Suggestions to possibly make your FR pages load faster [thread II]

Prior thread ^

[Jim Robinson]

Very sorry about the problems with our servers causing FR to get bogged down under peak traffic loads. Praying that John finds a solution or workaround soon.

In the meantime, here are some suggestion you can use to possibly make your FR pages load faster:

1. Configure your sidebars to display fewer items. I've temporarily disabled all sidebars but breaking news on mine.

   Select "Disabled" in the "Region" pulldown for each sidebar block you wish to temporarily disable then click "Modify":

   http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/manage-blocks

2. Reduce the number of threads and replies downloaded on each click. Go to personal preferences and reduce the "Thread Pagination" to 20 messages per page and "Browsing" to 20 results per page.

   http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/settings

3. Update: And a suggestion by metmom is to set your "Brevity" preference to "Headers." This will definitely make your index pages (latest posts, etc) load faster.

   And it’s simply a click to toggle "Brevity" from "Text" to "Headers" or back the other way when needed:

   http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/news-forum/index

4. And for firefox users: KoRn has posted a useful tip to make firefox load pages faster:

   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1299854/posts

If enough of us did this we would reduce the amount of data downloaded on each click, reducing the load on the database and the server and possibly increasing overall systems performance.

To reset your preferences next week after Obama is evicted and the tea party tsunami sweeps the socialists out of office from sea to shining sea, click on "Account" at the top of any of the main index pages and then "Manage Blocks" to configure your sidebars and "My Preferences" to reset your number of threads and replies per thread preferences.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/my/

Also, we have FR contingency standby pages on yahoo and facebook. You may wish to visit and bookmark these pages:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/26012226159/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freerepublic2/

Our system didn't actually crash during the debates, but when a hundred thousand or more users tried to access it all at once during a short two hour window, it bogged down to a crawl. Hopefully it won't do that on election day as the window will not be so short. The news and results will be coming in all day and all night. But if it does crash, we can leave messages on the contingency sites linked above.

Thank you all very much and good luck.

Prayers up for our nation.

[Born to Conserve]

Yadda, yadda, ada, ada, yadda.

[Intolerant in NJ]

I disabled most of my sidebars as suggested - seems to have helped significantly.....

[tommix2]

I switched from internet explorer to Mozilla Firefox browser and T think I am getting better result connecting to Free Republic.

[X-spurt]

Thanks Jim for the info, reconfiged per suggestions and hope it helps. Figured you all were busy as a cat covering it up on a tin roof.

Election night is going to be crazy. Hope the Unable to Connect grey screen is rare.

[ConservativeMan55]

Thank you Jim for all you do!

This site is MUCH appreciated!!!!!

[ConservativeStatement]

Thanks. The suggestions have been followed.

[OneWingedShark]

Uh, c# isn’t a compiled language.

It's a hybrid; it produces bytecode (done via compilation) which is (later) executed in a VM.

And stackoverflow has no problems with it and it handles a ton of traffic.

*Shrug* - Just because it can be done doesn't mean the way it's done is even good.
And being in the SW industry, I think many of the popular methods/solutions are pretty poor -- then again, most all of the projects I've worked on emphasized "do it quick" instead of "do it right"... and I couldn't tell you the number of times the "do it right" approach would have saved time and effort in the long-run -- PHP is a very good example of doing things fast and "easy" but not right.

[gunsequalfreedom]

JimRob,
I’ve been on here since 2000 and love FR. I remember the days when people would forget to switch off the bold and every post after would be bold until one of us switched off.

You fixed that and you will get a handle on this one too.

Again, FR has been a wonderful website. Thanks! Big thanks!

[smith288]

Not discounting your method. I was just demonstrating that a very high trafficked site like SO does a very capable job that uses a common language that many accept. Dapper, is a very slick guy though. Really does a fine job of data layer work and is super flexible. But I’m not gonna get into a nerd pissing match.

[rocksandbroncs]

Just made the changes to Firefox’s configuration you recommended in step #4, Jim, and there was a significant and noticeable change in speed. Very much obliged.

[Mygirlsmom]

Sidebar reconfigured - thanks much Jim!

While we are on this subject, I have what I think is a related question....does anyone know of a way to block images when perusing FR? I often look in on the news at work, and there are images that are frequently not worksite appropriate. I'm using Firefox.

[OneWingedShark]

I was just demonstrating that a very high trafficked site like SO does a very capable job that uses a common language that many accept. Dapper, is a very slick guy though. Really does a fine job of data layer work and is super flexible.

Not saying he didn't do a good job. Some programs are amazingly well built in spite of what was used to build them (i.e. triumph of good design).

Not discounting your method. [...] But I’m not gonna get into a nerd pissing match.

I didn't propose a method. But if it's interesting to you you can read/compare items under the Concurrency Category of Rosetta-code. Granted this has the disadvantage of being non-complex systems (non real-life scenarios). There's also an interesting paper on the differences between Java and Ada concurrency (though the title says C#, no C# was actually given [perhaps because the style of parallelization for C# and Java is the same?]).

[Java4Jay]

Purchase more servers

[Straight Vermonter]

FWIW, my speed really improved when I disabled the keywords at the top of the “Latest Posts” page.

[JoeProBono]

How?

[Straight Vermonter]

Go here: http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/manage-blocks

[generally]

Fellow FReepers, even if your speed is fine, if you implement these suggestion it reduces demand on the system and thus helps us all.

Highly recommended!

I implemented these changes and my load time went from agonizingly slow, to pretty good. Not blindingly fast, but really quite good.

Thanks, Jim. And thanks to all who made suggestions.

Now I’m over to the Firefox thread to see what else I can do.

[21stCenturion]

...

[Excellence]

I still think that, as it is your web-site, you should be able to toggle off all of the bells and whistles if traffic gets over a certain number of hits per minute or second or some such thing.
Not logging in unless absolutely necessary also helps.

[GotGlock?]

For Safari and mac users try this it worked for me.

Quit Safari
Open a Terminal window.
Type the following: defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.25

You can substitute 0.25 for any numerical value from 0 to 1 seconds (e.g 0.5 or 0.75.) 1 is the default.
Press enter to save.
Close the Terminal application and re-launch Safari.
Test for changes