYI I have not been able to stick w/ logging in but once every day or 2/...it doesn;t hang but it takes waaaaaayyyy too long

my experiences....

powermac g3, os9.2.2 with both ie 5.17 & ns 4.77

the version of netscape is ancient and it works extremely fast

ie on the other hand has the major slowdown problems (45 seconds to load on dsl where before it was not even 6 seconds) and it has been since whatever enhancements were made but i've been able to isolate a few things.

the advertising banners at the top of the page cause some of the loading problems (and the all pages "flash" as they load-part the page loads-flash to a blank screen, more of the page loads-flash to a blank screen, etc....

now, if i disable the following preferences (plug ins, scripting & activeX) there is some speed up but not as it was before the enhancements.

just my observations but i think it is an explorer issue which doesn't like the enhancements

Hey ... I have TONS of Kudos to go around. :)

Kudos to EVERYONE in FT Admin that helped clean this up. :p

And I take it from your "No Flash Rule" on FT note that flash ads should NOT be appearing in future? ^

well, whatever the case may be, I am writing this a little more than exasperated at waiting over 1 minute just now to open a new thread on the UA forum (I was really interested in the blackberry for 1ks offer - while waiting for FT, I opened the link on UAL.com's 1K site...and read and signed up for the offer while FT was still trying to load up the thread). I disabled flash, run an adblocker, have a fast machine and a high bandwidth bb line. I know this is a free site and I really appreciate it...and will support it through thick and thin...however, the last few weeks have been really tiresome. I find myself reading the forums less and less...it's already hard to find time to read and sometimes contribute.

Anyway, hope this all works out!

I just came to this forum to post that I was in a different city on a friend's computer and DSL connection and I experienced the same thing as above and in my previous posts...intermitent complete stalls of FlyerTalk. Very frustrating.

What PremEx said goes for me too.

There is something in FT's setup that is causing this intermittent -- but consistent and widespread! -- problem.

And I too have ads turned off, have edited my hosts file to re-direct all the tribalfusion ads, etc., etc.

Some of us -- no, lots of us! -- would PAY real money for an ad-less FT.

Yes I second thast. I'd gladly subscribe to FT...I have gained so much here in real value it'll be worth paying for.

This happening to me also :confused:

I also get a blank page that occasionally loads. The Forum header is on it, but nothing else.

M8

Ditto on that for me too.

I'm on a T-1 running IE6.0.2800 with AdSubtract Pro enabled and up-to-date. Over the past few days I've been getting page load failures on FT, particularly when replying to a thread, but the reply still posts. I have to refresh my session in order to see the FT screen again.

(Edited to add following)
Happened again on above post. Error "Cannot find server or DNS error" screen came up after submitting post. Pressed IE's refresh key. Got FT screen with vBulletin error message: "Invalid thread specified. If you followed a valid link please notify the webmaster."

Restarted FT and found original message above had successfully posted. Reentered this thread to edit this message; thread had still not loaded all the way at 45 seconds then I took a nature break. Came back and edited this message.

I Give Up!
 

I have doen everything suggested - I went to netscape 4.77 and if I*use it, the speed to read is OK it won't let me post anything - reply or new topic. If I stick with IE on mac 9x it's too slow and now DOES just about hang. i've PM's John at WebFlyer to see if there are any other options but i may have to give up FT if this isn't solvable. I clear my cache every session, don;t have any other windows open etc.

HELP! While those of you who dont care for my moderation may be clicking your heels I would be very sad ot give up on FT!

It's not just you. The site has been unbearably slow lately.

I don't know if it's strictly related, but I want to say that the big slowdowns corresponded to the introduction of the new page header. How big are those images? They don't seem to cache either.

I'm on the same computer I've always been on, a Toshiba tablet < 2 years old, and I don't notice this being a problem with any other sites.

Hoping the team can figure something out...

Thanks

It's getting slower and slower... Post replies time out too...

Here too. :(

Same here, most of the evening.

I'm a frequent reader, sometime poster -- the site is so slow lately (AARGH!) that I was forced to look for this forum...

I surf at work, on break or at lunchtime. I'm with a big corporation with a nice speedy network connection, IBM laptop with XP, and IE the only choice. Our sys admin is pretty strict, so options for any tech remedies are about zero here. My problem is that all FT pages are very slow-loading -- though the ads seem to have first priority to pop up. I understand that ads help to cover costs of this terrific forum, but they really should can the glitz.

FT used to be fine. Given all the posts to this thread, it seems I'm not alone in suspecting the Flash animations and bulky banners to be the issue. They are SOOOO annoying that I will resist their message. Even those dancing iPods.

I'm surprised that the tech department, who is understandably devoted to their Macs, does not also have a MS/IE setup around the shop for testing. Because no doubt, the ad agency that is creating these monsters is also using Mac. Help us please! It's so frustrating!

Keep us updated as to what you see now.

We are looking at different sources of problems.

We do.

We don't believe that it is the ads.

Thanks,
John

Starting about a month ago, FT has been slow for me, in the same way as others describe, though I've made no changes technically on my end. Today and this week especially, it's horribly slow.

Just did a little testing from a University computer lab with a very fast connection and high-end machines and it was very slow.

It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the actual loading of the page. It's in the contact period with the server, waiting for a reply and negotiation that takes a long time.