FG Site Performance Improvements!

[madmax]

Hi Crew!

As you may know, we've recently experienced explosive growth here at FlyingGiants.com! Over the past few months we've seen aproximately a 75% increase in overall traffic, and our community is on fire! Great videos, photos, and superb content has been flowing in from around the globe, and I'm on a charge to make FG more bandwidth friendly, and increase page load times, and over all site performance.

In the coming days and weeks, you will notice some subtle changes in the way images and media are displayed in the forums, on the homepage, and throughout the site. In the community forums, you will also see that the uber huge images that take some folks forever to load have been reduced to smaller thumbnails for faster, and more efficient viewing. The page sizes throughout the website have been compressed on the back end too, things should seem a bit more snappy loading.

I have also spent a considerable amount of time re-working our menus throughout the site as well. The new menus are 100% CSS, and do not utilize Javascript. In the past, the menus were not very efficient, and users have reported problems. Good news is we're on track for even more expansion, and we're very excited about all that 2007 has in store!

Thanks again for your ongoing support!

Best -- Maxon Duncan

[treym7]

Great work Max, I noticed a few things a little different and was going to post up that there may be a problem. That's when I saw you posting images in the test section. I knew then you were on top of it. I am sure some of the people on here will really appreciate the quicker loading, I know that there are still a lot of people out there on dial-up.
Trey

[yaks]

keep improving :P

[Matchless]

Glad to hear it Max. This is absolutely one of the best RC sites on the net. FWIW though, it is also absolutely positively the slowest loading site on the net for me. The thing that strikes me as odd is that when I click a link, I don't get the next background and then slowly populate the other fields with graphics and text. Instead it 'sits' and only pops up after everything has dl'ed. Makes for an odd surfing experience compared to every other site I view. (I run IE7)

[ericb]

This site has always worked great for me. Keep up the great work. RCU is the slowest for me.

[madmax]

Thanks guys.. Honestly, the motivation was this: I actually looked at the page size of one of our build threads and it was over 7 megs. FOR ONE PAGE! Ak!

Jer - help me understand something, are the load times -any- better from your end than they were early yesterday? Also, I'm looking into your question, I'll get back in a few...

[crhammond]

Max - the site is very noticably faster for me. I mean orders of magnitude faster...
Great work!

[3D_Kid]

This site has always been great, maybe cause I have a Linksys 802.11n Wireless N router and a 3 meg cable internet hehe.

[casey g]

hey max just some thing that has been like this for a while and i never said any thing but when u go to media by member u only get the last uploaded media. but i can view all of mine just not the persons im trying to look at
not sure if thats a bug or notbut thanks madmax
casey g

[Matchless]

	Quote:
	Jer - help me understand something, are the load times -any- better from your end than they were early yesterday? Also, I'm looking into your question, I'll get back in a few...

Yes, load times seem significantly better now, and it loads progressively. Definite improvement.

[paffy]

Good work Max !!!

The thankless job of administering web site backend.... it's almost like CDing an IMAC contest

But, please don't "increase page load times" any more !!!

P.

[Mike Bargman]

Max...seems better on my end here too...keep it up bud! Good work!