Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

So many bastards, so little time.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Everybody saw this coming.

You are here: Home / z-Retired Categories / Previous Site Maintenance / Quick Site Update News

Quick Site Update News

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Folks,

I’m hard at work on the new site/new theme. Instead of launching everything I hope for at once, I’m going to go for a series of stages. This should allow things to settle in before making more significant changes. Stage One will be the new theme. Stage Two, etc. TBD.

New Theme? I Hate Change!

As do we all. I chose a new theme because the current one was no longer suitable for our needs. We are stuck on an older version of it  which has lots of issues, but the current version, once loaded into Balloon Juice (on both the old test server, then a new one), killed the site. I spent hours trying to get the damned thing working, but I decided that it was no longer a good use of my time, so now I’m working towards a better future with a new theme that’s well-supported and well-regarded.

Recent Comments

As many have noticed, the Recent Comments function has been removed. Until we get a better handle on the site’s performance, this was the “low-hanging fruit” that greatly improved performance. I hope to have an updated Widget for that soon, but for now, Recent Comments (and Posts) has been removed.

To explain – there are approx 5 million comments, and that’s a big table; each time the page is refreshed, that widget would query the table. This added too much extra load and our hosts strongly recommended we remove it. This is not how you would design things, but it is how things currently function.

CDN And Caching

The site should be much faster for most users as we’re now using a Content Delivery Network (this copies the site’s resources and puts these copies “nearer” to you on the Internet so that you are not downloading everything from the main server).

This greatly speeds up the site for many users, and as we get more familiar with it, we’ll tweak the settings to achieve optimal results.

Caching is related; it is a series of settings that greatly reduce the amount of files you need to download when you refresh the page. They work together to provide a much faster experience.

Mobile Site

One key change will be the dumping of the current mobile site. The current mobile site is extra work as it is a completely separate thing from the main site. This means many resources are not available on it, and it is much more work to maintain. The vendor for the mobile plugin/theme was recently purchased and their support has been inconsistent since then, sometimes taking 2 weeks between question and answer. And this is for prepaid, premium-level access!

Tablet View Of Mobile Site

In order to reduce the complaints about the iPad/tablet view of the mobile site not working correctly, I’m just going to turn the whole thing off today to see how it goes.  I had planned to await the new theme launch, but I truly feel awful that it’s such a pain for users.

If there’s much angst, then I’ll re-enable it until the new site design is live. Either way, that stripped-down, text-heavy view will soon be a memory.

Morning Slow Down

Another issue that I’m unable to fix right now, but that I hope we can improve, is the morning slowdown/poor responsiveness.  This is unavoidable because the site is backed up once a day, and that takes a lot of resources (disk spinning, memory and CPU occupied, etc.) that would otherwise be used to make the site speedier. It begins in the early morning hours, when there are the least active readers, and runs until completion.

Each day, there are more pictures/graphics, and more content, and that means that there are more files to backup, and that the database that drives the site is bigger.  This means the backup takes more time and CPU attention, every day.

I’ve researched and asked our hosting company if they can do a differential backup, the common solution to this issue, but to no avail – they have a standard backup toolkit and that’s what they use. We shall see what creative means we can employ to improve this, but for now, it’s the way it is.

Video Ads/Memory Issues

Although we’ve removed the insecure video streams from the ads, that doesn’t mean they don’t eat up memory. As soon as I have some time (post redesign!) I will once again see what I can do.

My hope is to have the redesign site/stage one ready next week, and then, once everyone’s rent their garments and pulled out their hair, demanding everything be back the way it was, and I’ve tweaked a few things, I can look anew at the video ads to see what we can do to make them behave better.

So that’s where we’re at. Hopefully I can restart On the Road soon, but no promises – I only have so much time for things Balloon Juice these days!

I will not be around in the comments to this post, but I will review it later. I must go scrounge up some lunch, do a quick koi pond clean, then back to the computer!

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  4. 4.

    Betty Cracker

    Thanks for your hard work, Alain. I haven’t wanted to bug you about it because I figured you’re already aware, but the back room has been wonky as hell too. I gave up trying to post a couple of times this weekend because it was impossibly slow. (Chrome on iPhone X)

  5. 5.

    Robert

    Thanks for the extensive update.

    I may have a very minority opinion, but I’ve never liked how the mobile site worked on either my phone or iPad. I use the desktop site ALWAYS.

  6. 6.

    Doug R

    Re the query of 5,000,000 comments. Would closing comments after say 48 hours help cut down the resource use? Maybe video ads should go bye bye until the resources are there to handle it?
    Maybe have a pass the hat thread once a month?

  7. 7.

    Alain the site fixer

    @MomSense: John will run a fundraiser for me when the time is right.
    Back is better but not perfect. I don’t expect I’ll be back to normal before winter. But it’s stronger every day and I can do more so that’s good. @Ruviana: my pleasure!
    @Betty Cracker: ugh. I’m sure it’s go to do with the caching. There are like 250 settings and the learning curve is not insignificant.

  8. 8.

    Aleta

    Alain, Thanks for the way you do things. Something about your way of seeing and your kindness shines through the look of the blog. I wish I had better words for my appreciation. You make this place what it is. Its spirit has a presence thanks to you.
    And you have a koi pond? Nice.

  9. 9.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Doug R: unfortunately it’s really an artifact of the site having been around since 2002. Once the dust settles (like this fall) from the major stuff I’ll see what we can do.

    Ok time to go skim some floating plants and do a partial water change. I’ll be back later.

    And as for the video ads, their performance hit is on your machine, not the server. It’s just that some folks have complained about it so I’m addressing those who have issues but haven’t spoken up.

    Ok mobile site is off. If anyone has issues with that please email me [email protected]

  11. 11.

    The Pale Scot

    Don’t sweat the recent comments do-hickey, maybe just put up an EF Goldman “when last seen” widget.

  12. 12.

    A Ghost To Most

    Nice job, Alain. The law of unintended consequences is a harsh mistress.

    Paying a recurring fee to avoid the autoplay ad is something that might be popular.

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    After 16 years of running on spit and baling wire, I guess we’re lucky that this rusty bucket of bolts can make the Kessel run at all. We should be thankful to have Alain as our Chewbacca.

  16. 16.

    Another Scott

    Thanks for all you do here, and for your good-natured posts. They’re both greatly appreciated.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    Joey Maloney

    Alain, thanks for all your work and sympathy for your back problems.

    So, not that you don’t have a zillion things on your plate already, but will we see a return of the On The Road threads? I enjoy the pics.

  21. 21.

    Vidya Pradhan

    Hi Alain, as I mentioned in an earlier thread, this blog is so valuable to my sanity that I would be happy to subscribe to a paid version with no ads. Especially on the mobile site, the travelling ad across the bottom and the scores of ads i have to wade through to get to the comments are so annoying. Is Blog Leader Supreme Mr. Cole interested in having a subscription based version of the site? Without ads the speed might go up too.

  22. 22.

    JanieM

    Thanks to Alain as always, and I for one would certainly kick in $ more often if there were a thread reminding of how to do it now and then (as @Doug R suggested above).

    I’m a bit player around here — quite new by BJ standards (not quite three years!) — and not prolific in commenting. I don’t know how you people keep up with the pace, which leads me to say that the “Recent Comments” widget seems particularly irrelevant when — which is most of the time — the comments come so fast and furious that any given comment is off the list almost as soon as it gets on there. I.e., if “Recent Comments” never came back, I certainly wouldn’t miss it.

  23. 23.

    RobertDSC-iPhone 6

    As always, your work is appreciated.

    Just please scrap the Taboola ads. They jam up the page and their photographic choices are ugly to see.

  24. 24.

    Spanky

    Thanks for what you do to keep the site running, Alain. It ain’t easy on the best of platforms, and FYWP is far from the best.

  27. 27.

    TenguPhule

    @Amir Khalid:

    After 16 years of running on spit and baling wire, I guess we’re lucky that this rusty bucket of bolts can make the Kessel run at all. We should be thankful to have Alain as our Chewbacca.

    And still under 12 parsecs!

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    The non-mobile site seems easier to read than it has been before (I don’t have to expand anything to read the text), so that’s nice.

  30. 30.

    Alain the site fixer

    Part of what I’d like to do is offer a reduced ad experience. John’s never liked two classes of commenters or users but I think his mind is more open due to the volume of complaints. So my plan is to demo something for him then take it live. But first, new theme. Ok time to go check on water level and add some chems. Be back later.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    “There are no problems. This is not the site you’re looking for. Move along.”
      – Obi Wan Balloonjuice

    :)

  33. 33.

    Gin & Tonic

    And of course no edit button to quickly fix my to-two typo, so I look like I belong in the stupid class.

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    As for the slowdown during back-up, that is both understandable and beyond frustrating. Clocked 7 minutes and 34 seconds between clicking Post Comment and full page loading the other night. That’s not a slowdown, that’s gridlock.

  36. 36.

    dexwood

    Gracias, Alain. When the time comes to raise funds for your hard work, I’ll be in like so many others able to avoid therapy thanks to Balloon Juice.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    Okay, now I can see what functionality is missing on my phone — the side-to-side arrows to move between posts don’t appear, and there’s no other navigation available that I can see. The “Previous Post / Next Post” navigation arrows from the mobile site are gone. So an alternative method of navigating from post to post will be needed. Right now, I’m having to go back out to the front page to navigate to other posts.

  38. 38.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:

    Right now, I’m having to go back out to the front page to navigate to other posts.

    That’s how I have been doing it all along, mobile or desktop. That way I don’t get 12 steps in and lost, I can keep track of which/what we are talking about. On Android if I hold the left/back arrow it gives me a listing and I can one click back to the home page, just like on the computer. I find that’s easier for me than continuing to just back click till I get where I want to go.

  40. 40.

    Roger Moore

    @MomSense:

    Is there a PayPal link so we can chip in for your time?

    There’s the same PayPal link there’s always been, on the right side near the top. It says it’s to offset ad blockers, but you can always donate more if the urge hits you. I recently threw in a few shekels myself.

  41. 41.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ruckus:

    Well, sure, for older posts, but that doesn’t help me get to newer posts. I have to go out to the front page for that.

    Also, the video ad is stealth showing up at the very bottom of the page. It’s out of sight, but still chewing up bandwidth, I suspect. Sneaky little bugger.

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    @Doug R:

    Re the query of 5,000,000 comments. Would closing comments after say 48 hours help cut down the resource use?

    I’ve thought something similar. I don’t know if 48 hours is the best interval, but converting old posts to static web pages and flushing the comments from the archive seems like a reasonable idea in any case.

  43. 43.

    satby

    Thanks for all your efforts Alain.
    Unfortunate news about the mobile site, because it was much easier to read even without the additional functionality. Much easier. The larger font size made a difference, I assume this formatting is partially to allow all the other stuff like ads. I haven’t willingly read this site on desktop view since the redesign that brought you here, so maybe with a subscription option it would be better.
    (Yes, you guys, I can zoom the font size, but it starts to drop off on the sides. The mobile site just had better readability).

    Work on John allowing an ad free subscription option and I will be in.

  45. 45.

    Alain the site fixer

    @satby: Take a look now; this isn’t the desktop site, it’s a mobile view of it so not quite the same. With the old mobile site, when you toggled “desktop”, that’s what you saw, so you’ve never seen this mobile site before.

  46. 46.

    Alain the site fixer

    @Mnemosyne: I’
    I won’t commit to fixing that right now as the time is better applied to the new stuff, but if I get inspired, I’ll take a look-sy.

  47. 47.

    redactor

    Google ads seem to be in some kind of infinite loop. They are downloading all the time, never ceasing. Don’t know why. (Mac OS, current version, with Firefox for Mac)

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne

    @redactor:

    I suspect I may be having this issue as well. The page lags and is taking forever to load, plus it’s eating up my phone battery in a major way. Phone is slightly hot, too. (iPhone running mobile Safari.)

  51. 51.

    Doug R

    Got to admit when I saw you were dumping the mobile site I was worried.
    However the page renders nicely on my phone, with only a little more navigating.

  53. 53.

    satby

    @Doug R: it actually looks better on my phone than on my Kindle, though both should be mobile views.
    I’m fine as long as I can read things. I’m a simple woman of the Plains.

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    I just sent Alain an email about the video ads. There are THREE of them that I can see, and they’re draining my phone’s battery. ?

  55. 55.

    Ruckus

    On the phone, Android, FF private tab. The regular site rather than mobile is great. Loads faster, works better.

  58. 58.

    Alain the site fixer

    There does seem to be something about the ads reloading forever. I just submitted a ticket to see if that can be fixed. I’ll also see if I can enable the next/prev posts button on the new mobile site, but right now the ads are also kicking my ass so I’m unable to see what I need to see in a Visual Composer. The irony is not lost on me.

  60. 60.

    Pete Mack

    Currently this site loads the entire front page including images on mobile devices. This is not good for my limited bamdwidth.

  63. 63.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    Thanks for your work. I have to say I actually kind of like the current mobile site more. Being able to read entire posts on the front page strikes me as a pretty large improvement.

  64. 64.

    SWMBO

    Thanks Alain. We really appreciate the work you put into this. Tell the Blogfather that he needs to increase your pay.

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