exiern
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Loading times of Exiern pages on the website.
🕑 Added 2021-03-23 05:05:00 +0000 UTCOK, the plan is that I'm going to try and cover as many important maintenance related posts between now and the end of the month (but probably around 48 hours between each post).
Definitely want to try as much feedback as we can so we can try and fix as much of it as possible as quickly as possible.
So it has come to our attention from many different sources that the load times for the main Exiern website leaves a lot to be desired.
So, first question, what are people's experiences with the site? Comments below about this would be a great help.
It could be a function of the website repeatedly being built on top of the ruins of the previous one.
I have noticed that the new sites not built on a pile of digital archeological ruins of many years as opposed to the original site:
http://zen.darkreflections.live/
http://chaos.darkreflections.live/
seem to load much faster even with 2 MB on average page sizes. I was thinking that going back and replacing the larger size files via Sean Harrington's method of loading them in Photoshop and then resaving them as much smaller files sized files might help with the Exiern main site.
However, there might be more going on as even the earliest pages of Exiern past the title pages which are only a few hundred kB are also having issues apparently.
So next question, is there a loading time issue with the site, more specifically with the opening pages of the comic (the first few dozen pages are barely a couple of hundred kB in size if even that sometimes)? If so, please drop us a line in the comments here.
That would be very useful as I don't want to set on replacing a few hundred images (again!) with smaller file sizes if it's not going to make enough of a difference by itself.
Dave Barrack of Grrl Power did say there seemed to be load time issues, he recommended DreamPress for hosting (we currently use GoDaddy). I don't know if it would be the fix necessarily, though. Anyone with more expertise, please let us know in the comments if you have any suggests in this area.
Along those lines, if it's thought that switching from Wordpress would be the way to go, please feel free to make suggestions in the comments.
I dread the thought of not just having to load and resave hundreds of pages but also having to reload all of the pages to a whole new Wordpress or other site for what could be the third or even fourth time perhaps but I'll do it if we have to.
But in the meantime, any and all observations and advice about the above to do with the running of the site (speed, ease of use and so on), please let us know below in the comment section of this post! Thanking you in advance, it'll be a great help for all of us!
Comments
Shan from 1st January 2021 and Scott from before that.
I'm getting a couple of weeks off at the end of this month/start of next month, so the plan is with Sean Harrington's help is to go through and replace every image of size 1MB or more with a smaller file size (it doesn't seem to be affecting picture quality as such when we've done that piecemeal so far but the plan is to do a systematic top to bottom replacement and soon at that) and seeing if that helps. The site likely needs some additional upgrades and fixes, I'm going to talk to Scott about that too as he's done that in the past. Worst comes to worst, we might just have to rebuild the site from scratch yet again, through I dread the thought of having to upload 1000+ images yet again. But if it has to be done, it has to be done.
Kaffeyette Lektor
I just visited the site after a long time, and the load times are quite slow, especially when you're trying to work your way through a long stream of images to find something.
Shan from 1st January 2021 and Scott from before that.
Thank you, though I still more fall under this category than not and ... oh my goodness. Thank you again for your support and your assistance and advice will be invaluable going ahead, I'm sure.
Erin Halfelven at BigCloset
Nobody who hasn't done this stuff can really grasp how complex the problems can be. Good luck.
