Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 6/29/2002, 3:55 PM
Same here. You should see how slow it is on a dial-up. Thankfully I got broadband. I would suspect part of the reason for the slowness it the forum isn't just a static page, so it takes longer to generate because it is being updated constantly. Also probably a lot of people accessing the forum area which likely slows it down a little more. You tend to see the same thing at other busy forums like VCDHelp.
bakerbud9 wrote on 6/29/2002, 8:34 PM
I agree. I really do like the format and layout of the SOFO forums. But they probably do have more overhead because of all the formatting.
--nate
Spirit wrote on 6/29/2002, 8:59 PM
I'm on a 128K dedicated ISDN line and find the speed very erratic - but not too bad.

I didn't like the forum layout at first, but it's grown on me. One of its strengths (and weaknesses) is how quickly topics "die" and roll off the first page. They rarely come back after they reach screen three.

I'd like maybe 20 topics on page one and a FAQ link at the top of each forum. Sound Forge FAQ #1 is "how can I separate the music and vocal tracks?" AcidPro FAQ #1 is "When I record I'm getting my new track and the old track mixed together".

:)
BillyBoy wrote on 6/29/2002, 10:04 PM
You can change how many articles appear at once by going to Edit Account above, right under the cute little pointing hands graphic. I have mine set to show 50 at once. You can have between 10-100 responses per thread at one time or pick the non threaded option if your prefer. The newest post of course 'bubbles up' to the top, so if or not a thread is near the top depends on how often and how many people respond to it.
Chienworks wrote on 6/29/2002, 10:32 PM
One of the problems is that all the replies are listed as rows of a single table. Since the table also includes CSS elements, the ENTIRE table must load before the browser can start drawing it on the screen. When a thread starts getting lots of responses this can become very time consuming indeed. I've found that the refresh/draw speed is almost more related to the processor speed of the computer i'm on than to the internet connection speed.

What i did to combat this with my forum software (where quite a few of the threads have several hundred replies) is to end the HTML table and start a new one every 10 replies. Maybe in here it would be appropriate every 5 replies. It wouldn't necessarily speed up the total time, but at least something would start showing up on the screen sooner. I also post the replies in reverse order so that the newest replies are on top. It took people a little while to get used to that, but now they all like it.
Spirit wrote on 6/30/2002, 2:56 AM
Silly me! Thanks Billyboy
defucius wrote on 7/1/2002, 10:17 AM
Here is another forum I frequent, and it seems to refresh faster.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1010

in addition, nice touches abound on that site. Note the "headlines" field above the messages. It scrolls the latest news. And the search box is right there on each forum.