# Forum sluggishness happening more frequently



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

I've been having forum issues over the last few weeks, and lately (last few days), they're getting more regular. It's not an Internet issue, as I regularly access this site from two places, with two totally unrelated ISPs.

Long delays in loading, new posts sitting with those gray blinking things for 10-20-30 seconds at a time. Marking a forum READ sometimes is quick, at other times takes 5-10 seconds.

The forum became incredibly snappy when you made that huge upgrade a few years back. I'm starting to feel like it's becoming pre-upgrade feeling.

Is it just me?


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## Mike Lang (Nov 17, 1999)

Seems quick as usual for me.


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## JandS (Oct 1, 2010)

I have noticed a slowdown too, about 2-4 weeks maybe. I put it down to opening multiple tabs in Firefox 78.0.2 (oops, I see there's a 79 out now, will confirm one way or the other tonight or tomorrow. 

Win10, 1909

My SOP is to open a specific forum, then right-click to open multiple threads of interest in a new tab, sometimes 8, 10, 12. 

Lately each new tab is slow to open, the tab header eventually shows the thread title but there's a little back-and-forth blue icon to the left while the tab finishes opening. During this time the vertical scrolling display gets choppy, like the tabs opening is eating all the cpu. When each tab finally opens the choppy display resolves itself.

I use NoScript and AdBlock Plus. I have Facebook.net and .com "Untrusted" in NoScript.

I've noticed that Twitter embeds often take more time than usual to show up.


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## JandS (Oct 1, 2010)

I just timed opening original forum tab plus 5 additional tabs and the blue ball "waiting" icon in the tab title space is actually doing a metronome, one second for each transition left to right and back. So it was 5 seconds to open 5 tabs.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

Mike Lang said:


> Seems quick as usual for me.


mike, were you aware the forum has been sluggish all day, even throwing 502 sever down messages a few times?

it's hit or miss, but has mostly been an unpleasant experience today, and appears to be getting worse, in case you weren't aware.


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## Mike Lang (Nov 17, 1999)

No, I’ve been on & off all day without issue and there haven’t been any other reports.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

Mike Lang said:


> No, I've been on & off all day without issue and there haven't been any other reports.




LoREvanescence said:


> Is TCF running extremely slow for anyone else this morning?


terpfan1980 and pdhenry like this


NorthAlabama said:


> yes, i even hit the "server is down" error a couple of times - (in best yoda voice) hmm, issues there are.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Mike Lang said:


> No, I've been on & off all day without issue and there haven't been any other reports.


Yeah, it's been almost unusable for me today, with the occasional page fetch taking minutes.


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## Mike Lang (Nov 17, 1999)

Weird, I just checked again and not a single email. When we have a widespread outage or slowdown there are usually a bunch of emails.


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## Hank (May 31, 2000)

I’ve has bouts of many slow loading pages and images all day, but no server errors.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

Mike Lang said:


> Weird, I just checked again and not a single email. When we have a widespread outage or slowdown there are usually a bunch of emails.


things seem to be flying now.


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## stevel (Aug 23, 2000)

When TCF is slow or unresponsive, as it was yesterday, I don’t think to email, as it is a frequent occurrence. I just chalk it up to Suckuri (my spelling) and go find something else to do. If the site owners aren’t being notified of frequent 402 errors by Suckuri, then perhaps it’s not the right choice.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Yeah, I got quite a few Sucuri notices yesterday.










Things seem to be working fine now, however.


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## hummingbird_206 (Aug 23, 2007)

I'm getting lots of the Sucuri notices today


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## dcheesi (Apr 6, 2001)

Not sure if this is the same issue, but this morning TCF has been making _my whole PC_ sluggish. Any time I load the forum, my CPU usage goes from ~25% to ~80% with nothing else running, engaging all cores simultaneously.

Engaging an ad-blocker (which I normally don't for this site) fixes the issue. Perhaps a shady ad is doing something in the background (mining crypto, etc.)?


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## rcoates777 (Jun 29, 2005)

dcheesi said:


> Not sure if this is the same issue, but this morning TCF has been making _my whole PC_ sluggish. Any time I load the forum, my CPU usage goes from ~25% to ~80% with nothing else running, engaging all cores simultaneously.
> 
> Engaging an ad-blocker (which I normally don't for this site) fixes the issue. Perhaps a shady ad is doing something in the background (mining crypto, etc.)?


I have not been on this forum for a while but I now notice that it takes over the CPU when it is running.


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## Mike Lang (Nov 17, 1999)

My guess would be a rogue targeted ad (based on your browsing history) that only you see. I'm not able to replicate it and the particular ad should quickly get replaced with a different one.


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## rcoates777 (Jun 29, 2005)

Thanks, I do notice that after a few minutes things get back to normal for a while.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

i hit the sucuri firewall error once last night, and it's caused the forum to hang a few other times, but a page refresh generally fixes things quickly.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

i've been getting multiple time outs and server errors, and very sluggish response the past few hours - anyone else?


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Yep.


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## jay_man2 (Sep 15, 2003)

Same here.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

If we're talking about problems since ~1:00pm eastern, there's been a major internet hiccup that took out google dns servers, facebook, and dozens of other services. So this afternoons extreme sluggishness may simply a side effect of that.


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## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

NorthAlabama said:


> i've been getting multiple time outs and server errors, and very sluggish response the past few hours - anyone else?


Yup, super sluggish. Just this site. Rest of the internet is responding fine.
[edit] weatherunderground.com is also slower than normal, but sites like cnn and npr are fine.


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## Mike Lang (Nov 17, 1999)

Not just our servers...

Facebook is down, along with Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus VR


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

NorthAlabama said:


> i've been getting multiple time outs and server errors, and very sluggish response the past few hours - anyone else?


For a few minutes, but's ok now.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

i've been noticing a longer wait than normal when replying to/liking comments all afternoon and evening, longer than 5 seconds or so, when usually it's instant - not a big deal, but a noticeable slowdown in response time, fyi.

eta: no timeouts or firewall errors, just the status bar in the upper right corner.


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## Hank (May 31, 2000)

Same here. Not a big deal, but a noticeable delay when posting.


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## Mike Lang (Nov 17, 1999)

There's some maintenance going on in the background that might cause a temporary slowdown.


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## eddyj (Jun 20, 2002)

Hopefully you are just doing stuff in preparation for the upgrade or something, because page loads are crawling (and obviously not ads, since I am a member). Not getting timeouts, so that's good. Just sluggish.


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## JoeKustra (Dec 7, 2012)

eddyj said:


> Hopefully you are just doing stuff in preparation for the upgrade or something, because page loads are crawling (and obviously not ads, since I am a member). Not getting timeouts, so that's good. Just sluggish.


Seconded.


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## LoREvanescence (Jun 19, 2007)

This morning the forum was down for about an hour for me with 500 errors. 

I'm continuing to get them at random still. The forum also seems slow.


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## Mike Lang (Nov 17, 1999)

There will most likely be slowdowns and outages as they continue to move content over and prep for upgrades.


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