What's up with the site of late? It's been terribly slow. Am I the only one experienceing this? Yesterday it took me over two hours to download the Dungeon supplements and just loading any page takes a lot longer than it used to, to a speed that is annoyingly low.
Senior Software Developer
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At the time you posted, Paizo and the rest of western Washington state was being pounded by a really fierce windstorm. Power was flickering off and on at my house all evening, and I imagine communications were also being disrupted. Then of course the power finally went out, and didn't come back at Paizo until a few hours ago.
The website will probably still be a little slow as I get all of its various bits and pieces running smoothly. (It really doesn't like recovering from a full power outage.) The main servers are running and the secondaries are coming online now.
I was just curious--do the servers have backup power, or do they just crash when the power goes out?
I'm quite sure the servers have battery backups, but they're not designed to last forever, and eventually, those backups will run out.
Crashing on serves bad! Most servers have an auto shutdown sequence tied to the battery backup so that everything gets shut down nicely should the power go kaput.
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At the time you posted, Paizo and the rest of western Washington state was being pounded by a really fierce windstorm. Power was flickering off and on at my house all evening, and I imagine communications were also being disrupted. Then of course the power finally went out, and didn't come back at Paizo until a few hours ago.
The website will probably still be a little slow as I get all of its various bits and pieces running smoothly. (It really doesn't like recovering from a full power outage.) The main servers are running and the secondaries are coming online now.
Just being curious: Is it normal that your server claims that the store is currently down - whichever part of your site I tried to reach?
Click on "Messageboards" -> "Currently the store is down"
Click on "Dragon" -> "Currently the store is down"
etc. pp.
;-)
Greetings,
Günther
Hi, I have managed a few sites before, nothing nearly as major as this site in profits, but probably similar in hits. And I think there is a slight chance the server admins might be fooling themselves. I have done this before, "oh its not so bad", "oh there talking about last week during the power outage" ect ect...
What I am trying to get at is that your site is incredibly slow. I have noticed that it has been slow for the last 5-6 months that have used the forums. Not that I really care, this isn't a complaint. But I think the idea that this slowness is a one time issue is just wrong. It seems pretty consistantly slow to me.
[snip] It seems pretty consistantly slow to me.[/snip]
I must second this. For the last two years, paizo.com has been _the_ slowest site I access. It is not unusual for me to wait 20-30 seconds for most store pages to load (the rest of the time, it's about a 5- to 20-second wait for every page to load).
I check my bandwidth speed fairly regularly and it's typically rated at ~4 megabits per second (Storage ~500 kilobytes per second, 1MB file download 2 seconds, Subjective rating Awesome) at bandwidthplace.com (my speed is rated similarly at other sites).But I put up with the speed at your site time and again, because of the invaluable content and features (and I will continue to do so, though it would be wonderful if your site were faster).
:)
Eric
edit: it took 12 seconds to submit this message.
Yes, I agree that it is not just the power outage that has been slowing the sight down. In fact with the power outage I hardly noticed any difference in page load time. It really is this slow all the time. It gets so frustrating to brows for stuff. If I know what I want it not an issue, since it takes maybe a minute to get to it. But, if I just want to brows for a product not really sure what I', after I would rather drive the hour and 20 minutes to my nearest game store than try to navigate Paizo, its just too tedious.
It took 1 min 30 sec to post this the first time.
Horribly slow page loading on this site. I'm getting baud flashbacks waiting for pages to load. Time for Paizo to get into the giving spirit of the season and gift itself (and us) with new servers, a new pipe, or both.
I too agree that the Paizo site is slow. However, remeber that Lisa, Gary and the rest have said that an upgrade is in the works. also, I am sure that they do what they do out of love, because I am sure tha no one there is getting filthy rich off what they do. ~shrugs~ They give their best, everyone. Let us cut them some slack. If after the end of the 1 st quarter and things are still slow, then we can go back to complaining. (gets off the soap box)
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I too agree that the Paizo site is slow. However, remeber that Lisa, Gary and the rest have said that an upgrade is in the works. also, I am sure that they do what they do out of love, because I am sure tha no one there is getting filthy rich off what they do. ~shrugs~ They give their best, everyone. Let us cut them some slack. If after the end of the 1 st quarter and things are still slow, then we can go back to complaining.
This isn't complaining. It's giving feedback... on the Website Feedback forum.
If this website was purely for the messageboards, then it wouldn't matter a whole lot how slow it is; however, this is mainly a store. How many sales are lost because people get frustrated with the website or see its poor performance as some sort of indicator? Probably quite a lot. It's hurting Paizo a lot more than it's hurting forum trolls like me.
If this were a brick and mortar store, it would be like someone flipping the lights off for a minute every time you decide to look at another product on the shelves.
I often find the site extremely slow as well. This has been my observation for months. I would visit more often if this wasn't the case.
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CEO
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Hey y'all:
In January, we will be doubling the bandwidth by adding another T1, and we will also be adding firepower to our server array. Both together should help our speed quite a bit. I am at my parent's house accessing the site from AOL and it is indeed SLOW. Of course, most of that is my access through AOL through my modem. But needless to say, we should have the site slowness fixed in January.
Thanks for the feedback!
-Lisa
Hey y'all:
In January, we will be doubling the bandwidth by adding another T1, and we will also be adding firepower to our server array. Both together should help our speed quite a bit. I am at my parent's house accessing the site from AOL and it is indeed SLOW. Of course, most of that is my access through AOL through my modem. But needless to say, we should have the site slowness fixed in January.
Thanks for the feedback!
-Lisa
Since I visit this site daily, it is very nice to hear that.
Thats indeed good news. I´m happy to hear that improvements are on the way.
Stefan
~grins~ DocG, I meant no offense. I was just trying to remind everyone that they are promising to do some improving of the bandwith. Plus, it takes time to implement such changes and some patience is needed. That was all.