MN constantly freezing and lagging, and unresponsive links.

[MarleyAndMarleyWoohooohooohooohoooo]

This has been an issue for a few weeks now in a bearable way, but it’s getting a bit worse lately.
Sometimes it appears to be adverts slowly loading and once they’ve appeared the site works again, but sometimes it’s stopping completely and nothing on the screen works at all and I have to swipe safari away and begin again. This isn’t happening on any other website.

I’m in the mobile version on safari. I’ve cleared cookies. I’ve turned my phone off and on again.

Been more the last few hours - but my mobile is down due to the outage!!!

You could just raise a ticket with your team of developers and get them to look into it (the way it should be done) based on the description given by multiple accounts, using multiple operating platforms all having the exact same problems.

Never in my life have I heard of a 'bug' being investigated by having the 'customer' send video evidence.

Is this issue ever likely to be solved MN?

It is getting really tedious trying to use the site, it freezes for no apparent reason and in doing so freezes all the other tabs open on my computer, the computer just stands still. No other site I use does this, not one, this issue only happens when using MN it is therefore something specific to the way your site is operating.

Posters have been reporting this for months and months and still it happens.

Completely unusable on iPad, Freezes instantly and then prevents me accessing other sites unless I refresh.

It’s been particularly bad today and unfortunately seems to have infected PMs as well. If I try and scroll through my messages it’s just freezing, lagging and jumping back to the last message repeatedly.

It’s very frustrating and bizarre as no other site I use is like this. And MN never used to be like this.

And I am using private browsing.

Also happening on Chrome on Android, I think it's the ads as normally happens when I scroll to an ad. It crashes Chrome every time..only happening on mumsnet

Hi all...

I'm jumping in here to respond as there have been lots of questions about why we want to see this issue happening and why that is beneficial to us.

We have tonnes of people in-house using the site all day every day and, apart from very few occasions (two that have been reported), nobody is seeing this issue happen.

As asked earlier in the thread, this is both on the MNHQ network, home networks and also on typical home machines, mobiles and other devices and much higher-end machines that some of us use.

Seeing this happen in real time is beneficial to us because when it's happening we are able to ask you to do things in the browser which will give us much more insight about when this is happening and what is going on on the machine whilst it's occurring. We can check if there are any patterns, anything common among the user accounts that are experiencing it, or any commonality between the browsers and cookies that are present for the affected users.

And, being able to see it means that we are able to spot where in the request lifecycle (how we deliver the page to you) this happens.

As some of you have mentioned, the problems are intermittent. It can be fine for a few hours, or days, and then the problems return. This also makes it difficult to diagnose, but does give us some more information to work with.

There have been questions on here about the server load and whether the site is under unusually heavy traffic conditions. I can assure you that it isn't and that these problems aren't server related.

It's likely that there are one or multiple ads that are being displayed (or not if you're getting a blank page!) that are causing these issues. But without being able to inspect the page as the issue is occurring, we can't know for sure if that's the case or remove them.

There are some things to try if you're experiencing this issue:

1. Clear your cookies and website data.
2. Turn 'Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement' off if you're on an iOS device.
3. Try the site in Incognito / Private browsing mode.

If you're experiencing the issue and Incognito / Private Browsing mode stops it from happening, that would also be really useful information for us to know.

If anyone who is experiencing this consistently is able to get on a call with me personally and show me what's going on I would really appreciate the opportunity to see this happening.

Thanks

Matt

I've commented a couple of times on the other thread as well.
Private browsing doesn't have the problem, but it's a bit of a pain having to log in every time, and also the thread titles don't highlight when I've opened them, so I can't keep track of ones I've already read, unless it's got a very memorable title.
If I don't go incognito, I'm constantly bookmarking replies so I can find my place afterwards.
I click on a thread, and sometimes a completely different thread opens.
I bookmarking and end up on the "report thread" page.
Do you know if those with the paid subscriptions are experiencing the same problems?

To be honest I'm just going to use the site a heck of a lot less
if the onus is on me to a whole pile of bollocks that quite frankly a hassle ill spend my time elsewhere
no skin of your nose MNHQ I'm sure but hey ho

And basically inferring that it's our problem when loads of us are reporting it to you almost as if it's our fault is a pretty piss poor response

Wow. It doesn't happen on any other site!!

Sounds more and more like stalling tactics to me.

Reminds me of BT

I think some conspiracy theories will develop MNHQ if things don't improve.

I am sick of the problem, but I have a theory that it may be these pop up things that say “swipe right for the next can’t remember the rest of it”, and other pop up hints and tips.

I am using private browsing, and it is a pain to keep logging in, so I’m going to use the site less and check in occasionally to see if it is fixed.

I’m now just checking once every few days and it freezes on the first go - mumsnet is non-functional for me. It’s taken me several goes of opening and closing mumsnet but here is a screenshot of my frozen screen. It’s really poor that mn expects it’s product (we aren’t customers, if we were even worse!) to do the it work. Much as I like mn I don’t like it enough to faff around!

Frozen screen: (edited to say that the screen shot includes everything being grey below the text - about half the screen, but the screen shot has been automatically cropped by mn)

Thought this was getting better yesterday but that was just wishful thinking. It’s taken 4 attempts just to load this thread to check for updates.

Im not sure what Matt is saying when “only 2 people have reported issues”, there are dozens of posters on this thread, and dozens more in the other threads, so clearly not isolated. And those are the ones that are bothering to post about it. I would guess there are many more users that simply give up and go to another site so I expect you’re losing hundreds of potential site visitors if not more.

Seems very hard to believe that every single employee at Mnhq has a perfectly smooth time when they use the website, but I don’t work there….

Looking a little closer it does seem it’s ad related, don’t know how these things work exactly but could it be one of your ad suppliers has code that is not up to standard? Another website I used had a similar problem a year or so back and it was traced down to adverts. It’s notable too, that once the ads load, it’s fine, when it’s feeezes it’s like the ad is trying to load and getting stuck.

All the other sites I use bar one or two (BBC) use ads and they load instantly and seamlessly.

Yes, still dreadful. And to add a bit of fun, in private browsing mode when having to constantly log in... the log in link from the pop up in a thread leads to a broken link.

Any update @MNHQ?

Definitely the ads. I can scroll halfway down a thread, then it freezes.

Bearing in mind we are the product here (no users, no threads, no ads), can MN get a wriggle on with fixing it?

We've got no reason to stay on a social site where we can't read or interact with other people.

Read this thread earlier - echo all the other posts. Been getting worse since well before Christmas, mobile site using Safari on an iPhone.

Noodled around reading more threads, it’s happened just now after about 30 minutes.

@MattTech Here’s a screenshot of the thread I was going to read, clicked through from Active. I couldn’t get the full OP to load as it froze. The banner ad at the top is whited out. After refreshing, waiting, closing and reopening, it still wouldn’t get past this to load the full OP and no ability to scroll or refresh.

Second screenshot shows that when I minimise the window, the offending ad is visible. But if try to open the page, it remains white and won’t load at all.

I had to completely quit out of that browser window then reload the site from the home page to post this.

Hope that helps some.

I definitely won’t use incognito and I don’t want to use pages view. Hope it gets sorted.

Have to say this is only happening for me using Safari. Just tried it in chrome and it runs fine.

But I’m not switching to chrome, have always used safari for everything and will keep doing so.

I use Chrome - it is not simply about browsers. It has got a little more stable the last two days but no idea if that will even last. Interestingly though, I have noticed today that when using mutiple tabs (which I do all the time) it is crashing and a message is appearing saying that the MN tab is running a very high amount of memory due to the ads.

Just had my computer frozen for 20 minutes, could do nothing, could not move to another window I had open, just totally unresponsive. Had to restart the computer couldn't even log out or close the windows.

This only ever happens when I have MN loaded it never happens when MN is not loaded and running.

Come on MN you have enough evidence from numerous posters that the issue is with something in your site, it does not happen when your site is not loaded.

Makes you think we are being hacked.