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.

Now, suddenly, I swear, since I posted my message, FT is back to normal. Did somebody tweak something?

It may be slightly faster, but it is still taking MUCH longer to open posts and to reply than, say, a month ago.

Yes, whatever is happening is intermittent which makes it that much harder to diagnose naturally. It is seeming to us that there are several things that we need to do to continue improving -- some of those things are fast and easy to implement, others are harder to put in place. Thanks for the patience and the help.

John

It is extremely slow for me on both my home & office computers. They are both P4's - 2.53 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. I am on DSL lines at both locations and it makes no difference if I am using IE6 or Firefox.

Tried switching browsers (to IE6 from our usual Netscape 7.2) to see if FT runs a bit faster, and it does show some improvement, though not as fast as it used to be. Also because it's late here (3:50 AM on the east coast) and not as many people on FT as at other times of day, it's not a completely valid comparison, but it is slightly faster at this time. Will try this browser versus Netscape again during the day when FT is busier to see if there's a difference then.

Using a dial-up connection on my Windows 98.

bj-21.