Why is this web site such a resource hog??

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old3eyes

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#20282 19-Mar-2008 09:03

I've noticed this week that this web site seems to be getting slower.

On my work desk top a new PC with 1 gig of ram using both Opera 9.26 and Firefox 3 that the CPU usage only on this
site is about 51 ~76%  and on a P3 1000 in ly lab the CPU usage is  around 86% on this web site making it usless to use.
Most other webs sites I access  you would be luucky to get more that 10% CPU usage   Maybe it;s all the flsh crap that you have on this site??
I wanted to test again with Opera 9.5 beta which seems only to crash on this web site .Maybe  the CPU usage has something to do with that as well.

Regards,

Old3eyes

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Phil Gale
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#117476 19-Mar-2008 09:43

I've also noticed odd behaviour this week - I understand you've migrated your ad platform recently Mauricio, could this be causing issues?

It seems there is a lot of client side (read javascript) processing being done on each page load event - I notice it particularly because I have a habit of opening a forum and then middle clicking all the topics I'm interested it in fairly quick succession. At the moment there is a pause of around 1 - 2 seconds where Firefox completely freezes on each page load.

freitasm

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#117481 19-Mar-2008 10:38

I do have a variety of browsers around here - on Mac and Windows and haven't seen this problem. But yes, the Google Ad Manager adds to the script needed to load the site, which I am looking into optmising during this week.

I am also going to remove a couple of tracking scripts.

old3eyes: Maybe it;s all the flsh crap that you have on this site??

What do you mean?

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#117483 19-Mar-2008 10:57

I've just tried disabling Adblock and the issue has ceased ;)

old3eyes

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#117538 19-Mar-2008 14:51

I did some more testing on my lab P1000 with IE8 beta, FF3.04 beta and Opera 9.50 beta. When accessing the Geekzone main page or forum list the CPU goes up to 95% and stays there. When I manage to get to a forum it drops to 40%. I thought it may have been the Telecom banner ad so I clicked that and showndown the geekzone site. After the Telecom site had loaded the CPU usage goes down to about 10% which is normal for all the other websites that I visit.. Currently as I write this on HP desktop the CPU usage for Opera is 80%.

Regards,

Old3eyes

tonyhughes

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#117539 19-Mar-2008 15:18

old3eyes: I did some more testing on my lab P1000 with IE8 beta, FF3.04 beta and Opera 9.50 beta.

In my opinion, any test results or performance issues are irrelevant when using beta software.

I use non-beta browsers on a variety of platforms (IE, FF, Safari, Opera, on Windows XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Leopard), and Geekzone performs well on all of them, and doesn't hog resources. (I used to run betas of everything where possible (not just browsers), but now I am much happier with release version only of pretty much all my software, a few less features, but much better stability and less crashes [in general]).

With 30 tabs open, FF is idling along on XP Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz at approx 15% CPU usage, and opening 6 GZ pages in quick succession sees that figure take a geriatric high jump up to about 30% for a few seconds, then straight back down.

freitasm

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#117543 19-Mar-2008 15:34

As I wrote I am not seeing this but I have removed one tracking script since the first post.

Also good to note as pointed out that beta software is no good for benchmarks and As noted filtering software can also have negative impact on performance.

freitasm

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#117642 19-Mar-2008 21:19

I have done some coding around the new Google Ad Manager tags and you will see there's now only half of the script required to load on either the content or the forums pages. This should speed up loading a bit.

Also removed Yahoo!'s Mybloglog tracking code since we don't use that much.

Please let me know how it goes. I am always working on improving speed - but as I said I haven't seen these issues in our test machines here.

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manhinli

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#117650 19-Mar-2008 21:43

Firefox 2.0.0.12/WinXP:

10 Tabs of different Geekzone threads (opened at nearly the same time) took around 15 sec to load for all of them.

During that time, CPU usage was at 100% but then dropped off to around 5%.

Memory usage was around 50MB from the starting 15MB.

I think that's reasonable - it's about the same wherever I go.

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old3eyes

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#117748 20-Mar-2008 10:53

freitasm: I have done some coding around the new Google Ad Manager tags and you will see there's now only half of the script required to load on either the content or the forums pages. This should speed up loading a bit.

Also removed Yahoo!'s Mybloglog tracking code since we don't use that much.

Please let me know how it goes. I am always working on improving speed - but as I said I haven't seen these issues in our test machines here.

Thanx. That seems to have improved it. I did a retest on my lab P1000 with all the beta browsers and Safari 3.1 which I am using at present. Interesting Safari seems to load up the quickest on this site while Opera 9.5 beta the slowest though Opera 9.5 has always had problems here. Prior to the latest release it was impossible to use this forum without a Opera crash every minute or so. The high CPU usage at startup seems to come from the left panel loading. Once thats loaded the CPU usage drops . One thing I did note that if you go down the page so that the Telecom banner ad is not visible then the CPU drops to about 10%. As soon as the banner ad is visible again it goes up to about 80 ~ 90%.

On my normal desk top it only goes up to about 40% when it's viable.

Many thanx for your efforts. I can live with it now..

Regards,

Old3eyes

allan

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#117761 20-Mar-2008 13:11

old3eyes: One thing I did note that if you go down the page so that the Telecom banner ad is not visible then the CPU drops to about 10%. As soon as the banner ad is visible again it goes up to about 80 ~ 90%.

That's pretty much the same % CPU utilisation results for me as well on a 2.4GHz P4, XP SP2 with 1GB RAM

Madmax77

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#117783 20-Mar-2008 15:59

Same here on a Powerbook G4 1.67Ghz with 1 gig memory, will check on the MBP when I get it out of the bag! As soon as the Telecom banner is out of site, the processor drops to about 10%, when in view, up round 80-90%, surely Flash files shouldn't be that hard on the processor???

stuzzo

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#118817 26-Mar-2008 17:29

Just my 2 cents I find Geekzone pretty much the most resource hungry site I use with all the script running on it. I keep multiple tabs open but generally click off this site else it's good for an extra fan setting.

I was listening to a podcast recently where they quoted a survey of "power web users" (whatever that is) where there was general discontent with the performance of ajax applications esp. due to cpu host resource cost. I think a bit is fine but there needs to be a balance.

freitasm

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#118818 26-Mar-2008 17:36

We have no AJAX at all and have resisted suggestions to implement fancy things. The only scripts we have currently running are from Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, Google Analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings, and Statcounter. Plus the trich text editor when posting in the forums or writing a blog post.

I am tweaking the idea of removing Statcounter, because it provides just one more piece of information Google Analytics doesn't - which is current referrals. If I can work on a server side script then I will probably remove that one. This would leave just a small number of scripts - seriously, I've seen sites with much more than this!

freitasm

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#118820 26-Mar-2008 17:41

You think Geekzone is heavy? Try this page and look at the source code...

stuzzo

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#118822 26-Mar-2008 17:48

freitasm:
We have no AJAX at all and have resisted suggestions to implement fancy things. The only scripts we have currently running are from Google AdSense, Google Ad Manager, Google Analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings, and Statcounter. Plus the trich text editor when posting in the forums or writing a blog post.

Whether the script is coming from you or the Advertiser it doesn't matter to the end user. If I hadn't noticed it I wouldn't have bothered to find this thread. I know the site has to pay it's way through advertising and it's a fantastic site.

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