Problems with this website

For awhile I have had problems with the Guru website. Mainly, pages have been taking very long to load for me. I wait patiently for each page but it's a bit annoying. I spend a lot of time here so giving up this site is not an answer.

Does anyone else have this problem? Is there a setting or two I can change to make the pages load faster?

Thanks.

Same here, it's taking upto a minute to open each page and quite often I get this :-

Given the hundreds, sometimes thousands of people that view the site at once, there is probably very little you can do. I've messed with templates to try and fine the least graphically intense, in the hopes it ups server response time; significant difference? Eh.

I suppose this is part of the price we pay reading and posting on one of (if not the) most popular fansite on the web.

Guru was actually fairly quick/stable until just before Factions was released, search worked (the old decent version) load times were acceptable, so if your join date is after Feb-Mar 2006 you are to blame

Yeah, it's ultra-slow, and oftentimes my browser just times out and I have to refresh the page. It's also pretty often that it times out after I post (usually a long message) and I have to re-type the whole thing. I've gotten smart and now I copy my posts to the clipboard before I click the submit button. Still, it seems like they need to add another server or two to the ol' cluster (assuming there is one). That's not a cheap prospect, though.

I also have much problems from time to time. For some reason the reply from the webserver gets corrupted, and firefox offers to download it. WHen I open the file in notepad it is completely empty. (See Azagoth's screenshot)

Please fix this.

it's really fast for me in the morning (gmt) when I got to work, then as the afternoon draw closer guru starting to get slower and slower, then the page won't load anymore in the afternoon. I guess most user just log on at the same time and the server just kinda give in.

Are there any specific maintenance periods? Sometimes I get an error, where GWGuru won't load at all ( forgot to take screenshots, though iirc there was a message that the incident was recorded and sent to technical support, or something along those lines ). They occasionally happen on non-peak times.

I just open them in a batch...once the first page loads, the rest of them loads too...

Yes, the server goes down around 11,30-12Pm GMT for any data repair etc

Anybody know where the server(s) are physically located? This seems like a load issue to me (as opposed to net traffic) as I've used the site from various locations throughout the USA and it's pretty much universally slow as molasses. Some times of day are better than others, but there never seems to be a time that it has (what I would consider) an acceptable response time.

The auction system is even worse. I hardly bother using it because it can take several minutes to load each page...if it loads at all. It just times out about 35% of the time and I have to keep refreshing it until it finally loads.

Of course it's a load issue, where have you been for the last year or so? a lot of people use this site, at peak hours it will be slow. There is nothing that can be done.

Me to, realy slow website. Can sompthing be done about it?

Yes, of course it is. I was just trying to say it in a way that wouldn't be quite so offensive to the nice folks that run the site. It doesn't seem like much revenue is brought in by the site, so I'm assuming they have free ad-based hosting or some generous person (or evil corporation ) is funding the hosting.

Yes, something can be done. However, it would cost money. Server infrastructure can be strengthened, but in the case of a pure load issue you have to add more servers, which can be pretty expensive. If they want to add servers to a cluster all servers have to be identical in most cases. Web farms can work well too as long as there is a central data store for session data. Since this site is a stateful environment, running a farm is a bit more complicated than it is on completely stateless sites.

Actually, I believe that happens when the connection times out. Firefox and other browsers will only wait so long until it gives up.

The .php download thing only seems to happen with vBulletin boards when the connection times out.

yes slow....and trying to click on an image stored on this site is the WORST...I mean for most people they can up load an image and we see it when the page loads, some people use imagesuck or photobutt, but others of us dont have that option so we have to wait...................



and wait...........................



................................................an d wait................

and hope that the image loads before the thing crashes with the white page of death......

now that takes the cake. wait for the image to load only to have the white page of death....and never get to see the image as well.

but I have complained about that in another thread and no one seems to care about images. (but me, the one who cant put images into threads and cant have an outside hosting site )

Just again the trouble returned:

Loading pages takes ages.
Loading pages takes ages, and fails. (Firefox offers an empty page as download)
Loading pages takes ages, fails with a message that the domain does not respond.

An Elite site should not have these type of problems. I just ask that Guru fix the problem as I enjoy the site when it is working properly.

I respond to concerns and questions on this subject and have acknowledged many times the problems this site has. We have numerous threads on this, as evidence that you are posting in one and don't need another thread started. If you are truly invested in helping with the problem then simply state the time and the problem and it allows us to track down more specific problems that are appearing.

Does this site has more visitors than google? hotmail?

How do these sites manage their loads? Quite simply, they have the mula to invest in the networking needed. The more people that visit the site, the slower it gets... of course, the more people that visit, the more money the site brings in from donations and advertisement as well. It would at least be nice to know that my (and others) monetary contributions to the site are going to help fix this problem, instead of in someones pocket...

If there's nothing that can be done I'll stop donating. thx for the info.