Bitcointalk Speed Improvement?

[OgNasty]

I looked around and didn’t see any explanation (feel free to point me in the right direction) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t discussed already.

The forum seems significantly faster loading long threads and most noticeably my insanely full PM box. Not a little faster, but probably 5x faster at least over the last week or two.

Was a reason given for this? Has anyone else noticed?

[TryNinja]

Yes, theymos has been cooking behind the scenes.

The changes which precipitated this were pretty boring: I'm making tweaks to the backend infrastructure which will make things a bit faster and more reliable. (But don't expect huge improvements.) As part of this, in order to ensure fast and reliable database replication, over the past ~week I've been modifying all of the database tables to have primary keys. In the case of the merit_ledger table, I did this by adding a new "ledger ID" column. Adding this column is what broke the sMerit calculation. That's a big hint, so if you still want to try finding the bug, go back and give it a try now, because I'm going to give the answer in the next paragraph.

-snip-

edit: Just noticed it's really fast now. Wow

[Lida93]

Didn't notice. But just as try TryNinja said about theymos cooking behind the scenes, it goes on to show how much he theymos places importance into users convenience when exploring the forum, and this could be one of many things we just haven't noticed yet.

[Mia Chloe]

I looked around and didn’t see any explanation (feel free to point me in the right direction) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t discussed already.

The forum seems significantly faster loading long threads and most noticeably my insanely full PM box. Not a little faster, but probably 5x faster at least over the last week or two.

Was a reason given for this? Has anyone else noticed?

I haven't really noticed up until you mentioned and I just took note, the forum loads really fast compared to the previous regular speed. My best guess is Theymos has done some upgrades and part of it could be that he adjusted the servers probably adding more. Caching improves loading speed and hosting on a fast server with like PHP 7.4+ and using OPcache can  boost performance too I would have mentioned light weight themeing but this forum like other SMF have light weight themes. I'm very sure Theymos did some adjustments to the PHP codes for data sourcing also.

[DPHOR]

I have also been noticing this usual faster than before, the forum even load with a little Internet speed unlike before. Again, I do switches my network to get the best fastest network to explore the forum but for the past days have not even switch my network and it's still working very fast. Another thing I also noticed is that topic with many graphics loads faster as well instead of as usual.

Anyway, thank you theymos for the hard work. 

[348Judah]

I never noticed this, because the forum has not been slow to that extent in the past from my perception, so maybe as this implementations were made, i hardly noticed as well, since it does not take much seconds to load a page and i cant remember how often I've been provide to go through long threads with numbers of pages over hundreds or thousands.

[Vod]

Didn't notice. But just as try TryNinja said about theymos cooking behind the scenes, it goes on to show how much he theymos places importance into users convenience when exploring the forum, and this could be one of many things we just haven't noticed yet.

   Or he could just be trying to get as much performance as possible out of an aging system by modernizing the database with indexes.    It's nice he does his own cooking so he doesn't need to spend billions on others to cook for him.   Oh, wait...   

[I_Anime]

I looked around and didn’t see any explanation (feel free to point me in the right direction) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t discussed already.

The forum seems significantly faster loading long threads and most noticeably my insanely full PM box. Not a little faster, but probably 5x faster at least over the last week or two.

Was a reason given for this? Has anyone else noticed?

I personally haven’t noticed any changes until saw this thread , then try to confirm for myself found the forum is now faster compared to before even when loading longer threads . This shows that you are  really observant to have took noticed all this while, base on quote it definitely theymos doings. In the post theymos mentioned that the changes won’t be major though, but  they will be noticeable and  I believe most users haven’t realized the difference yet , however some will likely noticed it after reading this post .

[DYING_S0UL]

Everything looks the same to me, I didn't noticed anything significant as higher loading speed. The forum was already running fast enough in my opinion, so even if the admin did some improvements and upgrades, most of us wouldn't even notice it. Some may realize it after reading this post, not me though. It's not like we are talking about frame rates and higher resolution here, like we do in gaming!

[Zoomic]

Everything looks the same to me, I didn't noticed anything significant as higher loading speed. The forum was already running fast enough in my opinion, so even if the admin did some improvements and upgrades, most of us wouldn't even notice it. Some may realize it after reading this post, not me though. It's not like we are talking about frame rates and higher resolution here, like we do in gaming!

I really did notice that the loading time is very fast but I didn't know or think it was from the forum side. I thought it's from my ISP. All the same, there's improvement in the loading time of the forum but you wouldn't notice because the forum wasn't lagging at first.

[OgNasty]

Everything looks the same to me, I didn't noticed anything significant as higher loading speed. The forum was already running fast enough in my opinion, so even if the admin did some improvements and upgrades, most of us wouldn't even notice it. Some may realize it after reading this post, not me though. It's not like we are talking about frame rates and higher resolution here, like we do in gaming!

I really did notice that the loading time is very fast but I didn't know or think it was from the forum side. I thought it's from my ISP. All the same, there's improvement in the loading time of the forum but you wouldn't notice because the forum wasn't lagging at first.

It definitely isn’t an ISP thing. I have fiber internet and it would take sometimes more than a minute for my personal message box to load. No exaggeration. Now it sometimes loads in less than a couple seconds. Honestly a >x20 improvement there. A similar speed increase can be noticed by posting on the wall observer thread.

If you don’t have an insane message box or post on extremely long threads, you might not notice.

[Ultegra134]

To be honest, I haven't noticed anything significant, perhaps it has to do with my inbox not being as full as yours, or that I rarely ever open megathreads, nor do I use the "view all pages" function. On the plus side, I never felt that Bitcointalk was ever running on the slow side, its simple but versatile layout was always fast and efficient. My internet also sucks, they recently installed Fiber on the neighborhood but I haven't made the switch yet, still running on the old ADSL lines, but even with that connection, it's extremely fast.

[AVE5]

Was a reason given for this? Has anyone else noticed?

Honestly i never noticed any of such. My psycho hasn't even been bothered to even think texts had been on the slow loading if not just images.
And yes it's difficult for me to even notice it if there was really changes and perhaps the loading of contents in the forum doesn't visibly displays it loading speeds in meter to easily have it noticed.
I rather give kudos or blames to my internet network provider on the basis that my contents takes to load except there's an obvious forum problem. It's also good to know from TryNinja that Theymos has already made the dish and served without our consent.😁

[Findingnemo]

A similar speed increase can be noticed by posting on the wall observer thread.

If you don’t have an insane message box or post on extremely long threads, you might not notice.

I haven't posted in WO for a while but in the past, I always had trouble posting and often ending up in double-posting due to the loading issue, and I checked if that's changed with the improvement here. Loading still exists but it's faster compared to before.

But tried loading threads using view all after reading this, and yeah, the speed difference is noticeable.

[GeorgeJohn]

If you want to observe such, go to wall observe, you will notice that when you click on a wall observe BTC/USD....Thread you will notice that the system is now faster than before, I think theymos has touched the system a little bit, bitcointalk community is now sharp.

[skarais]

~~~

I haven't posted in WO for a while but in the past, I always had trouble posting and often ending up in double-posting due to the loading issue, and I checked if that's changed with the improvement here. Loading still exists but it's faster compared to before.

But tried loading threads using view all after reading this, and yeah, the speed difference is noticeable.

Just like you, I can't compare inbox and page load because the number of incoming messages is not as much as others. But I can confirm that the page load speed is very fast compared to before, at least before the fix was made. It only takes a few seconds to load the entire page especially for threads with 20x pages or lower. Of course this is something I didn't notice before, but now everything seems nice and useful.

[Perfectbaby]

Well I didn't noticed till you call my attention towards it, and no wonder the platform works very smoothly without delay. Theymos has put out his best to make this forum a place to enjoy and has ease access to the platform. And of course you are very correct in the aspect of loading larger page just as the WO section most times while trying to load some pages there would be delays but, couples of days now I tried visiting that section of the forum it was free and faster to access than the usual ways.
Special thanks to theymos for putting out your best to make this place as clean as snow.

[Mpamaegbu]

Yes, I've been noticing it for sometime now but didn't know it was from the forum. I thought it was from my network provider. It's great to know that theymos, who has been quiet here, hadn't been quiet on improving the forum. Dude has been working underground. Perhaps, one day he will reconsider bringing back mixer campaigns to the forum 😏

[OgNasty]

Perhaps, one day he will reconsider bringing back mixer campaigns to the forum 😏

I hope not.  Between the trolls that left this site after no longer being able to farm easy payouts from money laundering campaigns and now having a useable personal message box again, this site seems to be taking steps in the right direction after years of the opposite.  If they actually started enforcing the no trolling rules and taking action against people who manipulate the trust network to further their extortion network and you might even see respectable builders in the Bitcoin community start to return here.

[vapourminer]

I haven't posted in WO for a while but in the past, I always had trouble posting and often ending up in double-posting due to the loading issue, and I checked if that's changed with the improvement here. Loading still exists but it's faster compared to before.

very noticeable in WO, usually 1st post of the day there would lag bad, and time out or double post many times.

mucho better now. thanks theymos