man vs wild

[bosshawg]

 is it me, computer or what - but is anybody having troubles opening site w/this man vs wild pop-up or when its downloading?
my computer just bogs down or locks up when i go to click it off from opening. just curious..

[TCook]

Its not just you, latley this has been the slowest site I visit. I have a fast connection and it took me about 8 min just to get to this reply page, most other sites take a few seconds to load. Dont know if that has to do with the man vs. wild pop up or not?

[Cheetam]

What browser are you guys using?  I'm not having any problems using Firefox...maybe it's an IE thing?

[djkimmel]

What browser and version are you using? I've received only 3 complaints about speed so I have no good idea about any pattern of possible problems. I do, however, do hundreds of pages of testing on different computers, browsers/versions, locations, connection types, so I have a pretty good idea about page load times. And I have not had a lock up once.

For the forum, my slowest load time is usually 25 to 30 seconds with slow DSL - those times usually only on the first page load and with multiple man vs wild ads. 8 minutes is something else wrong. I would refresh if it took more than 25 seconds to load a single page. There's a possibility there was a problem with your connection and/or a server along the route from the page or an ad to your PC. Those things can come and go, but 8 minutes for load time would equate to a connection speed of about 2KB per second - bad dialup on a bad line.

If anyone continues to have such slow loads, then something is definitely wrong beyond the number of ads or code. I am on several different times of the day, and I have other computer people who provide me with feedback on load times and performance. I usually know if something like a bad server or other major problem occurs for anything more than a few minutes.

The load time with the man vs wild is somewhat slower - average 23 to 26 seconds per page if multiple come up, or on first load - while I'm getting 8 to 14 seconds most of the time on the forum now per page. This is on a slower DSL connection. I have not tried dialup because I know few people now who use it, and I don't have the the personal coding knowledge, or the money to pay someone else to work on the complex coding to switch to lower memory versions based on connection speed. Someday, I may, but we all start somewhere.

I made some code changes a couple days ago after the first complaint that I was hoping to not make for a couple weeks yet to try to help out. I've been working on learning how to speed things up while still meeting contracts and necessary settings to pay for the costs of the site. I took some graphics and some coding off. I show an average of 30% to 40% faster than it was last week for the forum, and 10 to 20% faster on the home page.

The 20-some seconds slower loads are when several man vs wild come up together, which I'll work with the provider of that ad to try to adjust - I don't serve that ad - an outside company does so please be patient. I do not know how well they can control beween the 3 spots, what loads at the same time. After a few views, other ads show up.

If you are talking popup, then I assume you are talking about the home page or the articles index - the only two places I have a popup installed. Any other man vs wild ads are just rich media - if you are loading a page with ads on it, don't put your mouse pointer on the ad space. The ads are designed to load minimally if no interest is 'shown' but if you move your mouse over the ad, it 'sense the interest' and will load the additional broadband type activity like video and sound. So try making sure you mouse is not on one of the bigger ads. Again, I have not had one lock up from any ad on any computer and neither has any of my 'testers' so I don't know what is happening there, but try keeping the mouse off the rich media ads.

As for the popup on the home page, you can always skip the home page if you want to or are having trouble by going directly to www.greatlakesbass.com/forum/ if you aren't interested in any information there - one of the reasons I try to make is easier now to go to specific sections so you can skip the parts you aren't interested in.

The popup on the home page is the first one I've tried. It runs for only 10 days so it is almost over and since I've never done it before AND it pays more to have them, I wanted to see how it would go. So far only two other complaints just about the popups - the "I hate popups" response. More people hate them because they have been abused, but not everyone hates them. They are still a successful advertising method, so many advertisers, especially the bigger companies, want to use them.

I have some contractual requirements to use some types of rich media, but it if turns out that a significant number of people are having trouble, or are just ticked off by them, I will minimize the use of them as much as I can. I don't expect to be doing a lot of popups - it is just a special deal the comes along once in a while. By not using them at all, I will be turning down income that could definitely be used to pay for the steadily increasing costs of having a growing web site.

Realistically, advertising is the way most bills are paid on the Internet. I've taken a number of graphics off the home page and forum in the last few days, and will do so on more pages, but it will take some time. I will try to work towards a balance since I don't try to think of ways to make things slower - honest. I do try to think of ways to not lose money while spending 40 to 60 hours a week working on the site.

I can not at this time afford the much higher cost of dedicated or virtual serviers with less sites on them. That is a significant increase in cost so when I serve ads, it will not be as fast as some sites who can afford these better solutions, or maybe have their own servers, something I don't want to mess with - I don't have that amount of time or money available. If you have one or two ads on a page, even on the shared hosting like I use, it will be faster - true. I may get there eventually, faster servers with a few less ads, but I feel that I provide, and will continue to provide a good environment with good information that is fortunate to have a respectable amount of support interest. I'm working at improving things while trying to balance all needs with what is available and feasible.

I spend some time on other sites too, and I time them and look at their methods. My comparisons on averages show some sites are faster, some are about the same and some are slower. I also see the normal variations in load times that happen at times because of all the various factors involved in Internet performance. I hope that when any member or visitor visits here that they realize this is not a high dollar site that can afford the best and fastest, but does offer a lot of good info and entertainment, and is growing with enough support to have good potential to improve over time. I'm an angler trying my best to provide a web site worth visiting.

[Durand Dan]

When I saw the Man vs Wild pop up I thought "Dan's making a few bucks"!

[McCarter]

I use IE 6 and my ISP is Massnet.  Ever heard of Massnet???  Didnt think so.  Its dial up.  And its horrible.  For some reason my company insists on paying $20.99/month for the worse possible internet service on the planet.  My stuff runs slow.  real slow.  But i am not experiencing any unusual slowness from this site.  I have a harder time with ebay than i do here.  So i definatly dont think its a IE issue.  It might be something in the settings on your browsers.  Maybe a cookie issue.  I dont really know what that means, but it sounds like something Dan or Cheetam would say.  I like cookies.

McCarter himself

[TCook]

I have no problem with the ads at all, just noticed it taking a looooong time to load most pages on glb in the last week or two. I have dsl and most other sites would load in about 10sec so I figured it was the site. It must be something with my computer if only a few are having these problems. Not a big deal at all Dan and today the pages are loading much faster for me.

Tim

[bosshawg]

 unfortunately i have comcast (not by choice) and usually haven't had problems before like this until the ad started showing up. if its run to end soon, i'll deal w/it. was just curious if others had same problem. thanks.

[djkimmel]

Sorry about the long response, but I wish I could fix and do everything the best way for everyone. That's part of why I'm constantly tweaking and trying things. This whole site has been my training ground for so many new things.

I really don't want anyone to have a bad experience. The popup ads stop tonight at midnight. IF I had about 100,000 page views of just that ad, then I might have some gas money for a few weekends, but at the traffic level here for home page loads over 7 days, it will probably be enough to idle out of the no wake at Harley Ensign... but hey, every little bit helps!!!

There's just so many variables to web performance from your PC to the servers involved in this site that it can be incredibly complicated to try to figure out what might be causing what.

I will try to control and improve what I defintely can and ask that if you do have problems, but only short term, there's probably not much that  can be done, but if a problem persists over a few hours, several different times, or especially one day to the next, then please send me a message and tell me when the problem is happening, what browser/version you're using, the ISP/connection and what operating system you have.

I often can't do anything if only one or two people contact me, but if several do and I see a pattern of some kind, there may be something I can do. If I can, I will.

bosshawg, Comcast is experimenting with blocking certain types of Internet traffic without informing their customers clearly what they are doing. I'm aware of this, but so far have only heard of things that shouldn't affect this type of site, but since they have publicly said they will be aggressive with load balancing, it is possible there may be intermittent slowdowns. I'm trying to stay up on this issue because more ISP's are doing this more aggressively, but so far mostly dealing with much more high traffic file-sharing sites from what I've found out.

TCook - I'm working on understanding caching and no-caching programming and apps better since this affects load time verses expected ad and graphics performance. I have to meet certain obligations, but where possible, I'll try to optimize code for faster loading. I'll just keep working at improving when I can, and if I do get a little more details in the future, again, I may be able to put it together with other people and work things out with advertisers or code. Not all the time, but I will when I can.

McCarter, you obviously come from another planet

[Vic Cerabone]

I check the site from home (Firefox) and work (IE) with no problems.  Ads pay the bills, and I think you are doing a good job managing them Dan.  Take a look at BFHP is you want to see ads gone wrong.

Dialup? McCarter!? 

[djkimmel]

Thanks Vic. I hope this site will only get better as I continue to learn new web coding techniques. There's so much to learn, I'll be bringing in some help down the road too - hopefully smarter web computer peoples.

I had someone compare GLBass (me) sort of to BFHP and I admit, it hurt. I haven't been to BFHP in quite a while, but I hear things. I sure hope over this winter I have time to get some more improvement knowledge leading to a smoother design down the road. I've started implementing parts of it already.

I want to get more video on the site too and that seems pretty complicated. I expect at first, that people with fast connections will like the video, while people who don't have a fast connection will not like it, so I will try to put it on pages that allow people to choose to go to those pages or not without losing the ability to read the other information.