Website performance

[donmoe]

Thanks for that announcement. I've registered for it too. (the cheero PP3 phone charger - ed)

However, I'm concerned about how extremely sluggish the "srblog" section of our website loads. If I wait long enough, it finally does finish loading, but only after several minutes. In contrast the forum loads quickly. (I'm using an iPad Air 2.)

     Don

[TN2Wheeler]

Thanks for that announcement. I've registered for it too.

However, I'm concerned about how extremely sluggish the "srblog" section of our website loads. If I wait long enough, it finally does finish loading, but only after several minutes. In contrast the forum loads quickly. (I'm using an iPad Air 2.)

     Don

I share your concern. There are many links to external resources (probably too many) and any delays from those other servers impact the perceived performance of our site. To wax technical for a moment,  the site is built in WordPress which means, on the positive side, it's relatively easy to maintain but being PHP-based there is a lot of server side processing going on making it slower than a simple (but much difficult to maintain) HTML site.

Your browser settings will affect this too. If you have your browser set to not catche images it has to load everything each time you visit. Depending on the browser,  some will catche content for a pre-defined time then discard the catche. So long periods between visits are the same as first time visits. Loading the entire page on each visit definitely makes it more sluggish.

All that said, one of my goals is to improve the reponsiveness as much as possible. Although I've administered enterprise browser-based systems on an internal LAN/WAN before I'm fairly new at internet website administration (where there are people with malicious intent) and am gradually clawing my up the learning curve.

Secondly, I should say that I agreed to do this only as an temporary solution. I will probably never be as good at it as someone who really wants to do it. So, we are still looking for a PERMANENT webmaster with a passion to improve our online presence. Volunteers?

INTERIM webmaster@ridemsta.com

[Bob Chappuis]

Don et. al.

I made some changes this morning that appear (to me) to have improved the responsiveness of our STAReview website (http://www.ridemsta.com/srblog/).

In order to facilitate online reading of STAReview we had a number of embedded PDF documents on the home page. Those took time to load. I reformatted those posts to move the online reader to a second page. I'd be interested in your assessment. Any improvement from your perspective?

Jim

P.S. We would welcome articles, ride reports, photos from others in MSTA. Got a motorcycle-related story to tell? I'll be more than happy to provide a place for you to publish it.

[donmoe]

Yes, the main srblog page does seem to load a bit faster. However, it still seems to take too long, perhaps due to the extremely large number of image thumbnails from STAR 2015. I would recommend limiting the page length and moving the thumbnails to secondary pages.


    Don

[Brick]

This AM I couldn't get in through Tapatalk but didn't try from my computer. It wanted me to sign in but no matter how many times I tried it didn't like me. This evening I signed on and zip... Not a problem. seems quicker to me.

[TN2Wheeler]

This AM I couldn't get in through Tapatalk but didn't try from my computer. It wanted me to sign in but no matter how many times I tried it didn't like me. This evening I signed on and zip... Not a problem. seems quicker to me.

GoDaddy was doing maintenance this morning.  The server was up and down several times. I lost my work more than once : (

[Brick]

Ok that explains that.

[96viffer]

I knew we had a new admin, but didn't know who. Thanks for stepping in Jim, albeit on an interim basis. It's never easy taking over especially without much in the way of a transition, and I for one am grateful for all the work you do to keep our site running.

Choon

[TN2Wheeler]

Yes, the main srblog page does seem to load a bit faster. However, it still seems to take too long, perhaps due to the extremely large number of image thumbnails from STAR 2015. I would recommend limiting the page length and moving the thumbnails to secondary pages.


    Don

Good suggestions. Instead of removing the STAR thumbnails altogether, I just limited the number to 20 (was 200). Also I limited the number of blog posts on the home page to 6. If blogs were only text, it really wouldn't matter that much but since ours almost always contain images and external links it makes a difference in load time.  Both of those helped I think. I want the site to be as rich as possible but I also want it to be responsive enough to not be frustrating.

I really don't know why it would be of interest to them but this site gets frequent attempts at sabotage from off-shore accounts. Usually from eastern Europe or Caribbean island IPs. Just this morning we had a brute force (many logins) attempt originating in England. I've considered blocking the site IPs outside North America - may do so yet.

[TN2Wheeler]

I knew we had a new admin, but didn't know who. Thanks for stepping in Jim, albeit on an interim basis. It's never easy taking over especially without much in the way of a transition, and I for one am grateful for all the work you do to keep our site running.

Choon

Thanks, it really shouldn't but does take some time everyday. I hope that will become less as I become more comfortable with the technology.

The site is pretty stale right now. With colder weather coming, I plan to add some more featured (front page) content. The easy way to do that is to reformat articles from STAReview for web presentation. Those are already available within the STAReview documents, of course, but they are more obvious to visitors as a feature. Fresh content is a major challenge. Nicky has the same problem of course and he does a marvelous nearly one-man-show effort in producing STAReview. I'm always impressed. It takes time to document a trip/ride or review a product of course, and that's a valuable commodity these days for most people.  I truly wish more of us were interested in telling our motorcycle stories - as a club we have lots of 'em.

[donmoe]

Jim,


Reducing the content on the webpage made a dramatic improvement in its load time. Thanks very much for those changes.


     Don

[stevegrab]

Honestly I have rarely if ever used the srblog pages and not really sure what purpose they serve (or were meant to serve) or how many of our regular members or others outside MSTA use them.

I get the emails about new STAReview and down load them, then read them on my tablet (sadly 2-4 issues behind most of the time). I come to the forum (less frequently lately) and read and comment on what was here.

PS  Jim like others I appreciate you stepping up, even if on a temporary basis.

[TN2Wheeler]

Honestly I have rarely if ever used the srblog pages and not really sure what purpose they serve (or were meant to serve) or how many of our regular members or others outside MSTA use them.

I get the emails about new STAReview and down load them, then read them on my tablet (sadly 2-4 issues behind most of the time). I come to the forum (less frequently lately) and read and comment on what was here.

PS  Jim like others I appreciate you stepping up, even if on a temporary basis.

The STAReview blog was created primary as a means of electronic delivery of the newsletter.  It supports that VERY well. It's also our primary online presence.  If you seach the web for motorcycle sport touring it will come up. It's a venue that supports online contributions from others. Unfortunately not many MSTArs seem interested in publishing thier stories. 

At one point anyone,  anywhere could have published there.  No one did. So, while we would still love to have articles from others, I felt that was too open in our modern malicious world and to publish now I require a request to do so first. 

[STLTHMSTA]

This AM I couldn't get in through Tapatalk but didn't try from my computer. It wanted me to sign in but no matter how many times I tried it didn't like me. This evening I signed on and zip... Not a problem. seems quicker to me.

GoDaddy was doing maintenance this morning.  The server was up and down several times. I lost my work more than once : (

Brick, try taking your gloves off when you type!!    TM

[stevegrab]

Honestly I have rarely if ever used the srblog pages and not really sure what purpose they serve (or were meant to serve) or how many of our regular members or others outside MSTA use them.

I get the emails about new STAReview and down load them, then read them on my tablet (sadly 2-4 issues behind most of the time). I come to the forum (less frequently lately) and read and comment on what was here.

PS  Jim like others I appreciate you stepping up, even if on a temporary basis.

The STAReview blog was created primary as a means of electronic delivery of the newsletter.  It supports that VERY well. It's also our primary online presence.  If you seach the web for motorcycle sport touring it will come up. It's a venue that supports online contributions from others. Unfortunately not many MSTArs seem interested in publishing thier stories. 

At one point anyone,  anywhere could have published there.  No one did. So, while we would still love to have articles from others, I felt that was too open in our modern malicious world and to publish now I require a request to do so first. 

Thanks for the info Jim, was not aware of any of that. I honestly think our presence in general has been spread too thin, on too many areas (local lists, forum, SRblog, Facebook) for most members to keep track, be involvled with them and offer additional contributions. Of course anybody that has worked on a local or state level and tried to get help with articles, ride leaders, etc. knows that getting folks to participate is always difficult.

As for electronic delivery of STAReview, I thought that was primarily done by us being emailed when new issues were available. I then take that email, and download the PDF of that issue to my tablet. As usual I have trouble keeping up with them so I'm several issues behind. But that works well for me, vs. being on some website reading them.

And thank you for stepping in to handle some of this even on a temporary basis.