First off, several of you had mentioned you were experiencing some speed issues over the last week. There is a lot that goes into a website's speed -- the webhost itself, your network connection, the path that the site takes to transverse the Internet to get to you, and then the software itself.
I have merged and reorganized some forums in attempt to lower page load sizes. Additionally, I disabled some add-ons we had been using as they were no longer being actively developed unless you signed up for an expensive subscription through the creator. Lastly, I moved the site last night to a third-party CloudFlare CDN to see if that would help with regionalized caching. You may (or may not) get some extra prompts from time to time related to that. If you do, that's what it is for. So far, it seems faster post changes to me here in Vegas but mobile is still slower than using the site on a desktop or tablet.
Which brings me to Google Hell. One of the remaining issues that impacts site speed is our reliance on Google advertisements. When the site first loads, Google bloats the hell out of your site by making multiple remote calls back to their various servers to deliver those ads. If I had my druthers, I would like to completely remove Google from the site. In order to do that, we would need more of you to become Supporting Members.
Right now, we have approximately $650 in fixed yearly costs between the web hosting, software licensing, domain name and SSL certificate registrations, etc. Then there are some non-fixed costs for things like bandwidth overages and some other software licensing and odds and ends. Last year, Google paid out roughly $750 for over 1.3 million impressions. Each year, they end up paying out less and less and while the ads are still paying for the site, I can see that in a few years it may not all the while leading to a poorer user experience -- ie the ads and speed issue.
Would love to hear your feedback as always.
I have merged and reorganized some forums in attempt to lower page load sizes. Additionally, I disabled some add-ons we had been using as they were no longer being actively developed unless you signed up for an expensive subscription through the creator. Lastly, I moved the site last night to a third-party CloudFlare CDN to see if that would help with regionalized caching. You may (or may not) get some extra prompts from time to time related to that. If you do, that's what it is for. So far, it seems faster post changes to me here in Vegas but mobile is still slower than using the site on a desktop or tablet.
Which brings me to Google Hell. One of the remaining issues that impacts site speed is our reliance on Google advertisements. When the site first loads, Google bloats the hell out of your site by making multiple remote calls back to their various servers to deliver those ads. If I had my druthers, I would like to completely remove Google from the site. In order to do that, we would need more of you to become Supporting Members.
Right now, we have approximately $650 in fixed yearly costs between the web hosting, software licensing, domain name and SSL certificate registrations, etc. Then there are some non-fixed costs for things like bandwidth overages and some other software licensing and odds and ends. Last year, Google paid out roughly $750 for over 1.3 million impressions. Each year, they end up paying out less and less and while the ads are still paying for the site, I can see that in a few years it may not all the while leading to a poorer user experience -- ie the ads and speed issue.
Would love to hear your feedback as always.
