Site changes | Page 35 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Just a quick update, because I know things are still loading slowly. I’ve spent the morning combining scripts and files, refreshing pages, noting what’s broken, trying to isolate the problem, excluding files, rinse and repeat. I’ve made some progress but I’m not there yet.

Apologies if you visited earlier and something was broken. Hopefully it’s a little better now.

It also takes a long time just to reloading multiple pages to check that different parts of the site are still operating with every single change, and if there’s a problem to load the dev inspector and try to find the problem.

I *think* the major cause of the lag is all the elements that the forum tries to load simultaneously. According to pingdom test results, there are 82 elements that get loaded in one go on the previous page. It’s not an issue on the non-forum part of the site, which is why I believe this is where the problem lies.

There are some css and javascript (js) files that I’ve successfully combined (those under /min/ below), others that I’ve not been able to optimise yet (though I’m still chipping away at them), and a bunch of images (png and jpeg files).

This page makes 82 parallelizable requests to beatlesbible.com. Increase download parallelization by distributing these requests across multiple hostnames:

https://www.beatlesbible.com/f…..tedposts=1

https://www.beatlesbible.com/i…..equote.gif

https://www.beatlesbible.com/m…../83d20.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/m…..n/8ca3e.js

https://www.beatlesbible.com/m…..s_async.js

https://www.beatlesbible.com/m…..n/ee85f.js

https://www.beatlesbible.com/m…..azyload.js

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ter_03.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ong_03.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..l-2016.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..l-2017.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..nshot1.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..-Badge.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..d-2017.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..G_2144.PNG

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..-Badge.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..rge_09.gif

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..rge_10.gif

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..acs_02.gif

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…../heart.gif

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..verlay.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ailure.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..uccess.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..p_Wait.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ropdown.js

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..-footer.js

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..-scale.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..avatar.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..eapple.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..safety.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..vatarz.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..vatar2.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..asty-3.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..394832.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..1_1280.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..avatar.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..t_av_1.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..-badge.jpg

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..-header.js

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ery-ui.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..thdays.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ayIcon.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..inking.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ntions.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..upload.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ery.ui.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..upload.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ery-ui.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..thanks.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..nkInfo.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..t-post.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..search.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ptions.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..inymce.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..tinymce.js

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..viewer.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..atches.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..owDown.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..rrowUp.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..istory.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..cebook.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..p_Feed.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..mation.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..p_Jump.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..gInOut.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w….._Mouse.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..malink.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w….._Print.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..onNone.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ration.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..Search.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..icIcon.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..eSmall.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..eSmall.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ebsite.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..Denied.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…..ouTube.png

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w….._arrow.gif

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…../style.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…../style.css

https://www.beatlesbible.com/w…../jquery.js

It’s not so much that these files are large (most of the smileys and theme images are around 1-2k); it’s more that the server is trying to deliver them all in one go. Sometimes avatars can be large, although there is an upload limit.

One fix might be to distribute these across different subdomains and set up a content delivery network (CDN). For now I’m going to experiment with removing certain elements and see what effect it has. It might mean that things like smileys or polls are disabled, hopefully temporarily. It might well have to look into a CDN to fix this properly though.

Thanks for bearing with me, and apologies as ever.

Hi everyone. Quick update on this. The cache is now working properly on the main part of the site (there was a problem getting it going). Once a page has been visited once it should be much quicker to load for the next person.

Unfortunately some of the forum caching didn’t work and prevented new posts from displaying (ie it was showing an older cached version), so I had to disable the private caches which I’d hoped would work really well. For non-logged-in users the forum is really quick right now, it just runs a lot slower once people are logged in.

Obviously that’s not ideal and I’ll try to get the private caching working properly. Thanks for bearing with me. Hopefully nothing else is broken right now.

Because of the work I’ve been doing to speed up the site and server, I’m able to present the Beatles’ history page as a single list once again. That’s how it was originally, but a couple of years ago I had to split it over several pages when the huge list became very slow to load.

That doesn’t seem to be an issue any more, so I’m pleased to have it once again as a single page. If performance slows again I might revert to individual pages for each year, but fingers crossed that won’t be necessary.

https://www.beatlesbible.com/history/

Von Bontee said
Hey Joe, I was just wondering if the “recent forum posts” could be re-added to the home page, or if there was a conscious decision made to remove it. I miss it!

Thanks.  

I’m sorry! I didn’t realise it had gone. It’s back now.

Videos galore!

The Beatles

John Lennon

Paul McCartney

George Harrison

Ringo Starr

These are all added to the top menu – you can access the solo pages either via the Videos dropdown, or via People.

OK, the plan is to set up a brand new server, clone all my sites and move them over, then point the domain names to the new server. There’s a chance of some content being lost in the changeover, if it’s posted to the old server after the backup is taken. In order to avoid this, once I know that the migration is going ahead I’ll put the forum into read-only mode.

Carry on posting for the time being.

OK, a backup of the site has been taken. The forum’s in lockdown until the migration is complete. If you’re able to post then feel free to do so; it’ll mean the switchover has happened where you are (it can take a while depending on various factors, and isn’t the same for everyone).