My Experience with Moorcock's Miscellany

[Reinart der Fuchs]

Hi everyone,

This non-scientific poll is to give me a sense of how MM works for everyone. The context is this: I consider Google, Top Gear, Wizards, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Reuters and etc., to be premium websites, because they have massive resources and spent a lot of money to keep their web business alive and well. They also deliver web pages to you very quickly.

Moorcock's Miscellany is very inexpensive to operate (volunteer moderators, cheapest hosting possible, content provided by donors). It is not our mission to sell content here, so we don't have the usual profit motivations. Since we don't make money per se, something has got to give, and that something is web page delivery times. If you compare the delivery time of this site to those mentioned above, they deliver within fractions of a second, and we can deliver to the U.K., for instance, within 1.5 seconds, a seemingly eternity. Our lack of resources and geographic distance from your specific location are the main factors of delivery times.

The main thing for us to do is improve performance to the extent we can. This has been done from a couple of angles, mainly the configuration of MM, and redirecting spammers and bots away from the site, and telling Google to crawl our site at the slowest rate possible.

The last week has been what I consider to be our ideal performance. Really, you could call it the new normal. It's the best we can do for about $10/month including the volunteerism that goes on at the site. This presents two questions:

1) Is 1.5 seconds too long for our members to wait?
2) Has anyone even noticed the performance changes?

If you have time, please choose the items in the poll that best describes your experience as a visitor to the site. If your thoughts are not one of the choices, please add in a post. I'm not fishing for kudos or compliment, so be critical. Please let us know how fast or slow, frustrating or pleasing your visits are.

Thank you,
Mr. The Fox

[The English Assassin]

My only observation is the site has been a lil bit slower over the last couple of weeks - it's not a huge problem with me tho. Very occasionally I find the site down, but usually for only a very short period and sometimes when I post I get an error (can't really remember what it says, sorry), but when I check my post is always there, so no biggie. This has possibly happened a little bit more frequently of late.

Other than that, everything is groovy!

[Pebble]

No I have not noticed a thing and I have had a lot of time at present.

Keep up the good work!

[opaloka]

I once had a 300 baud modem. This site is blazing fast!

Seriously, if performance in my neck of the woods is any indication, I'd say there's no need to upgrade your hosting.

[dennishenley]

Every time i've visited the site I've had no problems.

[Elryk]

I haven't had any problems other than a malicious April Fool's joke a few years ago!

It's all good here.

[dasNdanger]

I never have any problems, and my computer is kinda slow naturally (DSL). In fact, I'd say MM loads faster and performs better than my FB page, my e-mail, local news sites, and other discussion forums I occasionally visit.

I'm satisfied! :)


das

[sandy]

wait 1.5 seconds... strewth... I remember using cassette tapes to load computer games for the ZX Specturm. It took 5-6 minutes to load probably less data than one page on this site.

No - 1.5 seconds is not a problem.

[Cordley]

Some adventures one likes far behind them.

[Pikey]

I've never noticed a problem , but I have got a 100mb cable line so most things are pretty fast!

[porcus_volans]

A few sporadic technical and performance problems are a small price to pay to be part of this community.

Is there a way to make a financial contribution to the running costs?

[Grivessillus]

Somtimes the pages take a while to load. And I get slow uploading when I post.
It freezes, then I refresh and find out it's loaded.
Sometimes a while ago my posts dispearred and never loaded, but it stopped.

Overall, the site works fine.
I've seen far worse.

I would'nt pay to make it run faster.
So long as it works at basic things, the rest don't matter that much.

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

I spent over 6 months building the Hawkwind section of the image hive and I'm by no means a web designer,...I work in building erection.
A lot of the images I submitted were deleted and/or downsized without any followup explanation from whichever moderator performed the task.
I didn't ask for anything in return for my time since it was a friendly gesture towards M.M.
The Hawkwind section of the image hive hasn't been updated since my last addition in 2006.
Why hasn't the person that was so eager to alter my input kept up with the recent 20 some odd releases that we've seen since 2006?
I check in every now and again.
That's all that's left in me.

[UncleDes]

This place remains the Tanelorn of the internet.

Many thanks to Reinart and the mods.

Des

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

"Many thanks to Reinart and the mods."

Yes,.. thanks Berry, John, Gov, and the Chaos Engineers.
But no thanks to the moderator that altered the Hawkwind Image Hive I built.
This is the last you'll hear of it but you asked for honest opinions and mine lies herein.

[J-Sun]

All the problems I have on the internet are from my end, not yours.
This is still the best website out there. No questions. And one day I'll have reliable internet again and be back more often.

But this site is just fine as is IMHO.

[Heresiologist]

The site is slow like no other site that I have ever regularly visited, about 4 or 5 seconds on average, I think. I've sometimes wondered if this helps keep trolling down.

However, it's not usually enough of a problem that I decide to visit someplace else.

The rather table heavy layout, especially when they are nested, probably doesn't help. But that comes with the older version of vBulletin. I seem to remember reading that getting a newer version was cost prohibitive, too.

[L'Etranger]

Slow??? Well, it isn't lightening speed if that's what you mean. But otherwise no, it isn't slow.
And the speed is also depending on the various type of equipment, don't you think? It seems quicker at my office (a big media company with excellent access) than at home where I use a slightly dated WiFi (some 5 years old).
This place is about thoughts and discussions, not about winning speed awards so it is all hakuna matata !

[MWalsh]

Ah, the $10/mo. fee explains a lot. I found the site to be a bit slow. A few moments ago, I just upgraded to a so-called new-improved, sleeker, more magnificent modem, so we'll see how this progress from this point forward.

I can tell you one thing: the emoticons to the right of this message box appear to be moving more rapidly.

MW

[Reinart der Fuchs]

Originally Posted by Heresiologist

The rather table heavy layout, especially when they are nested, probably doesn't help. But that comes with the older version of vBulletin. I seem to remember reading that getting a newer version was cost prohibitive, too.

It doesn't help that the server is in Los Angeles and you are on the other side of England. I will be examining options that bring service a wee bit closer to Europe. 5 to 6 seconds seems to be a hedge case, but not a good one. Tables can be an issue if they are coded wrong. I am examining options which will bring mobile friendly version of the site as well as something that loads faster. Poorly designed databases do not speed things up either.