Hi

the site seems to have been extremely slow the past few days; typically 30-40 seconds for a response but at the moment around 2 minutes!

I've logged in 3 different countries over the past few days and it's the same everywhere so it's not the local wifi!

Is this a temporary thing, a known problem?

Thanks

Hello !

I absolutely agree on previous post. I experience also very slow response regardless of having a very fast WIFI connection. I tried different browser which does not help !

Any suggestions ???

Brgds Jens

Hello !

I absolutely agree on previous post. I experience also very slow response regardless of having a very fast WIFI connection. I tried different browser which does not help ! But CHROME works definetely better than SAFARI !

Any further suggestions ???

Brgds Jens

Hi All

I have to agree that the site is running very very slowly its taking to long to enter anything

Lets hope it gets fixed soon?.

Regards

Caos

Hi,

Please do something to speed up the response times. It is taking way too long and seems to be happening since the addition of photos to the site. Honestly the quality of the photos isn't that good that we really need them. I would rather a quick site without the pics and any thoughts I had of going premium are now on hold.

Rgds Greg

Hi Looks to be back to the old paper and pen, which is quicker.

Ron

Hi

I've cancelled my premium subscription until further notice. I am fed up with the slowness of the system, so I shall go back to my old system of recording. Also I am appalled by the lack of communication from those in charge. Its been about 3 months and have hardly a word as to what is going on. I thought that was what the forum was for.

Ron

I agree its so Slooooow is there problems running this site? Have you taken on to much? Paul

The response times are absolute crap!

I give up what free time I have to add/update the military side of the database as a Data Editor so you can all log your sightings. However, I'm constantly being 'timed out' by the server because some idiots are loading 3 or 4 photos of the same damn aircraft, at the same location on the same date in the same colours and killing the response times. They haven't bothered to re-size the photos from their original 2 Mb-5Mb size (and they're not that great in the first place) so we have fast become a photoLOGGER site!

I've sent several emails to the webmaster (both to the site contact address and his personal email address) over the passed 2 years and he's not been arsed to answer a single one - so don't hold your breath on getting this fixed anytime in the next 10 years!

As soon as I find another site that's just for plane LOGGING (as this was supposed to be when I signed up a few years back) I'm off.

Brian

Hi Everyone, firstly apologies for the lack of communication.

I've been looking in to the causes of the slow down over the last few months, but havent been able to identify a clear cause for the issue.

We've always suffered from an issue whereby every now and then the site gets slow due tot he database getting a bit fragmented, the solution for this is normally to run a script that defrags the database, after which the site begins to run normally again. We've tried this a few times over the last few months, each time thinking we'd fixed the issue, but to no avail.

The other possibility is that the server is just overloaded due to increased traffic. However, according to our existing logging systems, traffic hasn't increased all that much over the last few months so I'm not sure if this is the case. Also if this was the case we'd expect to see times of the day where the server was performing normally, and times where it wasnt. We've added various new loggers to try to identify and confirm this, but to no avail. The solution for this is fairly simple - move to a bigger more powerful server. Unfortunately, in this case moving to the next most powerful server means a 3 fold increase in cost, which is quite a significant cost just to try in a whim, so we have been a bit reluctant to do this until now.

As Brian suggested above, large image uploads can be quite taxing on the system, however the ability to upload an image has always been a key part of the premium membership package, so I'm reluctant to withdraw that any time soon. The vast majority of revenue comes from premium membership, so we cant justify anything that compromises that. Advertising these days just doesn't work on the web - look at how many adverts we already have on the home page, yet revenue from them is relatively minor.

So what are we doing?

• I've now upgraded the server to the next model up - and will be trialling that over the next week to see how it goes. We will then have to make a decision as to whether it is viable to run on that server, or whether we switch to two smaller servers instead.
• We will also look at some of the slower parts of the site and see if they can be re-written to be less processor intensive.
• Image uploads. we'd certainly appreciate it if users could re-size images BEFORE uploading, and we'll put a warning up to encourage users to do as such. Likewise, please refrain from uploading multiple images of the same aircraft if possible. However, this site is for everyone no matter how they choose to spot or log aircraft.
• We are also adding some additional monitoring to the site to better understand the performance issues and try to highlight areas that can be improved.

Thanks everyone for your patience in the mean time, hopefully we will be running smoothly again. I hope when we do, you will all consider upgrading to premium again and help contribute to the running costs of the site.

Data editors, thanks again for your continued contribution, we wouldn't be the site we are without you, and hopefully the changes will make your job far less frustrating.

HI

Why can't you make two sites (a) One for Loggers and (b) One for Photos and have links between the two. At the moment there is too much information on one site and it is getting too complicated.

Ron

Hi Ron,

The single site for everything would be ok if the server was large enough and there was coding and processes in place to limit the size of the photo to a max 300k and a single upload per sighting. It used to work fine until people started bombarding it with multiple photos of the same aircraft on the same date at the same location in the same colours...utterly pointless in my opinion...and if it stops me from adding new records so you can't log your sightings against them, it's a waste of my time and effort.

Kind regards, Brian

Something tells me that Brian is not a fan of the photos.... :)

I can understand the desire to post photos and I have done a few - really, just a few and one per aircraft! But I do agree, if multiple full size photos is slowing the system down for everyone then it could be reduced.

How about a size limit of say 500kb per photo and max 3 photos of the same aircraft per person. People probably edit the photo before posting anyway and resizing it takes 2 seconds. That would still allow people to post plenty of photos but it keeps the site working well for everyone else.

Dougie

He doesn't seem to be, does he? :-P

Just FYI, we've now moved all the images out of the database and on to azure storage. This has freed up some request capacity on the server, but made no noticeable difference to performance. Certainly displaying the photos isn't an issue, there can be some impact when uploading large images during busy periods, but this isn't a regular occurrence.