Avatars & Board Speed

Discussion in 'polls' started by Paul Wilders, May 27, 2002.

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  1. Paul Wilders

    Paul Wilders Administrator

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    To what extend loading pages is slowed down is not known. Please post your comment as well.

    regards.

    paul
     
  2. Pretender

    Pretender Registered Member

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    I voted "no", but I'm really not sure if that is the main problem. Seems the boards are running very well or very slowly. Course I'm using dial-up 56K so I don't expect it to run very well all the time because I could have connection slow down. So, as long as it works, I'm content with it for now. bob
     
  3. UNICRON

    UNICRON Technical Expert

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    The board is running slower than normal for me, I see we have small icons now. honestly I think it made no difference. The size of the avatars was small enough already, it is the latency of some of the servers hosting them that is a problem sometimes. It doesn't matter if the pic is 1 byte if it takes 5 seconds for this board just to establish a connection to the other server.

    If you watch the  status bar when a page is loading slowly, you can see what it is that is the problem. A few days ago it was Paul's avatar. No doubt over the weekend mine was missing because I host it locally and my connection was down a bunch.

    The slowness today is the actual Perl pages loading. This is NOT connection speed dependent, but server processing power dependent. I wonder if our board has been shuffled to a slower machine, or if the one it is on is getting too busy. Ofcourse a 56k modem may load even slower than that but that would be a client/ISP issue, not this board's.

    So I vote leave the avatars the way they were. The new size makes no speed difference. If they were eliminated altogether, that may help a bit, but then they'll start showing up in sigs anyhow.

    PS these avatars are now so small, many are impossible to identify. Paul, you avatar looks like a smudge lol. How is my severed Unicron head supposed to be intimidating when it the size of a leprechaun's?
     
  4. root

    root Registered Member

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    I'm on 56k and I have been to some boards where large avatars/graphics are used quite extensively and they slow me down to a crawl.
    I think if the people on this board are considerate and use small avatars, it is not a problem. If it gets to be a problem, then Admin can tell the users to cut the graphics down to size.
    I have been happy with the speed of this board so far.

    root :)
     
  5. Paul Wilders

    Paul Wilders Administrator

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    Didn't change my mind; still do agree.

    As for the bolded part: nope.

    Could be a possibility indeed.

    Avatars have been restored to (fairl) their previous size: 60 x 60  ;) - Although personally I did like that childrens helmet instead of your adult one a lot, UNI  :cool:

    regards.

    paul
     
  6. Checkout

    Checkout Security Rhinoceros

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    I like the Avatars.  Without them, this place would look and feel as anonymous as every other board running this system (and similar).

    Perhaps avatars can be copied to local storage...?
     
  7. UNICRON

    UNICRON Technical Expert

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    In ther private DCS forum, we upload an avatar then the server can find it easily. The server still has to push it to the client, but it should cache and not be needed to be resent atleast for the session.

    security concerns with uploadign a virus is not so bad with a private forum, here any old joker might try to upload malware.
     
  8. Checkout

    Checkout Security Rhinoceros

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    I wouldn't suggest that users be allowed to upload; I figure that the mods could do the copying (since we know how they love to have work piled on them).
     
  9. zappa

    zappa Registered Member

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    As long as I use IE this site rips.  When using Netscape 4.79 it is slowed to a old donkey going sideways down the cliffs of Santorini after a couple of Ouzo's.  

    I vote to leave em.  Still trying to figure out the difference between a UNICRON and a Viking type person.  Same nice hats and happy look on their mug.  
     
  10. Mike_Healan

    Mike_Healan Registered Member

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    I'm on a sorry 30K dialup connection and it takes a few seconds to load, but it's not bad.
    I believe a big part of it is the perl scripts rather than the avatars. The scripts have to find, access, read, then execute based on information in text files that are constantly growing larger.  A database driven board would load amazingly faster. YaBB perl upgrades to MySQL/PHP beautifully and the speed increase is amazing.
    FYI, I don't know if changing the physical size of the avatar matters. It's still the same file, and the file is still the same size.
     
  11. Pretender

    Pretender Registered Member

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    i've changed my mind to yes instead of no on the poll, not that i can actually change it, but, the board works fine for me. bob
     
  12. Prince_Serendip

    Prince_Serendip Registered Member

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    I use a DSL Modem. How fast the pages load seems to be dependent on what time I browse and/or the number of other people here. Overall this site is pretty quick, solid and dependable. I wish more sites were like this one.
     
  13. zappa

    zappa Registered Member

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    Why can't I see avatars, smiles and instead just see red x'x everywhere.
     
  14. Paul Wilders

    Paul Wilders Administrator

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    zappa,

    Having one or more blocking apps installed?

    regards.

    paul
     
  15. zappa

    zappa Registered Member

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    No doctor.  Now the problem went away.  Hmmm.  Did not change anything either.  Just another mystery I won't solve.  LOL.  ^Thanks Paul.  
     
  16. Paul Wilders

    Paul Wilders Administrator

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    zappa,

    Another proof MSoft works in mysterious ways  ;)

    regards.

    paul
     
  17. tepi

    tepi Registered Member

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    This thread frightens me. It must have taken me well over an hour to select, resize, modify and finally get my profile to accept my teensy-weensy 1.76 KB jampacked-with-significance avatar,only to have the profile lose it and for me to have to relive the whole agony again today, or much of it, and I do feel that collectively, as someone has pointed out, this colorful and often amusing collection of avatars makes for a much more interesting sight... erh... pardon me.. site. IMHO they give the site that lighter touch which helps balance the weighty matters under discussion here. And the thought that someone might be thinking the unthinkable, might be thinking of taking them away, well ... it's going to greatly trouble my sleep.
     
  18. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

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    Hi tepi,

    This is a very old thread. We stopped discussing this in the middle of 2002. And it turned out that we were able to support avatars and have even provided the newer avatar upload feature, which is unfortunately what you were struggling with in order to get your avatar posted here. :doubt:

    As to avatar size issues... The most common problem with avatar uploading is not the file size, but the dimensions (pixels) of the avatar. This forum software is set to only display avatars at 60x60 pixels. It can resize some file types under some conditions to fit that size, but if the image is not square, and either side is larger than 60 pixels (or if auto-resizing makes one side bigger than 60 pixels) then that's when the size error is generated.

    Take a look at these two threads about avatars:

    Size limit of avatars

    FAQ: Uploading Personal Avatars (v2)
     
  19. tepi

    tepi Registered Member

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    Hi Low Water Mark:

    Well, that's a relief. Thank you. But yes, I did resize mine to 60x60 and it was working great. But somehow it got lost. Anyway it's back now and I'm hoping it won't happen again. If I may say so, I find the avatar section of the profile page, with its two url windows and mention of uploading but no upload button very confusing. But I'll take your advice and check out those threads.

    Regards.

    P.S. Just read the threads and your post there makes everything perfectly clear. I don't think there will be any further problems now.
     
  20. bigc73542

    bigc73542 Retired Moderator

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    I don't think they are bothering me on page load time (DSL) but even if it did a little I still like them it gives the forum a personality of being friendly with a sense of humor. But this is just a personal opinion. :)
     
  21. tepi

    tepi Registered Member

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    Hi LWM:

    I've now found out why the avatar was lost. It's because, if I go into profile to change my profile, the browser location of my avatar doesn't appear in that little window where I last put it. So if I don't enter the location again, the window remains blank when I exit and - no avatar. So now I simply re-enter the location whenever I need to change my profile.

    Cheers
     
  22. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

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    Hmm, so you are saying when you go to the "Edit Profile" screen, the avatar line is blank for you (see the circled line in image below). So, if you hit the "Change profile" button at the bottom of that screen, obviously since that line is blank it will delete your avatar...

    Interesting. This is not the case with the majority of the people here. If I go to edit your profile, (I am an admin here so I could do that, though no regular member could, of course), your linked avatar is present and is not lost if I make an edit. So, it will not deleted your avatar when I do it. This is the same for editing my profile or anyone else's here.

    I suspect this problem is somehow related to the problem you've had with other forum functions here - such as the javascript problem with previewing versus posting. There may be some setting(s) on your system, or perhaps some security software that is interfering with normal operation of the forum software.

    As I said, normally that line always contains the current (previous) avatar link for people when they edit their profiles. :doubt:
     

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  23. tepi

    tepi Registered Member

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    Hi LWM:

    Yes, that line isn't there. And the tick mark isn't there either. But, as you say, I guess it's just a quirk of my setup. And now I know what's going on it's no problem to re-enter the line.

    Cheers
     
  24. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

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    Ah, thanks for confirming!

    I just want to say that some of your posts this last day or so have been very helpful for us in figuring out some of the things that people have been seeing here at the board.

    As I'm sure you are aware, it can be very difficult figuring out some of the more rare problems when you can't recreate them and see them for yourself. These posts have helped to define the problems much better for us. Thank you for posting about them. [​IMG]
     
  25. tepi

    tepi Registered Member

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    No problem, LWM.

    I'm happy to be of help, especially as so many folks around here have been of such great help to me. You really have a great bunch of people here at Wilders. In fact, if it isn't too presumptious to say so, it's one of the most sensible and civilized groups I've encountered in my many years of wandering the web - though I haven't yet met them all, and rumors have reached me of certain 'fiery' and 'inflammatory,' if not to say positively 'combustible' types, if you know what I mean....

    Regards :)
     
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