Topic: A4A problems

[Paulines7]

I haven't had any problems so far this morning so "Thanks Dan".  Fingers crossed that it is all right for everyone.

[Hyacinth]

....just for info, in case any more tweaking needs to be done, Dan, after I replied under Grawc this morning, Sod's Law, it took an age to post my reply and then so long to try to post a reply somewhere else I gave up...so, yes, it seems to be sporadic atm. Sorry.

[tonybloke]

this seems to have started when everyone got those new avatars? (did anyone except me read the disclaimer before deciding to get one?) Loads of info-gathering software add-ons wanted to be installed, do any of these effect the site??

[Flighty]

I am still finding this forum infuriatingly slow at times. It's been like it now for over two weeks!

[manicscousers]

can't use the search, says the server is under severe pressure  ::)

[betula]

Yes sometimes it is ok ,other times really slow,wish it would get sorted.

[lewic]

this seems to have started when everyone got those new avatars?

Interesting, you may be onto something there. I stupidly didnt read any of the small print (and I work in IT......)
Did notice there was an ad on their front page which went to a notorious spyware site though, which asked you to install something. I avoided this as when I clicked on it my antivirus went mad!
The avatar site names each pic with the email address of the person who downloaded it, which made me suspicious so I renamed mine in case they are searching for email addresses to spam.

[Unwashed]

this seems to have started when everyone got those new avatars? (did anyone except me read the disclaimer before deciding to get one?) Loads of info-gathering software add-ons wanted to be installed, do any of these effect the site??

I'm pretty sure the problem is on the A4A server, you can see how long it takes to do the database lookup at the bottom of the page.  The page I'm typing into now for example says "Page created in 0.202 seconds with 27 queries." but I've seen pages report 20 seconds.

My avata, like reddyreddy's, is just a jpeg served from the A4A server like most other avatars, so there isn't any ability in the avatar to be doing anything slow and malicious.  It's the browser on the client end that retrieves the avatars anyway, so that wouldn't slow the server down.  Chances are your browser has cached the avatars anyways so they're costing you nothing.  

More problematic is the advertising.  It's context-sensitive so before the A4A server can send you your page it needs a round-trip to the ad agency's server to get an advert - at least I think that's how it works.

[Ninnyscrops.]

I don't think it general to A4A...........the beings are getting clever out there.  Try and find me the strategic planning map for Southwater, I obviously get blocked out as I live here and my address is "logged" somewhere. I've tried the Parish Council website and Horsham District Council sites, can I access it...........oh no!

I though it was my uploading Internet 8, but I think it's going deeper than that.

Ninny

[grawrc]

Sorry but I do think it is A4A. It is the only place I ever have problems.

[Paulines7]

I often think it would be a good idea if Dan got rid of the details of all those people that signed in over three years ago and have never been heard from since.  There must be thousands of them!!   :o 

The site would then be smaller and maybe would cope better.

[lorna]

OK at moment but yesterday I gave up when I was trying to go to one thread from another. Quite agree with Pauline.

[Unwashed]

I often think it would be a good idea if Dan got rid of the details of all those people that signed in over three years ago and have never been heard from since.  There must be thousands of them!!   :o 

The site would then be smaller and maybe would cope better.

It's extremely unlikely that the number of registered users is an issue.  In practice a registered member adds a couple of entries to some database table on the server and databases are designed to work very quicly with millions of entries.

[tonybloke]

It's probably something to do with the advertising, it has to work out what ads to display on each thread (subject linked ads?)

[Hosta]

Havent found it slow, but have noticed a lot of folks avatars are away and showing a little red x in a box instead  - ????

Mine too LOL

Ooops !!  Spoke too soon............. It just chucked me out, forgot it does that sometimes !

[Paulines7]

Havent found it slow, but have noticed a lot of folks avatars are away and showing a little red x in a box instead  - ????

Mine too LOL

Could this be because you have not logged yourself in and are reading the forum as a guest?  Just a thought.  :-\

[Hosta]

Nope, I am defo logged on - can see some avatars still.

[Digeroo]

I have also been wondering about the moving avatars they are a bit of fun, but if there are several on one thread I was beginning to think things were going a bit slow.

I sometimes find logging out and rebooting gets things going a bit faster.

[Unwashed]

I have also been wondering about the moving avatars they are a bit of fun, but if there are several on one thread I was beginning to think things were going a bit slow.

Animated avatars are just files like any regular image file, it's just your browser knows that they contain several frames of an animation, so all the work is done by your PC, not by the server.

However, I find the really, really anoying, so I'd gladly see them go.

[Chrispy]

Only had a problem once with A4A, and it turned out to be a problem with the US-UK link as every other site that is based on a US server was also dead slow.

Some of the animated adds that google serve are a bit of a pain, if I have too, many pages open that have these my computer says it has enough and throws a wobbaly and grinds to a halt.