It seems to me that when the boards are pokey, even when my cache is cleared out, the SDMB loads the main page relatively quickly (the one listing all the forums), the forum pages showing the individual threads loads at a moderate speed, but clicking on an particular thread is interminable. If I do get into a thread, clicking on a later page takes longer than the first page did. The higher the page number, the slower it loads.
Anyone else notice this, or is my perception whacked?
Haven’t noticed any of those particulars, but the SDMB is suckificaciously slow. I was half tempted to drop by the Reader’s office this morning before grabbing the blue line to O’Hare, to pick up some of the latest threads before my flight. Even after two hours in the air, and an equivalent amount of ground transportation, it would have been a bugger lot speedier than waiting for the threads to load.
I nearly abandoned this site earlier in the year on account of the speed; it’s been bad again lately, and I’m on the verge of giving up again.
Yes, I’ve wondered about that, too. I get here fairly quickly, but I wait a looooonnnnng time for threads to load. When I click on a specific page of a longer thread that I have been following, I know I’ll have plenty of time to get some work done while I wait.
I live in Ireland, currently +6 hours on Straight Dope time. As I write this, access to threads etc. is very easy. However, the moment lunch time starts in Eastern USA, the SDMB system goes to hell.
There’s the solution - move to Ireland. The quality of life is better, the economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, and you get easy access to the Straight Dope. What more do you want from life?
I’ve noticed it, too. I think it is a function of the queries against the database that are required. The main page just requires post and thread counts and getting info from the last post. The forum pages require finding the 50 most recent threads, the number of posts and view for each, and info from the last post. The thread itself requires retrieving each individual post. Without seeing a database schematic, I’m guessing that the higher level queries are running against fewer records with better indexes. (For example, the post and thread counts could be stored in the forums table rather than calculated each time the page is loaded.)
As for subsequent pages of a thread taking longer, that could be because it is easier to retrieve the first 50 records that match the criteria (in this case the threadid) than it is to retrieve the next set. Essentially, to get the second set of 50, you need to know where the first set of 50 ends and then get the next 50 matching records. Again, I’m just going on how I think an SQL database would be set up.
