Not a criticism - just a question
Wed, 2012-10-17 13:10
#1
Not a criticism - just a question
Wed, 2012-10-17 13:13
#2
Why is rabble.ca sometimes so slow that it doesn't load at all? And why is it slower than the rest of the internet a significant percentage of the time?
This isn't an "upgrade" question. The upgrade may or may not have aggravated the phenomenon. One thing for sure, it didn't fix it.
I think, in the interest of transparency, users and sustainers of rabble ought to be confided in.
Wed, 2012-10-17 13:38
#3
Boom Boom
I had trouble posting an hour ago, kept getting the "Page Unavailable" message. Seems okay now. But it's irritating to get that g-d message.
Wed, 2012-10-17 13:49
#4
Speed, posting and posters has gone down appreciably since the upgrade. This is not a casual correlation.
Sat, 2012-10-27 13:23
#5
I love it!
Now, would it be possible to get an answer to the question which I posed in the OP?
PS: This problem has nothing to do with babble. The problem is with rabble.ca. I give money every year, besides being a loyal supporter in other ways. Please tell me (and the rest of us) what the problem is and what measures are being taken to resolve it. Thanks in advance.
Sat, 2012-10-27 13:33
#6
Unionist, try clearing your browser's cache and cookies. If that doesn't work, try an orange boxing glove on one hand and ping pong paddle in the other and reciting the words, Fishy, fishy, fishy oh! I wonder where my fishy GOes?
Sat, 2012-10-27 13:39
#7
Unionist, try clearing your browser's cache and cookies.
Fidel, that might help with login issues - but I'm not having login issues. This was pure internet connectivity with rabble.ca, not just babble.
Oh, and for what it's worth, the problem seems to recur about the same time every day - around 1 pm eastern time, give or take. Yesterday it was just search and searching till it timed out. And the problem doesn't last very long - as if someone is doing tests at the server level.
Now, of course, it's back to normal (normal slow).
ETA: I will, however, try the [i]fishy fishy[/i] workaround next time, as you suggested.
Sat, 2012-10-27 13:50
#8
Does it happen with a simple page request or refresh, or does it happen after hitting the save button to post a message?
It happens with page requests and refreshes. I've even manually typed rabble.ca in the url bar just to be sure I wasn't imagining things. It's connectivity pure and simple. As for the posting, that's when people sometimes get "Validation error bla bla", which is curable by flushing your cache.
I just wish someone would raise the question with the techies and ask them why this is happening. The bigger question is - why is it always slower than most of the rest of the internet.
Sat, 2012-10-27 13:52
#9
Does it happen with a simple page request or refresh, or does it happen after hitting the save button to post a message? Or is it common to both rabble.ca page and babble page requests alike? Because that does sound funny funnily enough.
I'll admit the 1 pm EST correlation does sound fishpicious, though. They should schedule that event, whatever it is, for a more convenient time, like between 3 and 4 am or so.
Sat, 2012-10-27 14:01
#10
Unionist, I fully concur, and thank you for this thread.
It would be helpful if our techies could come here and answer our specific questions about what is wrong concerning our slow or almost impossible to access site which has just about killed participation at babble.
Sat, 2012-10-27 14:18
#11
I think web stuff is a lot of work and can be slow going at times. It's been a while since I did and only dabbled with it. I'm going to have to cut them some slack as a result. I do know that sometimes errors which do not show with testing from a few client machines will not surface until going live with a full load with the thing. In which case the techies will be saying odd things about now, like, Oh bugger!
If techies are looking at this thread, I've been receiving this message with every other post attempt and for some time now:
[color=red]Validation error, please try again. If this error persists, please contact the site administrator.[/color]
Is there a timer variable set to time-out too soon or something?
Of course, I often take some extra time typing a message and especially with this new laptop pc with its dinky keyboard setup. Gah!
Sat, 2012-10-27 14:26
#12
Boom Boom
I think it's a great idea to have some techie participation in this thread and the "site comments" thread - Mods, can we do this? Just schedule a time, I'll be here for sure.
ETA: With my luck and the way things have been going here, I'd probably not be to access babble on whatever day is specified for the techie participation.
Sat, 2012-10-27 14:49
#13
Okay I've taken my own and Unionist's advice to clear rabble cookies and cache. I'll see how that GOes.
Sat, 2012-10-27 14:50
#14
Catchfire
Hi everyone,
I haven't responded to each complaint about site load times and validation errors because we've been experiencing this problem for many weeks and it's still the same problem. There are only so many times I can call our Tech guy up and inform him the upgrade was a mistake, and has been a mistake since 2008. I have tried to explain the problem as best I can, but here is the information I recieved verbatum a few weeks ago:
Starting Thursday, Oct 17th, some users may again start to experience
'Validation Errors' when they are posting content.
In part of our ongoing work to track and eliminate this bug in our site,
we recently disabled part of our caching system that was linked to these
errors.
The result has been that the site has been under increased load for
logged in users, and site responsiveness has gone down for everyone.As we enable this caching again some users will unfortunately get the
error occasionally when posting.
We're continuing to work on the issue as a high priority item.While we don't know the exact conditions that create this error, it's
been found to often happen when (but not exclusively):
1) a user has a content creation form open for 'too long'.
2) you get another error after uploading an image.If you do get this error, the solution is to:
1) logout of rabble.ca
2) log back in
3) create a new piece of content and copy and paste your text into itNote: If this problem is happening to you, it's wise to prepare your
content in a simple text editor first.
Some users have also claimed that switching browsers helped (but we
don't have proof this works, and doesn't seem depended on browser at least)It helps us if you can report validation errors with a full screenshot
and any other info you have such as web browser version.
You can send this info to [email protected]
Sat, 2012-10-27 15:05
#15
Catchfire, with the greatest of respect, that entire text deals with an entirely different problem than the one I identified here. I know you can only relay what you've been told, but I specifically opened this thread to try to separate the issue of SLOW OR NO CONNECTIVITY TO RABBLE.CA from issues relating strictly to babble. The issue you cited involves only posting. Not connecting. Thanks for trying, and I'll keep trying as well.
Sat, 2012-10-27 15:21
#16
Catchfire
From what I understand, Unionist, the issues are connected: the validation errors come from a bug that we don't quite understand. So to fix it, the techies disabled the software we were using to cache our site. Caching has the largest part to play in site load times, so that each page doesn't have to assemble each time its loaded and can instead be loaded straight from our cache. But the fix the validation error caused unacceptable load times, so we unfixed the bug--but now the site has to re-cache all the things it had cached before, so its still a bit slow at times. Also, since we're still trying to fix the first bug, occasionally we're tinkering with the cache software too, which exacerbates the slow load times we're already experiencing.
Does that make sense?
Sat, 2012-10-27 15:26
#17
Yeah, sort of. It means they must be turning the caching on and off frequently, to explain the random and sporadic load times. But given that I know how to fix the validation errors on my own, I know which problem I'd rather live with .
Sat, 2012-10-27 15:53
#18
Boom Boom
Okay I've taken my own and Unionist's advice to clear rabble cookies and cache. I'll see how that GOes.
Just wondering - isn't that done automatically when I run a cleaning program like Crap Cleaner that deletes my history, various cahces, cookies, and other stuff?
Sat, 2012-10-27 16:01
#19
Okay I've taken my own and Unionist's advice to clear rabble cookies and cache. I'll see how that GOes.
Just wondering - isn't that done automatically when I run a cleaning program like Crap Cleaner that deletes my history, various cahces, cookies, and other stuff?
No. CCleaner removes whatever you ask it to - has many settings - like temp files, orphaned registry entries, etc. The easiest and quickest way to remove cookies etc. is from the settings in your browser.
Mon, 2012-11-12 12:15
#20
The time required to access the site has been vastly improved and mucho thanks for that.
If possible, could it be explained to us what was done to speed up the process.