I would like to apologize if there was already a topic on this, I didn't see one.

I think that the gallery in the header needs a way to be disabled. Since it is JavaScript, and images that may not be optimized, it causes every page to load slower. The easiest way, I think, would be to set PHP to do a check if the visitor is logged in, and if they have disabled the gallery, at which point it would fetch the JavaScript from a separate file and load it provided the user didn't opt out of seeing it.

Also, as a side-note, the footer and header seem to be be set to a specific size, which looks really weird when making a post (They extend past the div "ipsLayout_mainArea" . Also, there is a comma missing in the registration notice after the second instance of the word "gender" in the second paragraph of "Account Policy".

I like the gallery images being displayed at the top, but I know that it also causes the website to be quite slow. I would also like this option.

I don't think we have much interest in making this toggleable. We want a uniform design that we know is being shown to everyone.

It doesn't actually add too much to the site load times, the reason people think it does is because you see the full contents before the JavaScript has completely finished initalizing on the page.

In actuality, the images are compressed (via WebP) and the JavaScript is also compressed and minified (via PageSpeed). We also tell your browser to cache both for at least 6 hours.

Edited June 15, 201510 yr by Cyan

I as well. Especially on topics and other gallery images.

I don't think we have much interest in making this toggleable. We want a uniform design that we know is being shown to everyone.

It doesn't actually add too much to the site load times, the reason people think it does is because you see the full contents before the JavaScript has completely finished initalizing on the page.

In actuality, the images are compressed (via WebP) and the JavaScript is also compressed and minified (via PageSpeed). We also tell your browser to cache both for at least 6 hours.

​A uniform design is great when everyone gets pretty uniform performance. The problem arises from the fact that I almost certainly have a different internet speed than you do, and from a lot of people. Then, unless you are using a CDN, geographic location comes into play, which further slows down page loads. It took this page almost 5 seconds to refresh! So even with nearly everything being cached, it still fetches it, and that takes time. I have attached the network results from my browser. Without caching, it took 7.04 seconds to load this page. If you want to run the same test with Firefox, right click on the page, inspect element, then click on the network tab.

The good news is the images are compressed, along with the JavaScript. The bad news is that I'm sure you want people to view the site from anywhere, which becomes a problem. I cannot use this site on my phone simply because the gallery is there and it makes the page insanely long and way too hard to read. I can't check the site really fast even on my desktop, since it takes 5 seconds to load a page that is cached! At the very least, a mobile theme should be available so that way the things that take time to load are not there, but you still present a pretty uniform view.

Honestly, the problem I am having with "I don't think we have much interest in making this toggleable." is that while G17 Media might not have that interest, at least three people have said they do and none have said they don't (I'm not including your no because you fall under G17 Media). If I am in the minority of the community, then you're absolutely right and shouldn't waste the time and energy to implement my suggestion. But, if I am not, then you should spend the time and energy to make the community happier.

Quick question: If I have another suggestion, should I put that in this topic as well, or should I create a new one?

 

Edited June 15, 201510 yr by DominusArbitrationis

Unrelated suggestions go in a new topic. Related suggestions can go here.

 

The one annoying thing for me is that on mobile devices (specifically Chrome on iOS), it takes a full second to load; I'll generally have been scrolling down, when the top of the page collapses. Isn't there some way to do it so that the browser knows to show just one row of images from the start? Maybe set a max height on that section with CSS?

​A uniform design is great when everyone gets pretty uniform performance. The problem arises from the fact that I almost certainly have a different internet speed than you do, and from a lot of people. Then, unless you are using a CDN, geographic location comes into play, which further slows down page loads. It took this page almost 5 seconds to refresh! So even with nearly everything being cached, it still fetches it, and that takes time. I have attached the network results from my browser. Without caching, it took 7.04 seconds to load this page. If you want to run the same test with Firefox, right click on the page, inspect element, then click on the network tab.

The good news is the images are compressed, along with the JavaScript. The bad news is that I'm sure you want people to view the site from anywhere, which becomes a problem. I cannot use this site on my phone simply because the gallery is there and it makes the page insanely long and way too hard to read. I can't check the site really fast even on my desktop, since it takes 5 seconds to load a page that is cached! At the very least, a mobile theme should be available so that way the things that take time to load are not there, but you still present a pretty uniform view.

Honestly, the problem I am having with "I don't think we have much interest in making this toggleable." is that while G17 Media might not have that interest, at least three people have said they do and none have said they don't (I'm not including your no because you fall under G17 Media). If I am in the minority of the community, then you're absolutely right and shouldn't waste the time and energy to implement my suggestion. But, if I am not, then you should spend the time and energy to make the community happier.

Quick question: If I have another suggestion, should I put that in this topic as well, or should I create a new one?

Hidden Content

​Internet speed is not the issue when the content is cached. If you're experencing slowness even with the site cached, then there must be a latency issue between our upstream supplier and your ISP. Regardless, your issue would not be helped by us removing the gallery images.

Edit: From your own screenshot, you can see that none of the gallery images are being loaded from our site, they're all being loaded from your cache.
And if you have another suggestion, please make a new thread.

 

Unrelated suggestions go in a new topic. Related suggestions can go here.

 

The one annoying thing for me is that on mobile devices (specifically Chrome on iOS), it takes a full second to load; I'll generally have been scrolling down, when the top of the page collapses. Isn't there some way to do it so that the browser knows to show just one row of images from the start? Maybe set a max height on that section with CSS?

​I can work with that, and I have been thinking about adding a max height, although there are a lot of template changes happening in the IPS 4 series, and I've been holding off making any massive amount of changes. Although this is small enough that I'll give it a try.

Edited June 15, 201510 yr by Cyan

You can block the gallery yourself using AdblockPlus or another element hiding extension.

lcpdfr.com##[data-blocktitle="Recent Images"]

 

In actuality, the images are compressed (via WebP)

nope.webp

http://www.lcpdfr.com/uploads/monthly_2015_06/xmedium.2015-06-15_00014.jpg.2c6130c27a6aa0f77876e71989a18c0e.jpg.pagespeed.ic.miemSN0QEp.jpg

Even BT won't force me to switch to Chrome.

I would also like to see this option implemented. I have no problems with the gallery, but if I want to view the gallery then I'll view the gallery. Plus, the gallery drops down half the page and slows down the loading time for me on any device I use. 

Internet speed is not the issue when the content is cached. If you're experencing slowness even with the site cached, then there must be a latency issue between our upstream supplier and your ISP. Regardless, your issue would not be helped by us removing the gallery images.

Edit: From your own screenshot, you can see that none of the gallery images are being loaded from our site, they're all being loaded from your cache.
And if you have another suggestion, please make a new thread.

 

I can work with that, and I have been thinking about adding a max height, although there are a lot of template changes happening in the IPS 4 series, and I've been holding off making any massive amount of changes. Although this is small enough that I'll give it a try.

That isn't entirely true. My browser still has to send packets to your server in order to ask "What do I need?" at which point your server replies "You have everything already" and sends the packets back to me with a 304 Not Modified. So it does take some time, albeit not much. I will grant that the screenshots I posted weren't overly good, since all the content is cached, so I ran another test: I cleared my cache, browsed to the main page and it took 7.12 seconds to load that. Which means it took about 2 seconds longer to get things that aren't cached.

We want a uniform design that we know is being shown to everyone.

 After looking a bit further into the site, I've found that you actually aren't accomplishing that goal (Did you forget to disable other themes?). As you can see, my version of your site looks rather different and I have not modified the site on my end whatsoever. This is what your software is sending me, after I set it to do that.

I'm trying to figure out what makes the site so slow for me right now. The images definitely don't help, neither do signatures (The ability to toggle signatures would be nice too and is similar to toggling the gallery) but you don't seem to want to make those toggle-able.

Can you explain why a uniform design is wanted? To me, it doesn't make much sense, unless you simply don't want to do the work required for multiple themes, which I could understand, but could also come up with alternatives.

After reading over this post again, I see that some of my remarks may come off as hostile or rude. That is 100% unintentional and entirely unwanted, so I apologize if you feel I have been rude, disrespectful, combative, etc.

 

I'm trying to figure out what makes the site so slow for me right now. The images definitely don't help, neither do signatures (The ability to toggle signatures would be nice too and is similar to toggling the gallery) but you don't seem to want to make those toggle-able.

You can disable the showing of signatures inside your account settings/signature section.

 

That isn't entirely true. My browser still has to send packets to your server in order to ask "What do I need?" at which point your server replies "You have everything already" and sends the packets back to me with a 304 Not Modified. So it does take some time, albeit not much. I will grant that the screenshots I posted weren't overly good, since all the content is cached, so I ran another test: I cleared my cache, browsed to the main page and it took 7.12 seconds to load that. Which means it took about 2 seconds longer to get things that aren't cached.

 After looking a bit further into the site, I've found that you actually aren't accomplishing that goal (Did you forget to disable other themes?). As you can see, my version of your site looks rather different and I have not modified the site on my end whatsoever. This is what your software is sending me, after I set it to do that.

Hidden Content

I'm trying to figure out what makes the site so slow for me right now. The images definitely don't help, neither do signatures (The ability to toggle signatures would be nice too and is similar to toggling the gallery) but you don't seem to want to make those toggle-able.

Can you explain why a uniform design is wanted? To me, it doesn't make much sense, unless you simply don't want to do the work required for multiple themes, which I could understand, but could also come up with alternatives.

After reading over this post again, I see that some of my remarks may come off as hostile or rude. That is 100% unintentional and entirely unwanted, so I apologize if you feel I have been rude, disrespectful, combative, etc.

As @Illusionary said, we do have support to hide signatures, this is ability already inside our forum software.

I think our greater goal is improving the speed of the site, and we've been trying to do that more and more recently. The images are potentially an issue, and we'll try and compress them more. We'll also get rid of making the browser ask for updates, as IPB makes every file name unique and tends to add a query string if it changes - so it's unneeded for browsers to recheck. If we still have speed issues after all of this work, then we'll consider adding a way to toggle the gallery images.

My only concern is the easiest way to do this (at least for your particular issue) wouldn't help much. This would be the same way IPB decides to hide things (like certain forum categories), It would be some JavaScript thing that sets "display: none" on the element when it loads. It wouldn't help you that much as the images would still effectively download and you'd have to wait for the JS loading to hide them.

The more advanced way is to hook into the block, or create a new block, which adds this feature. Granted this doesn't sound difficult, we have a lot on our plate right now, including making sure the website is still standing when the clock hits zero.

It's less that we don't want to add methods to hide these things, it's more of it creates something further for us to support and further deviates us off the course of the mainline IPS theme. They are still updating a lot right now, and with every update I have to make sure all of our custom stuff is up to date and update everything manually. I'd be a lot more comfortable only doing this if it needs to be done and if there's nothing else we can do to fix it.

Again, it's something I'll look into, but there is really a lot going on right now. You might find the issue better already, we've been adding a lot of caching to prepare for future events.

Likewise, I don't mean to come off as rude, although I sometimes don't give the full picture that probably explains our reasoning -- I hope this post helps show that more.

Edited June 17, 201510 yr by Cyan

You can disable the showing of signatures inside your account settings/signature section.

Thanks, I somehow missed all of the account settings!

I think our greater goal is improving the speed of the site, and we've been trying to do that more and more recently. The images are potentially an issue, and we'll try and compress them more. We'll also get rid of making the browser ask for updates, as IPB makes every file name unique and tends to add a query string if it changes - so it's unneeded for browsers to recheck. If we still have speed issues after all of this work, then we'll consider adding a way to toggle the gallery images.

With this large of a site, speed is very hard to improve, I know this from experience. One of the problems with the images is I have seen a very large (Compared to the JPEGs/PNGs) GIF that took a lot longer to load (Probably about a whole second to load or so). In terms of site speed, have you tried looking into a CDN like Cloudflare or something similar? Those usually do a ton of caching and other speed-enhancing actions without much effort needed.

My only concern is the easiest way to do this (at least for your particular issue) wouldn't help much. This would be the same way IPB decides to hide things (like certain forum categories), It would be some JavaScript thing that sets "display: none" on the element when it loads. It wouldn't help you that much as the images would still effectively download and you'd have to wait for the JS loading to hide them.

The more advanced way is to hook into the block, or create a new block, which adds this feature. Granted this doesn't sound difficult, we have a lot on our plate right now, including making sure the website is still standing when the clock hits zero.

It's less that we don't want to add methods to hide these things, it's more of it creates something further for us to support and further deviates us off the course of the mainline IPS theme. They are still updating a lot right now, and with every update I have to make sure all of our custom stuff is up to date and update everything manually. I'd be a lot more comfortable only doing this if it needs to be done and if there's nothing else we can do to fix it.

 A JavaScript solution that hides it would not do anything, except possibly making it ever so slightly worse. If I'm understanding what you mean by hooking into/ creating a new block, then that would be pretty easy to do, since it would just be a IF unchecked, insert the JavaScript, ELSE, do nothing.

I don't know how IPS is, but usually you can make a theme, then update your version which wouldn't change much in the theme except requiring some to be recoded if that code was removed. New versions of forum software, in my experience, don't touch themes much, since security and customizability are pretty important.

    Again, it's something I'll look into, but there is really a lot going on right now. You might find the issue better already, we've been adding a lot of caching to prepare for future events.

Likewise, I don't mean to come off as rude, although I sometimes don't give the full picture that probably explains our reasoning -- I hope this post helps show that more.

I've actually had increased load time lately, which is probably pretty strange and possibly unique. That post definitely helped me understand a lot more, thank you.

 

The following are the results of pinging your server from two machines located in very different geographical locations:

This is from a server (CentOS 6) in Michigan:

PING lspdfr.com (68.65.123.225) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 68.65.123.225: icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=64.1 ms
64 bytes from 68.65.123.225: icmp_seq=2 ttl=47 time=63.3 ms
64 bytes from 68.65.123.225: icmp_seq=3 ttl=47 time=62.8 ms
64 bytes from 68.65.123.225: icmp_seq=4 ttl=47 time=64.8 ms

PING lcpdfr.com (50.31.225.93) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from unknown.servercentral.net (50.31.225.93): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=61.6 ms
64 bytes from unknown.servercentral.net (50.31.225.93): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=61.3 ms
64 bytes from unknown.servercentral.net (50.31.225.93): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=60.5 ms
64 bytes from unknown.servercentral.net (50.31.225.93): icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=62.2 ms
64 bytes from unknown.servercentral.net (50.31.225.93): icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=61.3 ms

This is from my personal computer in south Georgia

Pinging lspdfr.com [68.65.123.225] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 68.65.123.225: bytes=32 time=102ms TTL=52
Reply from 68.65.123.225: bytes=32 time=102ms TTL=52
Reply from 68.65.123.225: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=52
Reply from 68.65.123.225: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 68.65.123.225:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 101ms, Maximum = 102ms, Average = 101ms

 Pinging lcpdfr.com [50.31.225.93] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 50.31.225.93: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=54
Reply from 50.31.225.93: bytes=32 time=102ms TTL=54
Reply from 50.31.225.93: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=54
Reply from 50.31.225.93: bytes=32 time=102ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 50.31.225.93:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 100ms, Maximum = 102ms, Average = 101ms

Edited June 18, 201510 yr by DominusArbitrationis
Formatting issues