Official Luthiers Forum!

I keep a guitar next to the desk, I use the wait time
for added practice time, works fine for me.

Tom

_________________
http://www.moriciguitar.com

     Maybe we could order some cool OLF Fez's and twirl those tassles while we wait! It's good to think laterally!

   I usually open two or three topics and overlay DL time so I hardly notice the OLF creep!

Billy Dean ThomasBilly T38980.1272916667

_________________
Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

I now listen to Don Ross while waiting !

Interesting, I find the site to be very fast. I'm not running a computer that is all that fantastic, just a P4-300, but perhaps my Verizon dsl is just up to the task. I don't have issues at work either, and we run Towerstream wireless dsl there.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I'm running on 2mB broadband and it loads really fast, just as quick as any other site I look at. I do use the active topics button and after reading a thread just hit the back button and I'm back there instantly. No complaints from me. BTW I just run an 1800 AMD system using Netscape.

Colin

OK I just went to the main discussion forum and it took all of 3 secs to load, way way too slow . When I clicked on this thread it too less than a second to load it. Now in my book that's fast enough for anyone, even in the instant gratification world.Colin S38980.4004398148

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

This is really odd, I believe everyones claims that its slow, but I have NEVER experienced it.

I access the OLF from practically every were I go where there is a computer. That includes my home, three different boxes, shop laptop, kitchen laptop, and main desk top all on Comcast DSL with a 6.5 meg connect, my office on ATT DSL, my Dads home, my mother in laws home in a different city than I live in, still on comcast, among other places, and it is always lighting fast.
I don't know a whole lot about SQL/access dbs but I do wonder if there is something going on - on the user side of this?

_________________
Support the OLF! Bookmark our STEWMAC link Today!
Lance@LuthiersForum.com

I find the site to be quite speedy. It does take a few seconds to load a page,
however there is alot on these pages.

William has a good point there, not only a lot of text but also many pics from me sometimes!

I just had a thought.

Maybe more subscriptions would help. Speed costs money!

_________________
now known around here as Pat Foster
_________________
http://www.patfosterguitars.com

i have found this to be slowest forum i have participated in regardless of system/internet access type used, currently 3ghz p4, bellsouth dsl via firefox.

back when i still had dialup, before dsl came to my area, i too went the solitare/minesweeper route or noodled whilst waiting.

now it's too quick for that to be interesting or convenient, but still woefully slow.

if it weren't for the usually... high...quality.... .... sometimes.... i wouldn't bother.

[QUOTE=Brock Poling]It is a project we need to tackle though, and we are gearing up for a solution -- I just don't know what it is going to be yet.
[/QUOTE]

Brock,

I suppose it might end up being how fancy you want the interface to look. Check out the cascading threaded forum at hpmuseum.org. The interface is plain, but it loads really fast. Looks like its all CGI. Chances are an interface such as this could be "pimped up" somewhat without affecting speed. Dunno if you can imbed graphics or emoticons, though.   

Best,

Michael

_________________
Live to Play, Play to Live

Mine is slow at both home and work. I have a new computer on T3 line at work and still doesn't seem to make much difference.

I've been a long time lurker here at the OLF (not a builder, just a fan of the guitar). This thread caught my interest because I've always wondered about the slow performance of the main forum pages while individual threads seem to load quickly.

I selected the Active Topics button as others have suggested and the difference is night and day. Instead of taking 10 to 20 seconds to load, the site now loads instantly! The format may not be quite what everyone wants, but if you've been discouraged with the OLF performance, try the Active Topics button - it's my new bookmark!ScottAllyn38980.4549421296

The only time the forum is really slow on my end is when I clean out the cache in my system. Then it takes forever to reload all the graphics on the site.

Also,The large Photo files in a thread can take as long as 10 minutes to load each photo. If I go to one of these threads and see a bunch of large photos, I don't even bother with it most times.

It's a good forum though, so I just accept the things I cannot change

A couple of points:

1) If, like most of us, you find this place loads slow, try holding down your shift or control key when you click on a link. Depending on your browser, this will open either a new window or new tab for the thread. It'll still load slowly, but the advantage is when you are done with the thread, you don't have to hit the back button and wait 20 seconds. Just close the window or tab. I actually open about 10 links at once, all the threads I am interested in. By the time I've selected the last one, the first one has loaded, so I can read that thread.

2) The active topics page, as Mario points out, doesn't let you see if a thread is popular or not. I agree with him that people don't choose informative thread titles. In the Main discussion forum, you can hover your mouse over a link and see the first line in the thread, which usually tells you if the thread is interesting to you or not. However, on the Active Topics page, hovering over it gives you the topic start date, which is not nearly as useful. Brock, any chance of a 1/2 hour change to make the hovers work like the Main Discussion Forum?

3) If you want to know if a thread has a lot of replies in the Active Topics page, just look at how many replies there are. You don't need a cascade to know that there are a lot of replies.

Here, here. New window is the way to go. MichaelP38980.5080439815

I want to complain about all of the people that are complaining that the OLF is slow. Do you know how long it took me to get here?

However long it takes it's a great forum to get to (Applause for Lance and Brock)

Brock/Lance - perhaps you need to introduce a "Meets Mario's Interest Level" marker on topics in any new software you get

_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

"Fluff" is what gives the OLF heart, IMNSHO.

In Active Topics, I find that the number of posts shown for each topic gives a pretty good indication of its popularity. And you can specify how far back to show Active Topics, up to a month ago. Takes about 1 sec to load the first page.burbank38980.5494675926

_________________
now known around here as Pat Foster
_________________
http://www.patfosterguitars.com

[QUOTE=burbank] "Fluff" is what gives the OLF heart, IMNSHO.[/QUOTE]

Pat, I could not agree more with you LanceK38980.5646180556

_________________
Support the OLF! Bookmark our STEWMAC link Today!
Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Strang, I use an AMD with a 1.2 precessor and this is one of the faster loading Forums, Every now and then though it slows down but most of the time it is quite fast...that is of course when my service provider isn't having trouble which is quite common.

OK, many thanks to everyone that dropped in and to Lance and Brock for putting up with us. Understood about the backend and needing to do the upgrade. I'll play around with using separate pop up windows for threads, sounds like a good idea anyway to reduce server load.

And while we're whining Brock, I've been having this pain in the diodes all up and down my left side, anything you can do about that?

Alan (Whinin' Bees Us) D.

"1) If, like most of us, you find this place loads slow, try holding down your shift or control key when you click on a link. Depending on your browser, this will open either a new window or new tab for the thread.... "

This is actually a pretty good tip...it makes things faster and presumably reduces the load on the server since there are fewer queries.

_________________
David White, Toronto

"All my favourite singers can't sing."

Brock -

If you want to make a project out of transitioning to a new forum
platform, there might be some OLF'ers who are also hackers who could
help. You could set up something of an open-source project - you and
Lance would manage it and set the direction, and OLF'ers who have l33t
ski11z (for the rest of you, that's "good programming ability") could
contribute as they're able.

Just a thought.

Jay

Ecklesweb...I was thinking the same thing! Great idea.

_________________
Brad
Avon, OH

With now 5281 posts under my belt, i'd be crucified or laughed at if i were to complain about the speed here !

Love my OLF and can forgive a lot of things!