Loading is VERY Slow; Curser slow; Board moves

[jfood]

The boards are loading VERY slowly and the "New" icon seems to load almost 3-4 seconds after the verbiage. Likewise when youplace the curser on the post you would like to ope it is an "arrow" and does not change to the "up index finger" for a couple of seconds. Then the screen moves a bit and the post you were highlighting is no longer being pointed to.

Is this happening to others?

[macadamianut]

I can hardly get into chowhound because it's very slow to load. I have a nice computer that loads quickly but not on chowhound for the past week.

[whs]

System has gotten very slow in the last few days--for some reason Internet Explorer was quicker than Firefox today. Very frustrating.

[widehomehi]

mines slow pages not loading completely pictures aren't showing up one week now help.

[Engineering]

Hounds, please see this thread: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/417547 . Your help will go a long way to getting this resolved.

[hannaone]

Things seem to have improved again. I notice that the I-phone ad that used to be at the top of the pages is gone.
Still slow connect to google.com and chow.com, but at least they finish loading instead of hanging.
Ummm - maybe server load is also playing a part in this?

[tuxedo]

sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[bmorecupcake]

All right, if you are as desparate to browse Chowhound as I am, and you are running IE6 (Internet Explorer 6), then I have a temporary fix for you. Different operating systems/browsers should have something analagous to this. If you are not desparate, the extra effort might not be worth it. Also, this mucks up the default settings of IE6 a bit, but for most people, it won't make a difference because they usually never use this feature of IE6 anyway. I will give another warning below. Also, you might want to copy and paste these directions in your word processor and print them out.

If you go to the menu and select Tools->Internet Options, an Internet Options dialog box will pop up. This box will have lots of tabs. One of those tabs should be labeled Security. Click on the Security tab. You should see four zones listed (as icons): Internet, Local Intranet, Trusted Sites, and Restricted Sites. Click on Trusted Sites zone. You should now see some text under the zone icons that reads: "Trusted sites. This zone contains Web sites that you trust not to damage your computer or data." To the right of that text is a button that reads "Sites...". Click that button. You will see a Trusted Sites dialog box pop up. Everything should be empty and there should be a check next to "Require server validation for all sites in this zone." If you see any sites listed here, STOP and do not proceed. Your system could have a special setup for other websites you need to use for work or some such thing; sites, dare I say, even more important than Chowhound. If you are feeling queasy, then also STOP and hit cancel until you get back to Internet Explorer and forget this ever happened. For the adventurous, you may proceed at your own risk. :)

First an explanation of what we are going to do. We are going to redefine the Trusted Sites zone. What this means is that the Trusted Sites zone is no longer for "trusted" sites, but rather for Chowhound and only Chowhound. So after all this is done, when you see the Trusted Sites zone in the Security tab of Internet Options, pretend that you are seeing the Chowhound zone.

You should still be at the Trusted Sites dialog box. First uncheck the box next to "Require server validation for all sites in this zone." Now in the text box under "Add this Web site to the zone", type

http://www.chowhound.com

and click Add. Click OK and you should be back at the Security Tab of the Internet Options dialog box. Make sure the Trusted Sites (aka Chowhound) zone is selected. On the lower part of the dialog box, you should see some text that reads "Security level for this zone." Under that should be a slider. Under that should be two buttons that read Custom Level and Default Level. Click on Default Level. The security level should change to Low. (If your security level was already Low, then the Default Level button would have been grayed out and you can just proceed.) Now move the slider all the way up so that the security level changes to High. Click Apply and then click OK. You should now be back at the main Internet Explorer window. Close Internet Explorer and start Internet Explorer again.

Bring up Chowhound and browse around and life should be good... or so it seems. Yes, like all good things, there is a catch. Certain features will not work. For example, you won't be able to reply to or post new topics. So if you want to add a new topic or reply to a post you will have to go back to the Tools->Internet Options dialog box, click on the Security tab, then click on the Trusted Sites (aka Chowhound) zone, move the security slider down to Medium, click OK, and restart Internet Explorer. This last step, namely restarting Internet Explorer, is really not necessary. Just a simple refresh of the page should do. But if things act strange, restart IE and try again.

Remember to set the security slider back to High after you are done with your posting(s). It's not as bad as it sounds, especially after the initial setup.

I hope this helps somebody. Have a good day. :)

[Engineering]

Just wanted to say we have read your reports, and are looking for solutions. Please see this thread ( http://www.chowhound.com/topics/417547 ) if you want to help out.

[RGR]

Thank you for letting us know you're on the case. Here's hoping you find a solution very soon because this problem is sucking up so much extra time that I'm considering taking a hiatus from Chowhound. Won't be easy.... :-(

[QueenB]

Same here, unfortunately.
It's virtually impossible to read the boards, considering how slow everything loads. I can just forget about opening any of the longer threads.
Thanks for working on this.

[ahr]

Ditto here.

According to Alexa ( http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tra... ), Chowhound page views are down more than 50% over the last few days. Is this merely cyclical, or could there be a connection? Sometimes one has to wonder whether developers, here and elsewhere, test extensively with the most common OS and browser combination (Windows XP, MSIE 6 SP2), or just the latest anything-but-Microsoft.

The jumping, which is almost as annoying as the slow loading, has been present for some time. It's just more visible now.

[The Dairy Queen]

Nah, my guess the page views are down because lots of folks took the week off work and don't have idle time in front of a computer. Maybe your "slow loading" user survey will help the chow-engineers zero in on the problem?

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/417508

~TDQ

[bmorecupcake]

Right, same here. Started after the maintenance on Friday. I am fairly certain it is not something we the users are doing wrong. It is a problem with the changes in the site. The changes to the site require a lot more processing per page. If you have a recent fancy schmancy computer, you don't feel it. But for most of us with 2-3 yr old computers that work just fine for what we want to do, it's really a pain. Do we upgrade just for chowhound?

I've seen this sort of thing happen on other sites, btw. I used to like Dailymotion (a YoutTube clone), but they "upgraded" and threw so many Flash objects around their pages that I stopped visiting. But their hanging/freezing isn't as bad as Chowhoud is. You can go to http://www.dailymotion.com/ and click on any video and experience a similar freeze (but to a lesser degree) to what's happening here. Maybe this is a sign of things to come and we will be forced to upgrade. :(

Sorry, I didn't realize this thread existed and started my own earlier today: http://www.chowhound.com/topics/417288

Please ignore that thread.

[RGR]

Interesting. I never considered that site changes could be problematical for older computers. My husband's computer is much newer than mine (his = less than a year; mine = a couple of years), so I just logged onto Chowhound on his to test out your theory. There is still a loading glitch though it is not nearly as lengthy as it is on mine. That tells me the problem is on the tech side, not the user's side.

[jfood]

jfood working w a 5 MONTH computer and it's worse today.

[Rubee]

Same thing here. As others have said, ever since the site was down for maintenance. Decided to post now because in the last hour or so, it has actually gotten worse - it now takes 15-20 seconds just to load "my chow", on two different computers (IE 6 Windows XP)

[vorpal]

Same problem here in Firefox 2.0, and it seems to have started as of only a few days ago. Long threads take ages to load, and on my Mac, sometimes I get the spinning beach ball of doom and things become and remain unresponsive (I've waited up to two minutes in certain instances) so I have to force-quit my browser and try again.

[steve h.]

the safari 3.x beta is pretty snappy. firefox seems to be back to normal speeds. of the two, the safari beta is far faster. be aware that it doesn't come with java/flash support so you'll probably want to use both for awhile.

[vorpal]

I'd love to use Safari, but I value AdBlock Plus far too much. I have no opposition to ad-supported websites, but so many ads these days are visually noisy and distracting that I have to block them for my own sanity! :-)

[hannaone]

Feedback for the techs:
I don't know if you have worked this problem or not (no post to indicate it) but pages are now loading fine for me, however the "jump" is now happening about every third or fourth page view.

[smartie]

got the same problem for the past few days, very slow to load posts.

[hannaone]

Sheesh, I spoke too soon. This morning everything was fine, now it's back to the slow/incomplete loads.
Again hanging on google.com and chow.com.

[shaebones]

Ok, it's Monday now, how come chowhound engineers are not addressing this problem...in fact, not even acknowledging it????

[MMRuth]

CNET is in San Francisco and it is 8:14am there right now, so I'm guessing they may not have had the chance to read all the feed back yet.

[RGR]

When CNET finally does read this thread, I'll add my "Ditto" to the complaints about the site not loading correctly, i.e., exactly as described by jfood in the o.p. Started happening on my computer yesterday. At first, I thought maybe it was just my computer acting strangely. Obviously, not! I've done the cookie-clearing thingy, restarted, but the problems persist.

This reminds me of the backspace problem some months ago, which plagued me and lots of other Hounds. There were people who insisted it wasn't a problem. However, turned out that we "complainers" were correct, i.e., it was a glitch that occurred after the Techs had serviced the site. Happily, they fixed it. Here's hoping they'll fix this one soon!

[mshpook]

I had the same comment yesterday. Havent' seen one acknowledgement that there even is a problem.

[Jacquilynne]

The issue has been brought to the attention of Engineering, so they're aware of it, but they have a lot on their plate with the recent launch of the new search function, so may not be able to find a solution right away. These types of problems that affect only some users only some of the time can be very time consuming to track down and fix.

-- Jacquilynne, Chowhound Community Manager

[RGR]

For those, like me, who are affected, it is not "some of the time" -- it's more like *all* the time!

Frankly, in my view, this kind of problem is more important than working on the search function. Nice to be able to search, but it seems to me that a major problem affecting trying to read the boards and posting should take priority. And since everybody who may be experiencing this problem has probably not posted on this thread, the problem might be much more widespread than you think.

As I said in my previous post, this is remindful of the backspace problem. Your excuse then was that it could not be fixed, and we should learn to live with it. However, when the Tech Team put its mind to it, it got fixed.

[Jacquilynne]

No one's suggesting you should learn to live with this, just that it's not easy to track down problems that only some users are experiencing and it will take time for them to find a solution.

[janetofreno]

How do you know only some users are experiencing the problem???? As someone pointed out, its much MUCH more pronounced the longer the thread. I have stopped reading the occupations thread (much as I enjoyed it!) because it takes waaayyyy too long to load. I am now thinking twice before reading ANY thread with more than 50 responses....and that's sad. Maybe some people aren't experiencing the problem because they aren't reading longer threads.

BTW, I am writing this on Friday afternoon the 6th of July....at 3pm Pacific Time, which means its long after five on the east coast.

[MMRuth]

I've posted several times that I'm not having problems (smile) - WINXP, IE6 - that I didn't have before the latest roll-out. Those longer threads have always taken some time for me - though I agree it is unfortunate that they are unwieldy and take forever to open. But in terms of general speed of the site, I've not had the problem.

I am sorry that you and others are!

[RGR]

Since the problem started, I've logged onto Chowhound on three different computers and have found that the intensity of the problem is related to two things: the particular computer one is using, and the speed of the the high speed service on each computer. The computer I'm on now is 3-4 years old, but the DSL speed is very high, so the loading isn't as much of a problem as the other two, which are newer but have slower DSL speeds. Regardless, there is a major problem that needs to be fixed!

Btw, I agree that exceedingly long threads -- e.g., Overrated Restaurants on the Manhattan board -- always took longer to load. But the current problem involves *all* threads, though with the shorter ones, the wait doesn't take as long.

[LindaWhit]

I still think it's somehow attached to the graphics - advertisements, and all the graphical avatars in Who's Talking and throughout each post. However, today (at home) I have noticed that loading is just a smidge faster. Not sure if you did anything with the ads, but I have noticed some speed-up. Although the super-long threads still take a long time, and I usually walk away until I expect (hope) that the thread has loaded.

The longest one I'm reading has to do with the "What Do Chowhounds Do for a Living?" posted by Kevin on NAF, however, remains the biggest problem. It's 489 posts long, and I just timed it: started to open it at 6:57:03 PM EDT, and at 6:58:04, I finally got this pop-up message:

"A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script? Yes (button) No (button)"

I press the No button, and it takes another full minute to make that pop-up go away. So it takes a full TWO minutes to open that very long thread.

What script is running on that page that causes that message and causes the incredibly long load time?

[janetofreno]

I got the same message! Running XP.

[kura kura]

Same problem here.

[ElsieDee]

This morning I've loaded four pages (including this one). The first I didn't time. The second ("My Chow") took 13-seconds - the third ("Technical Help") took 11-seconds - the fourth (this thread) took 17-seconds! I'm on a cable connection - cannot imagine how long it's taking folks with dial-up.

One major "hang area" is the background, near as I can tell - I use the lighter-colored theme and the page seems to first load a version of the darker theme before painting over with the lighter. Also, the animated ads (right of screen, under "Who's Talking?") are taking a while to load and are jerky.

This is quite frustrating!

[QueenB]

Same problem.

[Veggo]

I'm on dial up and navigating Chowhound now is like watching old people eat.

[Gio]

Take that back! LOL
It is extremely frustrating not to get the pages to load as they did just last week. My computer is Very fast and now we're at snail speed here.

[LindaWhit]

One major "hang area" is the background, near as I can tell - I use the lighter-colored "theme and the page seems to first load a version of the darker theme before painting over with the lighter."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Exactly what I said in another thread about slow-loading boards. And the longer the thread, the longer it takes to load. Short threads of 30 or less take about 4 seconds to overlay the colors; but God forbid you want to read Kevin's thread re: our occupations which is almost 500 posts - I click that link and go do the dishes. It's available to read when I get back.

This is happening at work, with a T1, or at home, with regular ol' DSL. Whatever has been done to start this "overlay of color" REALLY slows it down.

[mshpook]

So, is there anyone at cnet listening? It would be good to get some acknowledgement that someone is working on this problem.

[Chris VR]

The engineers put out a major site fix on Friday (presumably working their asses off to get it done) and now it's Sunday. Engineers get weekends off too ya know :-)

[susancinsf]

yes, particularly the issue with the cursor. very annoying.

[hannaone]

Ok
Just tried with three different browsers
Firefox 2 with adblock and noscript - Very slow sometimes incomplete loading hangs on google.com and chow.com

Seamonkey - Pages load much faster but 50% are incomplete, get script warning for incomplete or slow script, will hang on i.i.com.com and chow.com

Opera - Text portion loads very fast but Incomplete loading on every page, the image counter shows 1 or 2 images not loading.

[Sarah]

Also, I can't get into links - anyone else?

[shaebones]

Slow for me too. In fact "What do you do for a living " post froze my computer solid. Chowhound, are you listening to us????

[bagdoodle]

mshpook -- I agree. It started after they shut down for "maintenance". I think you're right that whatever they did is what caused the problems

[widehomehi]

Mine used to do funny things but it was not just Chowhound think it was something wrong with a program or an adware had courrupted a program anyways I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled everything and is fine now.Only takes me 15 minutes to do that but if you got sensitive data you better figure out the real problem.

[widehomehi]

Things are working fine for me,hey,no there not I see the green Firefox load meter is stuck...AGAIN! uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[jfood]

did all the suggestiond wit ie6 win xp. still slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

[Sarah]

Not only that but I have to click everything at least twice in order for anything to happen.

[efdee]

I'm having the same problems as the other posters, i.e. each page has to (re)load twice every time before I can use it. Started to notice it Sat but it's no better today.

[steve h.]

very fast on safari (no java, no flash). go to the apple site for a free download of the windows beta. it won't hurt. really.

[SIMIHOUND]

Its still slow for me. I too cleared the cache etc and to no avail. All this since maintenance was done on the site Friday at about 5pm or so.

[mshpook]

that is exactly what i said in my previous post.....all this since the site maintenance was done. very frustrating.

[marti]

Seems the ad at the very top of Chowhound site saying "iphone available" has recently appeared which drops the whole page lower. Scrolling now is "jerky" and will either not "happen" or will roll way too far. This has been happening for several days. Extremely slow also!!

[jinet12]

Yes, I thought it was my computer...very slow

[mshpook]

I have been having exactly the same problem.........it started after the site was down for some maintenance, and I was just thinking that whatever they did seems to have slowed things down.

[baseballfan]

Having the exact same problems. Very frustrating!

[ElsieDee]

Things are running/loading slow here, too - using IE 6 - have cleared cookies and cache. Having trouble with the page "jumping" a bit, the drop down menu for the boards is taking up to 5-seconds to appear, etc. Very frustrating.

[AnneInMpls]

Very very slow on IE 6 on Win XP, computer restarted several times.

A long thread seems to hang my computer - at least, it freezes the browser window (can't scroll until the page is fully loaded, and things get messed up if I try to scroll too early).

ICK!!!!!!!!

Anne

[Gio]

This is what I'm experiencing too, with same system and after clearing & restarting.

[hannaone]

Same problem here. Firefox 2.0. Topic pages will not load completely.
Seems to hang on contacting google.com and chow.com.
Board pages load quicker but will also hang on chow.com

[BigSteve]

Have you cleared your files and cookies lately? (Click on Tools, Internet Options, Delete Files & Delete Cookies & Clear History)

[jfood]

yup, still crawling away.

[Pat Hammond]

Have you restarted your computer? All seems ok here, this morning.

[MMRuth]

I'm not having the problem at all - seems quite speedy to me today!