Layout Widened; Efficiency Improvements

[Yoda]

As some of you may have already noticed, the forum is a bit wider than it used to be. This is one of a number of changes intended to streamline the site and reduce loading times. Just thought I'd sum them up for you guys, in case anyone's interested.

Layout Width
When this layout was first designed, 800x600 was still a very widely-used resolution, and so it was important that it fit inside that resolution without any horizontal scrolling. Today, only 3% of our visitors use 800x600 (or lower). Considering this, and the fact that the average screen resolution is getting higher all the time, the change was inevitable.

It's not a big change; we've added just 58 pixels to the site's width, but it'll allow for different ad formats and just give me a little bit more to work with. :) It should also help alleviate things for members using particularly high resolutions, for whom the site can look awfully narrow.

Updated Navigation
A few months ago, the buttons in the header were combined into one single image. The navbar now just shows different portions of that one image depending on which button is being displayed. When the layout was originally designed, each button image (and the button text above it) was its own image, as were the versions you saw when you hovered your mouse over them. In other words, we've gone from 24 separate files being loaded, to just one. It's a big one, to be sure, but it's worth the dramatic reduction in HTTP requests.

Updated Code
I've also simplified the layout in general, duplicating the look of the old one with significantly simpler code. The difference in load time may be incremental, but every bit helps, and a reworking was long overdue.

Reduced Queries
There have been a few technical changes to the forum home page, too; the slogans have been moved from the database to a simple array, thus saving a database query each time the page loads. Also, the latest reviews and box office are now fetched with just one query, instead of two. This may be reduced to zero before long, but we'll see.

Anyway, that's it. Hopefully these changes will help increase load times a bit, especially for new visitors who don't have any of the site cached. I've already got a few more tune-ups in mind, but these should be a nice step forward.

[Sedai]

It's funny. Justy about five minutes ago, I was on the index page and I thought to myself...

"Self, why does MoFo seem...odd today? Something just seems different."

Now I know what it was!

Nice work, as usual...

[Yoda]

Thanks. :)

Forgot to mention one other thing: the layout's also been reworked in such a way so that it should "stretch" to the bottom of the screen no matter what. This won't change most pages, but certain error messages, or pages with very little text on them, would end before reaching the bottom of the screen, which always looked a little unsightly.

[Powdered Water]

Nice job, you continue to make this the best forum on the net and I for one appreciate it. :yup:

[7thson]

Thanks for always keeping things up to date and tidy.

[PimpDaShizzle V2.0]

And the naked women are..... ?

I guess it's still technically an improvement.

[7thson]

And the naked women are..... ?

.


Riding a big bird in heavy Metal



http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/153/862503~Heavy-Metal-Posters.jpg

[SamsoniteDelilah]

Nice work, Chief.
One thing I just noticed (though it could have changed long ago) is that post titles are gone? Will those be returning (or should I go label all my reviews)? :D

The layout seems arier. I like it!!

[Yoda]

Yeah, post titles are gone. They could come back; I'm not dead set against them or anything. But obviously the overwhelming majority of posts didn't use them, so they were just taking up a little space, which isn't a big deal, but adds up on every page.

But, in a few select instances, like your reviews, they were not only used by fairly important, so...bleh. Not sure how to reconcile this. I don't want you to have to label all your reviews. I might be able to write a script to do it for you, if you want them all in the same format...? Just tossing the idea out there.

[Aniko]

Yoda!!
When I go into 'My Profile' to check on any messages I just see a big black space with some of the forums listed on the bottom. No more PM system for me. :bawling: Not that I use it that much these days....just wondering if anyone else is missing their PMing ability.

Also...I just noticed that when I hit the 'Go Advance' Button...I also just get a black/blank screen.




Btw...Sammy...sorry....work/life's been mad crazy.

[Yoda]

Hm. I know I always ask this, but what browser are you using? Also, could you try doing a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5) to see if that changes anything?

[SamsoniteDelilah]

Aniko~ I totally understand. No worries, and drop me a line when you can. :)

Yoda~ fyi, I use Firefox and my PMs are still there. A script to title the reviews might be good, if you get time. If not, I can just start to do a few here and there. Either way.

[Aniko]

Also, could you try doing a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5) to see if that changes anything?

Thank you, thank you Chris...hitting the refresh worked. :)




Sammy...thanks...line finally dropped. :p

[Yoda]

Woohoo, refreshing actually fixed something for once! :D And here I thought I was just stalling...

[Aniko]

:laugh: :laugh:

That's exactly what I thought when I hit that little ol' refresh button. Thanks you for your stalling tactics. :D

If only there were a refresh button that could work like that around the house. :D

[Ðèstîñy]

If only there were a refresh button that could work like that around the house. :D

I wish!

[nebbit]

Yods, is there something wrong with the e mail as I haven't received one from MoFo for about 4 days now :(

[7thson]

:laugh: :laugh:


If only there were a refresh button that could work like that around the house. :D


Refresh = Divorce.................worked wonders for me.:)

[Tacitus]

Yods, is there something wrong with the e mail as I haven't received one from MoFo for about 4 days now :(

I agree. Initially I thought that my spam filter had taken the head staggers but when I checked it was just the usual fake Rolex offers, dodgy online casino invites and, no doubt, 100% effective manhood-enlarging procedures.

What are these people trying to tell me???

[Yoda]

I'll ask Rob, our generous server admin, about the email thing and report back here. :)

[Tacitus]

Thanks Chris. I've checked (just in case) and my email notification box is still checked in my profile. ;)

[Yoda]

Rob tells me it was part of some of the downtime we had a few days ago and that he believes things should be back to normal. Can you guys give it a half-day and let me know if the problem persists?

By the by, while this shouldn't matter in this instance, I feel I should point out that the box in your profile only dictates whether the box on the reply page is checked by default...unless that software changed a long time ago without me noticing (entirely possible). But of course, in this case it comes to the same thing.

[nebbit]

Thanks Yods, still nothing, but i am hopeful :yup: i have taken some valium for my MoFo withdrawal :eek:

[Tacitus]

Nope, nothing here either. Are we the only people affected or just the only people bothered? :D

[Yoda]

I've followed up with Rob and he's going to reinstall sendmail. Hopefully we'll have this sorted out soon. :) Thanks for the updates, guys.

[Tacitus]

Seems to be working now - I got one update from 4.52 my time, anyway.

Cheers Chris. :)

[Yoda]

Aye, a bit earlier Rob let me know that he'd run a test and all appeared well. Let me know if you guys have any other problems, and thanks for keeping on this! :)

[Yoda]

This seems to be the best place to post this...

Added a small modification that allows me to see, at a glance, how many database queries (IE: connections) each page needed to load, and after installing it I noticed a disparity from one thread page to another. Long story short, it turns out a modification we've been using was adding an additional query for every single post on a given page...and for a feature we weren't even using! Yikes.

Needless to say, the superfluous queries have been removed. This means that each thread page is now using about half as many queries as it was using before. To you non-geeks out there: that's kind of a big deal.

A big "d'oh" on my part for not noticing this before, and for taking awhile to check for these sorts of things in the first place. Very happy to have caught it, though, as it should mean far less strain on the server when browsing threads, and some decrease in load time, too.

[nebbit]

Thanks Yods :)

[martian leader]

Good job Yoda. I thought it was my cold. :laugh:

[Austruck]

Aha, so this partly explains why this site was always the slowest-loading one that I visited each day? Makes good sense, actually.

And it IS loading a lot faster!

NICE!

[Yoda]

A lot of things go into load time, so it wasn't necessarily the cause before, and won't necessarily guarantee faster load times in the future. The load on the server is still the most important thing; if it's hanging, even otherwise fast-loading pages with relatively few queries or actions will take awhile. And if it's flying, even busy pages will come up reasonably quickly.

If the entire site was giving you trouble for awhile, as well, then other factors would have probably been the cause, as this particular problem was relegated only to thread pages.

Of course, the extra queries from the thread pages could contribute to the server being busier, but it's well-nigh impossible to separate these things from one another perfectly.

I doubt anyone would really care to read this post, but here it is, anyway.

[spudracer]

All I know is that the site loads faster for me now while I'm at work, which is a big improvement over the 5-minute load times, per page.