this site is slow

[Juicy]

no it's not !

[Dreamacre]

I have a he!! of a time getting onto PTE Chat! I have been waithin for months

[NSCR FAN]

OK. let's see, it's free; it's fun; it's friendly (usually); we're fanatics and, yeah, it's still free. What's the problem here?

[MonkeyBoy]

Originally posted by PTCruzr
Here's something to try. Make a link (or a favorite.... or have it be your homepage) and have it start out at the "Owner Discussion" section of the forums instead of at the "PT Forums" section. The load time is MUCH quicker..... don't know why.

I did exactly that a couple of months ago.

The main page contains more than the standard forum list, it has current users, users for the day, etc. All of this takes time to extract from the database backend the forum software uses.

Sometimes the front page loads within a few seconds (I'm on cable) but more often it's slow. I also notice that when within a thread the majority of the page loads quick but starts crawling when loading up the "quick reply" box at the bottom of the page.

For those who are essentially saying "Shut up, it's free" - yes it is. And even slow I'd still be here. But when things start slowing down it may be an indication that something is wrong with either the hardware or software that hosts the forum. The administrators may well like to know when performance takes a hit so they can perform some preventative maintenance if necessary. Better that than not finding out until something crashes and things are down for days rather than hours.