HydrogenAudio

I want to know what you think about the loading time of this site.  Is it fast enough for you?  Does it compare favorably with other sites you visit regularly?  Is it speedy even on dialup?

whoaah. One vote for "Speedy" resulting in 100%. I guess this is the first time I dominated a poll result like this ;-)

Hehe.. that was pretty fast, I believe the poll was only up for like a minute when you submitted your vote.  It should be interesting to see how many votes I get on this...

The site seems very fast at the moment -- and progressively renders well (sections display as they are loading, and the ancient version of Netscape I have at work is very happy).

It'll be interesting to see how the speed scales as this board becomes more popular -- you have an awful lot of features, and I imagine some of them are quite processor intensive.

Originally posted by Jon Ingram
The site seems very fast at the moment -- and progressively renders well (sections display as they are loading, and the ancient version of Netscape I have at work is very happy).

It'll be interesting to see how the speed scales as this board becomes more popular -- you have an awful lot of features, and I imagine some of them are quite processor intensive.

Yeah.  I think it will do well even under a pretty full load.  I've taken steps to try and find a good, reliable, and fast host and cut down bandwidth usage as well as attempt to keep the code running pretty fast.  I believe that trying to do this ahead of time will make quite a difference overall.

I honestly have never experienced a forum that's this fast. Care to let us in on your secrets?

John

Originally posted by Keynes
I honestly have never experienced a forum that's this fast. Care to let us in on your secrets?

Thanks.  The forum software on its own seems to be pretty quick, but as far as loading time goes, mod_gzip for Apache helps with that quite a bit, especially on dialup.  Then I'm also using Zend Optimizer which speeds up the php code a bit and lowers cpu usage.

Actually it's pretty fast, but the "Thx, Your Vote has been added" stuff isn't necessary, I think. That's the only thing I don't like.

Hope I could help,

Baddezzed aka doofus2 (dialup user)

Like most sites HA is sometimes fast and sometimes slow.

But I am getting tired of clicking the redundant links: Click here if you don't want to wait... why would I EVER want to wait?

"Thanks for bumping this thread"

I hadn't voted on this yet, hehe. I don't really notice any difference after the server change, HA for me (56K dial-up) is still "quite speedy" most of the time.

It's very speedy for me, it's good like that for me

very fast, faster than the old ha (tested on dialup and with fast connection), where is this new server located?

It's pretty fast on my 56k dial-up even with images enabled in Opera.

Better than the previous HA board. Thank you Dibrom !

very fast, faster than the old ha (tested on dialup and with fast connection), where is this new server located?

Yeah... not only is the forum software substantially faster than vb (and it just got faster with the latest update! (w00t) ), but the server is way faster than the old one  About the fastest transfer rates I've gotten out of it were 6.2MB/sec (yes, Megabytes) from apache.org when I was downloading an update

The server is located somewhere on the US west coast I believe, probably in or near the CA Bay Area or something.

This is the fastest board that I visit. Thanks for keeping the site fast and professional  Also aren't these so called "redundant links" necessary to keep the forum in synch with the user's browser?

This is the fastest board that I visit. Thanks for keeping the site fast and professional   Also aren't these so called "redundant links" necessary to keep the forum in synch with the user's browser?

I second that -- this is the fastest web-based board I'm currently using, especially in the time it takes between posting and the post actually appearing (nearly instantaneous).

This is the fastest board that I visit. Thanks for keeping the site fast and professional  :)

Thanks

Also aren't these so called "redundant links" necessary to keep the forum in synch with the user's browser?

Yes, pretty much.  All web forums have this really.  It might be possible to remove it, but I suspect that would cause problems with some browsers and/or other aspects of the forum software.  In other words, that's just the way it goes

Seems pretty fast to me!

Unfortunately I am not here as often as I would like, but I think the site runs pretty smooth.

Quite Fast ... even for my slow ass dialup when I am home for the holidays w/da Parents.

I guess It has to deal w/my other boards ppl have sigs that are jpeg & take up bw. O well.

Nice Work though

No complaints here.

Of course, being the PNG zealot that I am, I'd love to see all the GIF graphics here converted into nice, tiny, cute (yes cute) PNG files, for even faster loading .

Portal, Foruns and Active Topics, all have good speed.
No complaints. Nice job guys.(Opera 6.05)

LIF

Quite a fast board... Comparable to some of the boards I visit that use vbulletin. I use 56k and avoid many boards because of their speed.

This site is responsive on my cable connection, but maybe this has something to do with the fast hosting service.

I have been optimizing a dynamic website for my company because modem users have been complaining about long load times. I altered the sourcecode and dropped the generated-HTML filesize (on the page that was the most troublesome) from 100k to 65k just by eliminating the extra whitespace.

I downloaded the sourcecode for this thread, and it was a 106k textfile. Simply stripping out excess tabs and spaces dropped that to 93k. My guess is that the server is told to output text to the browser exactly as it is typed into the sourcecode, whitespace formatting and all. So, for a 10% increase in speed, I recommend that an administrator go to the site's tag generating code and remove any whitespace characters where the code tells the forum software to directly output HTML tags.

Example (I don't know phpBB syntax):

<!-- print directly to browser -->
<table>
     <tr>
            <td>
            <td>
     </tr>
</table>
<!-- now go back to the script -->

Should be:

<table><tr><td><td></tr></table>

Another thing: what about putting all the stylesheets data into a separate .css file (the same goes for the javascript)? Then the browser can cache that data and not reload it with every page.

And finally, I'm not sure if this is my browser's (IE6) fault or what, but many of the links seem to have an "absolute" address, rather than a "relative" address. Example:

Flag: <img src='http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/html/flags/blank.gif' align='top' border='0'>

could be

Flag: <img src='/html/flags/blank.gif' align='top' border='0'>

All other optimizations would require a lot more work. For example, any properties that's applied to all <td>'s could just be applied once to a <tr>. And then there's the option of throwing out all the table tags and switching to pure CSS layout... (I've toyed with that on my site... waaaay too much work! Going from tables to CSS for layout is like learning how to walk again! )

Most of these types of modifications require significant amounts of work.  I would have to go through and completely overhaul the system templates to do these sort of thing (remove all whitespaces, modify the stylesheet system, etc).  I just can't see the possible small benefit as being worth the massive effort it would take.  These sorts of things would also create quite a problem when attempting to update any of the forum software here as I would basically have to make the changes all over again every time.

Runs a bit slow some of the time on my 56K, but i guess thats just the image's which i could disable if i was really that bothered!


On the topic of the spaces et cetera in the code,  wouldn't that all be negligble when using mod_gzip as it would compress it anyway??


Cheers,

Kristian

Working smooth as silk over my dial-up connection! Good work compressing the amount of information needed to be sent over the net to my computer. Why don't all website use that GZip server plugin (I think that what it was called) save bandwidth and speed up connections.

Laters

Most of these types of modifications require significant amounts of work.  I would have to go through and completely overhaul the system templates to do these sort of thing (remove all whitespaces, modify the stylesheet system, etc).  I just can't see the possible small benefit as being worth the massive effort it would take.  These sorts of things would also create quite a problem when attempting to update any of the forum software here as I would basically have to make the changes all over again every time.

A few quick tests to see how I could reduce the HTML-output filesize...

Original full-length thread: 105k
Disabling session ID in links: -5k
Removing excess whitespace: -14k
Removing styles (i.e. externalizing them): -4k
Removing javascript (i.e. moving to separate .js): -0.5k

Some of these techniques have very little effect on the output filesize, but others could be fixed by Invision in five minutes. Throwing out all the spaces and tabs in front of each table cell tag, and moving all the stylesheet code to a .css file, would reduce the total board bandwidth by 15-30% (depending on the length of the threads).

I will check out their support forums and see if this lack of optimization has been discussed before...

EDIT: Ohhh is this site using gzip? That would explain why the modem users are so happy, and make most of this whitespace discussion moot. I played around with my "Enable HTTP 1.1" option in Internet Explorer, but my connection is so fast that I can't tell the difference.
EDIT2: Okay, the issue of external CSS has been discussed on their support forum before. Apparently it becomes both a compatibility and a flexibility problem if you put all that stuff in a .css file.

Gzipped the original page: 12.5k. Gzipped the "stripped down" page: 10.6k. Whoopie.

Sorry for making a fuss about something that really doesn't matter. 

I'm curious about how much web design is original to this site. I've been checking out the Invision software (specifically because of this site) and to be honest, I see very little more here than what comes out of their box. It sounds like most of the optimizations are on the back end (mod_gzip, Zend) instead of in the actual site design.

Speaking of, where can I go to learn more about this mod_gzip thing that seems to make all of the dial-up users so happy? (I'm about to Google "Zend", too.) I think I'm about to start some serious development on a community site and want to have a solid basis first.

I'm curious about how much web design is original to this site. I've been checking out the Invision software (specifically because of this site) and to be honest, I see very little more here than what comes out of their box. It sounds like most of the optimizations are on the back end (mod_gzip, Zend) instead of in the actual site design.

Of course most of the stuff on this site is based on the invision software + hacks.  To do otherwise would require a significant amount of reinventing the wheel.  HA could always do with another skin or something, but that's another story.  However, there are a handful of customized hacks that I've installed in the software to make things behave a little different (a little better IMO).

Speaking of, where can I go to learn more about this mod_gzip thing that seems to make all of the dial-up users so happy? (I'm about to Google "Zend", too.) I think I'm about to start some serious development on a community site and want to have a solid basis first.

A google search should bring up the homepage for mod_gzip, which is an addon module for Apache 1.  If you're using Apache 2, you don't need mod_gzip (there isn't one for it actually).  With Apache 2, you just use the built in filter system to compress the output or something like that.  I forget the details.. I'd tell you exactly how to do it if I had my Apache book in front of me

The site is very speedy for me and doesn't hang at all and since most users have a Cable/DSL connection anyway I don't really see the point in crippling...  ehh... optimizing the HTML code.
If there really is a need for more speed Dibrom should think about integrating a minimal skin for those on slow connections.

dev0

If there really is a need for more speed Dibrom should think about integrating a minimal skin for those on slow connections.

I saw a really cool text-only skin once for the iBF software.  I really would like to have something like that as an alternative at some point, but there are so many other things on the to-do list also.  In the end, I can't imagine that the text-only skin would benefit users as much as some of the other things we have planned.  Maybe someday though...

HA is typically very speedy, however in the last three weeks I've noticed a drastic slow down, such as some pages taking 60 to 90 seconds to load -- this I've noticed at various hours such as after 12AM (U.S. CST) and after 6AM (U.S. CST).

I realize the problem could be with my ISP since I do have a slow 56k connection.

Actually, I would revise my vote if I could. Having been watching the site's speed closely in the past few weeks, I can quite safely say that HA is the fastest site I visit regularly. Even on my crappy 56K modem, threads are loaded *very* fast.

Whoa slow down pls!

I have 56K dialup here and I'm feeling the speed 

The forum pages at http://www.dslreports.com/forums/all (http://www.dslreports.com/forums/all) load very fast, but this one sure is faster!

This forum never timed out or refused connection even once, and speed is very good. Great job

Oh, I'm on 768/128 ADSL.

For 56k users, it is an absolute godsend

HA is typically very speedy, however in the last three weeks I've noticed a drastic slow down, such as some pages taking 60 to 90 seconds to load -- this I've noticed at various hours such as after 12AM (U.S. CST) and after 6AM (U.S. CST).

I realize the problem could be with my ISP since I do have a slow 56k connection.

Same for me, but (at work) I have ISDN connection...

damjang