# can't sometimes visit the forum



## changwecanbelievein

Dear webmaster,

I'm sorry but I have to say the speed of visiting our forum gets more and more slow. 

 I'm sure it's not the problem of my browser. I've changed different browsers but the speed of visiting our forum is still much slow. The visitors get more and more. Should we need more servers to deal with this problem?


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## mkellogg

Hi chang,

The server is doing well and the site seems just as fast as always to me.  China is a long way from the server!  There might be some network issues that are causing this.

Are the WordReference dictionaries slow, too?
If it loads slowly, and you stop the loading of the page by hitting the X on your web browser, do you see anything?

Mike


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## gandolfo

Hi mikeI am having the same problem as Chang and I'm in Italy Rome (I have a pretty fast connection.....sometimes just opening the page takes 5 minutes! This started about a week or so ago.....All my caches are empty When the page finally opens there are no graphics at all..... other sites I use work as they always do......the dictionaries are fine (have just tested them) but the forums are really slow.....any suggestions? Thanks

(Hitting the x on my server makes no difference...it takes just as long to reload)


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## mkellogg

Hi Gandolfo,

It sounds like you are having trouble loading all the include files, most likely those coming from a different server such as images and JavaScript files. Often you will see a message at the bottom of the browser window that says "loading..."  for instance, your avatar is coming from this other server: http://forumcdn.wordreference.com/customavatars/avatar518618_12.gif

When you are having trouble loading pages, try loading your avatar through that link.

Please let me know if this continues and I'll research it more.

Mike


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## KaRiNe_Fr

Hello there,

Could be also a DNS issue. It was the problem for this guy, and changing its DNS for public ones (OpenDNS or Google) solve the issue for him. 
(for the procedure on Mac OS, this link could help)


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## gandolfo

Thanks mike will try that and thanks also to KaRiNe
 (in fact I have a mac)


Actually I just tried your suggestion mike and my avatar appears but only mine..... and no editing facilities on my reply function at all.....I will try fiddling with my DNS later....


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## mkellogg

Hi,

Let's test something.

For those of you who are experiencing extremely long load times, go to the bottom of the page and change the style from "WR Default Style" to "testing 2".  Does that make the site load faster?

Mike


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## gandolfo

Hi mike 

Yes, it loads faster (but continues loading I have a mac so the little symbol on the open page tab keeps going around for about 5mins when it does stop the page isn't fully loaded I see all the threads but without the "envelope" on the far left.) If I click into a thread I see individual poster's avatars and mine....but.....
on the quick reply, advanced reply no visuals/edit symbols: smilies, fonts, quotes etc etc


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## mkellogg

OK, part of the problem is that you are having trouble reaching the server that serves all the images and other include filse.

I am still curious about the other items that are not loading for you.  If you can use Internet Explorer 9 or Chrome, hit F12 to open Developer Tools. Choose Network and reload a page.  What files fail to load?  They probably eventually appear in red.


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## gandolfo

Hi mike

I use safari.....I don't have windows or IE or chrome (nor do I want them to be honest) Of course at the moment they are all loading fine... before even reloading the page edit symbols, envelope symbols didn't appear nor did they appear in red. The tools on the reply box didn't show their icons, but were present if I needed them by clicking on the space where they "should be"...does that make sense?  Sounds as I have the same problem as this guy. It's really odd because my mac has worked fine with WR no problems at all until now. I don't really fancy fiddling around with my DNS settings....yet...


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## mkellogg

You don't need to use Chrome permanently, but downloading it and using it once could help me troubleshoot this problem for you.


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## gandolfo

Hi mike 
I've installed chrome and it's even slower than safari  Also when loading the page the icons don't come up the F12 as per your suggestion doesn't work on my mac....Maybe you should know....I am a luddite as far as computers are concerned.....


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## jann

gandolfo said:


> the F12 as per your suggestion doesn't work on my mac


Instead of F12, try these instructions instead to pull up "developer tools." The proceed with Mike's description to check the files that fail to load.


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## wordbirdforever

I work in web development and might be able to be of some assistance in helping with performance issues.  Please get in touch if you would like help.  I could potentially help provide an alternative hosting solution too.

Grade C ranking for performance with YSlow.  Not too bad but always room for improvement.  Seems okay to me so far by the way.  The up and downs you'd expect from time to time with a site like this one.


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## mkellogg

wordbirdforever said:


> Grade C ranking for performance with YSlow.


There isn't much I can do with a lot of aspects of the forums, which can be extremely frustrating. vBulletin writes the software. I don't.  I can imagine that Yslow still has a lot of problems with vBulletin's design decisions.


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## wordbirdforever

Yeah, probably.  They'll start taking note one day!!


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## Danieloid

gandolfo said:


> Hi mike   Yes, it loads faster (but continues loading I have a mac so the little symbol on the open page tab keeps going around for about 5mins when it does stop the page isn't fully loaded I see all the threads but without the "envelope" on the far left.) If I click into a thread I see individual poster's avatars and mine....but..... on the quick reply, advanced reply no visuals/edit symbols: smilies, fonts, quotes etc etc


  Same here. Very frustrating. Mac OSX Snow Leopard, Firefox 9.0.1. Long time to load pages, no graphics, can't format replies, no edit symbols. Very frustrating.


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## mkellogg

I just made some changes.  Is it any better now?


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## Peterdg

Uy Mike,

Just a few minutes ago, when you look at the last post in a thread that contains a quote (e.g., here), the large quote in the beginning of the quote and the little arrow that points to the post, appear as a red cross (I hope I make myself clear: I tried to insert an image, but it appears too small to be able to read it). Strange enough, the other posts in the thread that also contain quotes, appear correctly.

Perhaps your change has something to do with this?


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## mkellogg

That was probably caused by a problem I had when I first made the change.  It should be fine now.


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## Danieloid

It's better now. Avatars are back. Pages load at normal speed. I can format replies, but only guessing, no graphic on the buttons in "quick reply" window, as you can see in this pic.


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## mkellogg

Danieloid, you should be able to see the QR buttons now.


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## Danieloid

Yes I can see them now!


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## changwecanbelievein

It may be one reason to explain why I couldn't visit this forum comfortably. As is known to all, some foreign IP Address are always blocked by our government. Most of those IP are political websites, some democratic states governments' homepages, and many foreign media. But many other unpolitical websites are also blocked because everyone could publish his views, deliver message, and get the news on them, such as Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and so forth.

We also couldn't visit google.com since 2010 in mainland China. Because Google has fallen foul of our government and evacuated from our country.


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## mkellogg

I haven't heard of any restrictions on WR in China, but I may be wrong.  You might want to try one of the two mobile styles that you can choose at the bottom of the page.  They are much simpler and might load for you faster.


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## tunaafi

Sometime around 08.20-08.30 Central European Time,every morning, I can't get into WRF. If I am already here, everything just freezes. Does this happen to anyone else?

I am based in Prague, Czech Republic.


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## Bevj

tunaafi said:


> Sometime around 08.20-08.30 Central European Time,every morning, I can't get into WRF. If I am already here, everything just freezes. Does this happen to anyone else?
> 
> I am based in Prague, Czech Republic.



Yes, me too (Spain).  I'm interested to hear that other people have this problem.  I thought it was just my connection.


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## tunaafi

That was my original thought until I realised it happened at around the same time every day. Glad to hear I am not alone. Perhaps one of the techies here will know what's going on.


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## mkellogg

Bevj said:


> Yes, me too (Spain).


Is this at the same time? I can check to server's logs to see what is going on, but my monitoring service doesn't show any problems at that time.


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## Bevj

Hello Mike.
Yes, around 8.30 a.m.


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## bearded

tunaafi said:


> Sometime around 08.20-08.30 Central European Time,every morning, I can't get into WRF.


It happens to me as well.  However, the inconvenience only lasts abt. 10 - 15 minutes. Maybe some 'update' is carried out at that time…?


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## tunaafi

I was not online yesterday, so I don't know if it happened then.

This morning, my WRF page froze at exactly 08.36 Central European time. When I came out, and tried to get back in, I got "504 Gateway Timeout".

I was able to get back in after ten minutes.


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## Perseas

tunaafi said:


> This morning, my WRF page froze at exactly 08.36 Central European time.


The same here.


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## tunaafi

So that's members in Czechia, Greece, Italy and Spain reporting the problem so far.


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## bearded

tunaafi said:


> So that's members in Czechia, Greece, Italy and Spain reporting the problem so far.


 
Unfortunately, around 8.30 is precisely the time when you have a fresh mind and in many cases have not yet started working.


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## DonnyB

I've just experienced the same problem.   

I was replying to a conversation message, so I cant be sure of what time it went down, but I'd guess at around 07:30 GMT.  I couldn't then send the message and trying to re-load the forum produced a *504 Gateway Time-out  *error message. 

It came back at around 07:45 GMT showing the message as sent "A moment ago"*.*


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## bearded

DonnyB said:


> I've just experienced the same problem.


Me,too. It started at abt. 8.35 AM our time. Duration around 10 minutes.


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## elroy

This has been happening to me too.


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## mkellogg

I found the problem and have set it to now only occur on Sunday mornings. I'm still trying to figure out how to solve it altogether.


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## bearded

Thanks, Mike.


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## tunaafi

Thank you. Best of luck with Sunday morning.


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## Bevj

Thank you.
I'm happy to say that on a Sunday morning I am not likely to be around at 8.30 a.m.


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## elroy

mkellogg said:


> Sunday mornings


 What time zone?


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## tunaafi

It seems to be Central European time. My WRF access froze up again at about 08.35 CEZ this morning.


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## bearded

mkellogg said:


> have set it to now only occur on Sunday mornings


This morning (Wednesday) it was impossible for me to reach WR from 9.00 to 12.00 AM - our time - approximately (while for all remaining Internet I had no problems) both through computer and smartphone.  Now everything is working perfectly again.


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## mkellogg

bearded said:


> rom 9.00 to 12.00 AM


Unless it happned to others who don't live near you, this was probably a network problem between you and the server.


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## Paulfromitaly

bearded said:


> This morning (Wednesday) it was impossible for me to reach WR from 9.00 to 12.00 AM - our time - approximately (while for all remaining Internet I had no problems) both through computer and smartphone.  Now everything is working perfectly again.


Today the TIM network has worked on and off, so that might be the problem.


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## bearded

Thank you, Mike and Paul.


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