Dgn Loading Speed Optimization

[Troy Spiral (13)]

I'm working on getting every possible bit of code that is cacheable to cache (load once then stay in browser until needed , rather than re-loading every time you click) and working on shrinking the 9 billion little tiny images all over the place down.

Probably will be minor visual glitches on and off, they wont last long though.

Anything to get this damn place to load faster.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Some severely slow loading times incoming. Should only last about 5-10 minutes.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Emoticon armageddon has arrived. I added waaaaaaay to many emotions. (and now i have more crap i need to optimize for download lol)

But this is cool:

[Dubh Aingeal]

Gee I wonder where you got that from.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Gee I wonder where you got that from.

Came from a "emoticon pack" from invisonize.com.

Although i did immediately recognize it from ginnys profile.

[Scary Guy]

Seems to be a bit slower today.

[BrassFusion]

Seems to be a bit slower today.

Such the optimist.

It's actually quite fast for me this morning

[Scary Guy]

Such the optimist.

It's actually quite fast for me this morning

Well to be fair it did speed up after everything loaded. Caching is good.

[know_buddy_kares]

Hmm... would this effect the avatar display? I've changed mine and it seems to not have changed on the board... I'll wait of course, could just be my own browser cookies, but avatars seemed to have been updated a bit quicker before..

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Well i spiffied up like 20 emoticons so that must be it! Just testing any graphical changes really will only have a minor effect on overall board response time.

The real bitch is the server that we are hosted on in terms of what would really give a big "consistency" performance boost.

We've probably all had times were everything seemed to be loading really snappy. Which, basically is when there is not much load on the server.

The problem is not really DGN in that case. "Cheap" web hosting, means your almost always on a shared server. So , say theres 20 websites on a webserver. At any time they could all start putting computational demands (especially things like searches, adding posts, etc) and when that happens we get them really pisser 5+ second slowdowns.

I can speed up the snappy loading of pages when the server is running good. But when its not, there's nothing to be done. In actuality at this point all the CSS and Graphics are optimized enough to the point were only the dial up users are going to notice much performance increase as i continue to try and get the graphics and such more optimized.

Dedicated server would be sweet... but since we can barely cover the costs of running DGN now, that's pretty much a pipe dream. (Dedicated server hosting of the type we'd need starts at around $150 a month)

Also me bitching at IPS to move me to the snappiest server/raid they can helps. Even though you don't notice it from a user perspective, we've actually been on 3 different servers over the years. This one we are on right now seems to be taking a shit more often in the last few weeks, time to bitch!

[Scary Guy]

Ah the joys of virtual hosting. At least you're on a nice fat pipe unlike my measly T1.

How much is hosting costing you anyhow?

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Its hard to breakout just "hosting" from the cost because we are hosted with IPS. Meaning, IPS is the makers of IPB (the board software) and they directly support the sofware, fix it, upgrade it etc. So the "hosting" cost is actually inflated due to this aspect.

The actual "cost to run the board" is about $70 a month but that has a lot to do with costs that are not tech related.

I have "hosting" guesstimated at about $20 a month but that includes a lot of other behind the scenes stuff that IPS does for us so just the hosting itself would be considerably less.

[Scary Guy]

You're getting ripped off, pretty sure.

Currently I get to pay $8 a year. But I run and maintain the server and it's on not nearly as fast of a connection.

I'm looking for alternatives.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

You're getting ripped off, pretty sure.

Currently I get to pay $8 a year. But I run and maintain the server and it's on not nearly as fast of a connection.

I'm looking for alternatives.

The term "hosting" is very general and doesn't cover any specific aspects so its near impossible to make a comparison about how much someone is paying vs what they are getting without a lot of details. There is a bewildering array of possible services that may or may not be included.

But i expected your response, and that's why i detailed out the IPS aspect of the hosting in my previous post. Your host, doesn't include native IPB/G/B back-end hardware optimization, support , bug fixes and upgrades. Its not just raw "hosting space" or "bandwidth". There is no real competition for IPS in this sense.

How much is that sort of hands-on, fast-response tech support worth to a site that , among other things, needs to be up reliably, and cant rely on a box in a house with no 24/7 support? Far more than $10 a month.

I'm not a guy that just blindly goes and does things. I do my research , usually over-do it some might say. I especially research stuff like this that i have to spend money on.

[Scary Guy]

Well tech support is 24/7 if someone calls me up and says that it's down. I'm pretty vigilant about it and do what I can to keep it up to date with the latest patches etc...

Then again the OS isn't custom tailored to the software, and I don't really know how to program or fix errors. I kind of fly by the seat of my pants but it is a good learning experience. However I do know that my box is secure with me and my other friend having the only access to it. I do need to put in a tape backup though because you can never be too careful. Also would be good to stick it on a UPS.