Sorry techs, but at 12 noon it is taking around 30 seconds to load a thread and 42 seconds from pressing post to message being shown

[Twiglett]

and that's just one count.

The site is really too slow at the moment for it to work.

What lapin said, sorry

It's putting me off too.

lapin, I'm afraid you've got completely the wrong end of the stick. For a start, in my last post, I said it is NOT busy, hence it's most likely an ad problem. I don't always just say it's busy and shrug my shoulders!!!

Other times that it's been slow it is because it IS busy. People hypothesize about the reasons for a particular problem and they're not right, so I post to paint a clearer picture, because most people appreciate that. It being busy isn't an excuse but when I say it was busy it is the reason for the slowdowns. We can tell when it's busy, and I don't just mean we can see when a big argument is kicking off. We're a bit better organised than that, despite outward appearances! We've got a screen on the wall that shows us round the clock how busy the server is, how much bandwidth is being used and so on. Every 5 minutes the server writes to a file precisely what processes are running, how many database queries are happening, how many requests per minute we're processing, everything.

I don't want to make any promises at this point because you'll just nag me as to exactly what and exactly when, but I will say that we are (and have been for a while) working on various solutions to the problem. As soon as they're in place you (all gazillion of you) will be the first to know!

I agree it does seem really slow at the minute. Sometimes it speeds up but very frustrating at the mo. Glad it's not just me. Thought there was something wrong with my laptop.

There's probably a good reason why you are using document.write for the ads, but as these are wrapped in td's with no width in a table with a relative width could this be slowing down rendering because the browser can't work out how wide anything is supposed to be until it has downloaded and run the scripts?

I always set a fixed width (and height) for containers wrapping inserted images to avoid exactly this problem.

must be an ad problem - not going to try lapins link - as it's running too slow - but if that's the thread that says its because of the searching on one particular night I posted to say that it's often running slow like this at 2/3am in the morning - and I doubt there's many people searching or posting (or even lurking ) at that time.

Been a problem on and off for ages for me now - but all other websites are fine.

MrVibrating, thanks for the suggestion, but alas an absolute width won't help. The nested document.writes (which are not our choice, but that of the advertisers) cause rendering to stop whilst they execute. I wish they executed asynchronously, but alas, they don't.

FAQ, to be clear, sometimes it's an ad problem and sometimes it's a "being too busy to cope" problem. We're working hard on the latter, because we know for a fact that at peak times (after the children are in bed but before you are) the server is running slowly because of how busy it is. We're spending time and money fixing this and we can only ask you to hang in there in the meantime.

The ads are a separate problem and it is more difficult to solve. We have some long term ideas of how to fix it, but in the short term pretty much the only thing we can do is take reports of a specific ad causing a problem and ask the ad supplier to remove that ad. The trouble with that is that it's not obvious to our lovely users which ad is causing the problem. In the meantime, sorry for the troubles; hang in there and we'll keep trying to improve matters.

Ad blockers are of course the worse solution, because without the ads there is no Mumsnet.

YMT - that sort of makes, except it's every page I load that is slow, makes no difference what advert it is

FAQ, I am making it a personal mission to at least provide you with a genuine explanation even if we can't immediately change it.

When I click Refresh on this thread it takes less than 3 seconds to load. That's pretty typical in my personal experience.

How long does it take you? If it is much more than 3 seconds, what browser are you using? If it's not Firefox are you willing/able to switch to Firefox to experiment with it? Also are you willing/able to install a plugin in your browser? No problem if not, but it might be helpful in trying to figure it out.

I@m on Firefox - and every other website I use (and I'm on the computer a lot with several tabs open at once ) is absolutely fine)

Happy to install a plug-in (if I don't already have it )

Seems to be ok atm

How about they get shot of the ads and charge us a membership fee to post like the Bad Mothers Club did?

SD - because I think you'd find they lost a lot of members - seem to recall when BMC started charging MN's numbers increased

And sadly it would probably be many of those that need MN most for support and advice the most will be the ones that can't afford it.

I could afford it (depending on how much ) but I for one would go elsewhere if they started charging........

"i don't know if you realise how 'off' your tone is on this thread."

I absolutely realise that some people might not like everything I write, but I am not completely sure how much more I can do right now. I've apologised, I've explained what's going on, I've explained that we're trying to sort it out and I've offered to help individuals if they can provide me with a bit more info.

I certainly don't mean to offend or upset anyone (and I can't recall actually criticising anyone, except perhaps Lapin a tiny bit for having a go at me, but she's smart enough to stand up for herself!). Unfortunately I can't give you what you want which presumably is for all the problems to disappear. I would love to wave a magic wand and make it all better but it's not all within my direct control, so I am afraid I can't. As I've said a few times, we're working on it and we're spending money on it.

If it makes you feel better to keep having a go at me then please do feel free. There are some amusing digs over here if you want to chip in!

FAQ, the Firefox plugin you could try is Firebug. Once installed, click Tools, Firebug, open Firebug. In the window that appears click Profile, and Net on the line beneath it, then All on the line above again. You'll see a bar chart showing the load times for each component on the page. Ignore the blue bars but look for the longest grey ones - the times will be recorded next to them. If a page is taking 30 seconds to load it'll likely be that one or more of them will have a time of 10 seconds or more. That's where the problem is for that given page. Report back if you see one thing consistently causing problems.

Obviously I do understand that that's a whole load of effort and if you'd rather not then no worries. We'll be working on fixes anyway, but hard data is always good if we can get it and our users are the biggest source of it.

Thanks.

Might try and find and install it tonight - I seem to have 3 children clammering round me atm wanting food

No problem - like I said, I know it's a hassle so if you're too busy don't worry.

Off home to put my son to bed now but if you want to slap me around a bit more I'll probably have a laptop to hand whilst I watch Never mind the Buzzocks later.

Whatever buzzocks are.

It has been suggested to me that "If it makes you feel better to keep having a go at me then please do feel free" is overly confrontational (despite the smiley and link to self deprecating thread). It was meant to be a light hearted quip. If anyone found that confrontational I do apologise.

Any frustration that I feel about this thread begins and ends with my wish that we could fix it instantly and make you all happy. In the mean time, the least I can do is be your own personal MNHQ whipping boy! (Except for for BoysAreLikeDogs who might take it a bit too literally)

would it be rude or confrontational or anything bad , if i were to say 'for gods sake young man-get over it! go and have a glass of whatever your poison is and forget about it!'

if that does sound bad in any way then i apologise unreservedly.

never ever post on the aibu threads by the way!