Important - New Server - Downtime Tonight 9pm

[Geoff Barnes]

Ah thank you Mods, that looks much better! 

[Steve]

Working well and super fast. Thank you Grant 😀

[iPeace]

Nice one, many thanks.

[Saganite]

All is well. Many thanks....

[Ant]

Yep, really quick for me today! 

Thanks for all your efforts Grant

[steppenwolf]

Well done Grant, an excellent upgrade and I for one really appreciate the time you put into doing all this stuff! Running really well for me.

[Jonk]

Seems much quicker, which is no surprise really as it should be!

[DaveS]

Working well here, though I'm still seeing an odd bright rectangle flashing up before a new page loads. Seen it on the desktop and android mobile. May be my connexion?

[Geoff Barnes]

4 minutes ago, DaveS said:

Working well here, though I'm still seeing an odd bright rectangle flashing up before a new page loads. Seen it on the desktop and android mobile. May be my connexion?

Yes I get that too, it seems to be the Imaging Challenge banner loading as a white square before it loads properly. Not a problem at all.

[DaveS]

It can be if you're looking at the forum late at night with the lights dimmed, 'cos you're in and out while imaging.

But that's off topic so I'll leave it there.

Edited May 10, 2019 by DaveS

[JamesF]

8 minutes ago, Geoff Barnes said:

Yes I get that too, it seems to be the Imaging Challenge banner loading as a white square before it loads properly. Not a problem at all.

I've noticed that, too.  There's an initial large white-ish square that then collapses down to the correct size once the banner has loaded.  I think it's been doing that since before the move though.  Possibly I've noticed it for the last week or so.

James

[Geoff Barnes]

3 minutes ago, JamesF said:

I think it's been doing that since before the move though.

Oh yes, well before the move to this server.

[Jonk]

Looks like the banner image is loaded as full size, then resized to be smaller - this is probably in the CSS, which would be noticeable as a quick flash of the full size placeholder.

A simple fix would be to have the correct size banner image without CSS resizing.

[JamesF]

Oh, I wonder if it's because all the banners are loaded in a block one below the other, so what I'm actually seeing is not actually a square, but a set of banner-shaped rectangles giving the appearance of a square.  That would kind of make sense.

James

[Grant]

I'll look at the banner issue - if you notice, it only does it (I think..) on the latest banner because the forum software has changed the way it handles these - I think because it now does the lazy load thing it puts a white square in initially which then gets updated with the image.

Previous banners didn't work like this.

[JamesF]

I'm fairly sure it's the lazy loading thing that is the cause of what I see, certainly.  Usually the white block (and I see them quite a lot  is the same size as the image, but in the case of the banner it is the same width as the one that's eventually displayed but much deeper, which is what put the idea into my head that perhaps it's multiple banners being loaded in a single block, each below the previous one.

It's hardly the end of the world and I imagine anyone with a reasonably quick internet connection might not even see it.  I just get a weird jump in the page as the block collapses after the banner loads.

James

[Ouroboros]

Thanks to all who worked hard to achieve this transition, and for maintaining this great side so well. It is very much appreciated. 

Just an observation. I notice the emoticon window is still very slow to drop down. Can anything be done about that? 

 

[Grant]

The banner flash issue is sorted 🙂

[JamesF]

Oooh, lovely.  Thanks Grant.

James

[Grant]

1 hour ago, Ouroboros said:

Thanks to all who worked hard to achieve this transition, and for maintaining this great side so well. It is very much appreciated. 

Just an observation. I notice the emoticon window is still very slow to drop down. Can anything be done about that? 

 

I'm not sure this is avoidable as there are so many emoticons in the list which just take awhile to load, especially on some browsers / internet connections. I confess, I never use this feature I just type the smilieys in but I will have a look.

[Ant]

Maybe we limit the smilies that are displayed? If you know the shortcut you can still type it, we just limit the drop down contents ? 

[kirkster501]

It all continues to work well and site loads well.  Notice from the IP address that it is hosted by Digital Ocean in London.

[Grant]

1 minute ago, kirkster501 said:

It all continues to work well and site loads well.  Notice from the IP address that it is hosted by Digital Ocean in London.

Digital Ocean is the data center / platform we are using but the host we are using are: https://stablepoint.com/ They are a great bunch of guys, really helpful and I've been working with them for probably 10+ years at this point.

They offer all sorts of hosting, so even if you just need to host a blog or your astro images, they will have a package to suit.

They put together something pretty custom for us and so far the speeds I am seeing on SGL are fantastic!

[kirkster501]

Ballpark how much does it cost to host SGL Grant with a cloud server of those specifications in that IaaS type configuration?  A reasonable sum I bet.  Do they leverage bandwidth charges as well? 

[Grant]

29 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

Ballpark how much does it cost to host SGL Grant with a cloud server of those specifications in that IaaS type configuration?  A reasonable sum I bet.  Do they leverage bandwidth charges as well? 

It's significant, there website will give you some idea but it's not really something I feel comfortable discussing publicly.

Luckily for us, our sponsor FLO takes care of these bills so we don't have to fill the site with loads of flashing banner ads!