Forum takes forever to load

Technical Details

Forum version : #phpBB2
Position : Founder
Concerned browser(s) : Google Chrome
Who the problem concerns : All members
When the problem appeared : A couple of months ago
Forum link : ( link is hidden, you must reply to see )

Description of problem

Hi all,

A couple of months back, my forum started taking ages to load, and I'm unsure of the cause. I haven't had time to address the issue, but I'd like to fix it now. I had a look at the network, though I'm not that great with inspecting bugs, and it seems to me that my accessibility tool might be increasing the load time. Also, once the forum finally loads, the problem stops. However, if I don't visit it for a while, it takes a long time to load again.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Coucou @the_rocketeer

have you – by any change – modified templates, added new javascript codes or external resources?

edit: upon visiting your forum – it managed 1790 requests, with 38.7 MB transferred, 89.7MB of resources and 1.4min to load the whole home page
for example this resource (https://data.whicdn.com/images/218230221/original.gif) took 28.52 seconds to load, but in the end it did not load because it doesn't exist on the original server

Can you try disabling javascript and see if the problem gets solved?
And then try to temporarily set templates (if modified) to the default content to see if the problem gets solved?

Hi Niko, thanks a lot for taking the time to help.

I have several modified templates and JavaScripts on the forum that were in place before the issue began. The only recent addition has been the accessibility tool.

I removed the image you mentioned and disabled the accessibility tool. While there has been some improvement in load speed, it hasn't returned to its original speed. I'm curious if there's a way to pinpoint what might still be causing the slow loading.

P.S. I also tested disabling the JavaScripts, but that had no impact.

Is something missing at the top?  There is a big space between the top and top of where the forums begin?

Yep, that's where the header will go once I complete the updates

@the_rocketeer use this tool
https://tools.pingdom.com
It will tell you the loading times of your forum, what loads and what does not load and all the loading information.

Hello your forum is waiting for the following page to load.

I would look at your widgets you have hosted from other site's, Most of the time it's thing like outside host's i remember i had a site visit widget that would count the number of people who looked at my site and it would always go down and would slow the forum loading times.

My advice would to go over all the things you have hosted outside of our host' service.

Regards.

Ape

Thanks, @jucarese! I ran a test last night but didn't get a chance to review it until midday today.

@Ape, I also noticed that these fonts take a long time to load when reviewing the Pingdom results. Thanks for pointing them out. I just removed them, and everything seems to be back to normal. I tried loading the page in incognito mode and from a different browser, and it loaded quickly. Hopefully, it's not just because I visited the forum a few times in the last two days.

The first Pingdom test actually failed, showing a -0.00 s loading time and only 27 requests. However, after removing the fonts, it was successful and gave me a couple of suggestions for improvement. I'll try to implement some of them if possible and keep an eye on the load time on my outside hosts.

Thanks all for the help; much appreciated! It was a good lesson to learn.

@the_rocketeer

I'm glad i could help and i am also glad it looks to be solved.

Have a great week and thank you for hosting your forum with Forumotion

Best regards.

Ape and the Forumotion Team.

Problem solved & topic archived. Please read our forum rules: ESF General Rules