Slow page loads: any one else experiencing that?

Busse, it'll help this effort if you can post computer info with as much specificity as possible. OS, version, browser, java updated?

And to be clear, you're dealing with it on a work computer. Is there another one that's working right?

 

I've tried 15 times to get here and post this. What a pain in the ass! I tried to take a screen shot but I'm not that savy. It said too many redirects and that there was something wrong with the server. This was on my Android.

 

This webpage has a redirect loop
The webpage at http://eseeknives.com/forumshas resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your device.

Learn more about this problem.
ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS

 

^ Interesting.

 

Again. My device works just fine with the rest of the internet.

 

I don't know if Java was the culprit or not. Seeing as how nothing else between browser and forum is dependent on it, it seems unlikely.

Unless Xenforo is built with Java handling the backend. Which is possible. If that is the case, then Java could totally be the culprit. But I believe Xenforo is written in PHP.

 

Looks like they have more than one permanent redirect going. You'll see that it redirects to itself.

 

So if you look at the highlighted section of picture, you'll see that you go to eseeknives.com/forums and it says, "Hey, i've got a permanent redirect to eseeknives.com/forums, go there!". And when you get there, it says "Hey, i've got a permanent redirect to eseeknives.com/forums, go there!". And then it loads the index.

 

You can also see in the console that there are some 404 - Not Found errors for some images. But those are trivial errors, since the forums can function without them. It would drive a web developer crazy, unless that developer were lazy.

 

Ah, but here's the rub. In yesteryear, "programs" were written in one language.
For me, the first was BASIC, then came Fortran IV.

Those were both after punch card data feeding a mainframe with thesis data to be analyzed by Statistical Analysis System, or SAS -- an analysis language -- and some sophisticated multivariate analysis software that did things like principle components analysis (PCA), which I used to analyze thesis data.

During doctoral studies, I messed around a bit with Unix on a university server, then with Linux. But I never got comfortable with either, and thus not fluent. But I get the the idea.

But to the main point here. Anymore, nowadays, with Internet stuff like Browsers, blog software, web sites in general (especially highly graphical ones), forums like this ... we're no longer dealing with a single (programing) language, but a system composed of several languages linked into a modular network, a complex adaptive system -- that's my field these days.

So the kernel of the OS may be in Linux; text handled by PHP; some data bases in C++ or something more modern (there's been a lot of evolution in database software that I know nothing about); image and video components driven by Java, etc. Some sites that are oriented towards mathematics, analysis and/or graphics may also contain elements of Mathematica, or some of Wolfram's other programing magic.

(Speaking of Wolfram, I study and teach (advanced courses) about his computational systems using this book, which lends a whole 'nother level to our understanding of what computation really is.)

So, if some element of page loading involves calling a Java routine, but a browser's Java is not updated with the same version as the server has, the link could fail, and the page won't load. That's just a hypothesis. I'm not saying it did happen, I'm saying it could happen.

One of the main principles of system sciences -- also called complexity (again, my current field) -- is that in systems composed of a bunch of interacting parts, really tiny changes -- whether ostensibly good or bad -- in one or more parts can have HUGE and unexpected effects. It has to do with several other principles, including sensitivity to initial conditions (aka the butterfly effect) and a phenomenon called emergence (the whole is more than the sum of the parts; unexpected results occur when parts with fully known properties interact with each other).

The "why" part would take a lot longer to explain -- like hours over weeks -- so I'll leave it there.

 

Not sure what all that means. Why doesn't the clicky-thing click when I click it?

 

<laughter>

Here. Read this. It's easier to read, and will answer all your questions.

 

I just want to use the forum and not have to try multiple times to get to a page. This thing is broken.

 

That's exactly how I felt for a few weeks prior to last weekend when I upgraded Java, and/or magic happened.
All is good again.

 

While what you are saying isn't untrue, I don't think it's the matter in this case. Xenforo looks to run on a classic LAMP stack, and if you browse both the source, and look at the network items loaded, there are no java applets running. While it's possible something on the back end is, it seems highly unlikely.

In today's web world (since maybe 10 years back) everything is moving towards web services, lightweight page loads, and tons and tons of javascript and CSS. Only super complex applications that need some different/higher form of security or application container are using Java, and those are becoming more and more rare.

What does seem more likely is that based on location (maybe?) the routes that are being traversed are jacked up.

 

Good points all. And of course, I'll defer to the IT/programing people here for the final word.

I'm just trying to point out mainly that complex systems -- like forum programs interacting with OS, etc -- can sometimes do unexpected, even surprising things. And of course, still trying to resolve why my problems went away as soon as I updated Java and rebooted my laptop. After that, zoom zoom.

I don't believe in either magic or divine intervention by cybergods, sooo .... unless somebody's got another hypothesis...

Here's the best, most complete summary of XenForo I've found so far.

http://www.forum-software.org/xenforo/review

 

The clicky-thingy, clicks intermittently and does not chooch. No chooch factor at all, even when I click the dooblydoo. This place used to be skookum as frig.

 

But the question remains: does it have a horn?

 

I wish it did. I'd be honking the hell out of it right now.

 

Here: watch this instead. This is Ray Mears -- one of my favorite bushcraft tutors -- in the Boreal Forest, episode 1 of Season 1 of Northern Wilderness. By the end of this month, I will again live on the southern edge of the southern border of the transition into Boreal, aka Taiga, at the bottom end of Maine's Great North Woods.

It's the allure of Boreal that has kept me in Maine for six hard years, even after my main plans (involving a woman, don'tcha know? Why did I trust her?) failed in a crushing way. I realized the beauty and power of the landscape here. I fell in love with it instead of another woman.

And it just gets more spectacular and wild as you go north. Once you get into Newfoundland and Labrador (one province), across northern Quebec and west to Nunavut, that's where the true taiga kicks in. It's bigger than the Amazon, and contains 1/5 of Earth's fresh water. Let that sink in.

I haven't been there ... yet, but it's high on my list of things to do. In fact, Labrador is right at the very top of places I hope to visit in my life. I want to see the Torngat Mountains. That's north of taiga in tundra -- high altitude tundra. But you have to go through taiga to get to them, then you can retreat back south or west into taiga after the experience. Torngats is not where I'd like to spend winter.

Who needs Java, or for that matter, Php? Got water, elk, birch and wild rice?