More ad-related testing… trying to determine which ads cause which issues.
Zerg*net ads are the big square boxes that show up after the first post on the front page and at the bottom of the page once you click on an individual post.
Zerg*net ads are now off, and the big banner ad is back. That’s the big one that shows up at the top – above the Balloon Juice log, the balloon man and the rotating tags.
How is the site behaving now?
Thanks for your help with this! I know this is tedious, but we’re trying to get this figured out.
Update: wow! I originally had Zergnet in the title of the post, and after I hit Publish, the thread wouldn’t open on my computer! The error message was something about “content blocker”. Interesting! I changed the title and it still wouldn’t open. I had to change the url to remove zergnet from the URL, and then it opened.
Another Scott
Another “nothing is obviously different for me” post.
Win10, Chrome, uBlock Origin.
Thanks for trying to keep this bucket of bolts together. It’s appreciated.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Hey, calling it a bucket of bolts seems kind of insulting. :-(
Just Chuck
@WaterGirl: To buckets or bolts?
Hey, there’s a reason we call it FYWP ;-)
WaterGirl
PSA:
In case you missed it, our BJ zoom with the FOUR DIRECTIONS folks (ballot access for Native people) is tonight at 7:30 blog time. Send email to WaterGirl to RSVP.
I have now sent out the zoom links to everyone who RSVP’d. So if you RSVP’d and you don’t have email from me, let me know. I don’t think I missed anyone, but you never know!
It’s not too late to RSVP, I will be watching for email until the meeting is underway. And maybe even after that! :-)
WaterGirl
@Just Chuck: I know you’re just teasing, but if you had any idea of how much time and effort I put into the site rebuild, you would back away slowly after making a comment like that. :-)
Just Chuck
BTW @WaterGirl, just curious about a bit of trivia, if you happen to have a myqsl shell handy: how big is BJ’s database, like in gigs and rows in the `posts` table?
Just Chuck
@WaterGirl: That’s why this jackal is teasing from a safe distance :) Really though, as a PHP dev myself who sometimes (rarely, thank FSM) dips into WP, I do absolutely and sincerely sympathize. Working on WP itself is hellish enough without it being a 20+ year old codebase. I shudder to think of the code you ran across on the old site while doing the rebuild…
So I apologize, I really do feel for you on this, and I’m super-thankful for your work here :)
Spanky
@WaterGirl: So comments about the willow are right out, then?
(No issues atm. Was getting the Back Button malarky previously. Will wait until more comments before giving it a workout.)
Percysowner
Everything is working for me. Embedded Tweets load fast, I have no problem with Replies. Firefox 88.0.1, with AdBlock Plus and UBloc Origin* running. Mac IOS Mojave.
*I give support through Patreon, so I fell like blocking ads is okay.
Eddyed
Website loads very very slow or not at all!
i have an iPhone 6s with iOS 12,5
was loading very fast without ads
Ken
No changes here either; Chrome, Windows machine, no ad blockers.
(And just when I was going to click through and read about the letter TFG left for Biden. Zergnet needs to rotate their clickbait more often…)
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
Thanks for everything you do. I’m not having any problems with the site. The twitter refresh does work for me once I get to the twitter page.
WaterGirl
@Just Chuck:
We have over 67,000 posts and over 6 million comments.
We were at 5.5 million comments when the new site went live about 18 months ago, and now we have about 6.2 million comments.
Chief Oshkosh
@Ken:
1. Did Trump really leave a letter for Biden?
For Watergirl:
2. Everything is working well; I’m using Safari 14.1 on an iMac running iOS 10.14.6.
3. I found the bottle of mustard in a willow tree. Where do you want it sent?
4. Are all the ads supposed to be about rubber and leather items that I never, ever have ordered anywhere online?
WaterGirl
@Spanky: Oh no, I have no problem with comments about the willow! :-)
Did you see John’s post where he finally realized/acknowledged that we were all right about the placement of the willow?
WaterGirl
@Chief Oshkosh: If you had your phone on and you were near someone who was talking about those things, Siri might have ratted you out to google.
WaterGirl
@Eddyed: How did it do on Monday and Tuesday when Zergnet ads were on, but the top banner ad was off?
citizen dave
Windows 10, Chrome, no issues at all under all versions. Same with my old samsung phone.
I can’t imagine the effort it takes on the IT front, so Watergirl you are much appreciated!
Linking Holly Golightly version of “Tell Me Now So I Know” to go with this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlImlEx-L7
(Heard it last weekend–that Ray Davies could write some songs…)
MomSense
@Chief Oshkosh:
As long as the na*l f*n**s ads NEVER come back I’m happy.
No issues for me with the site – but I do need a tutorial on the link feature. I’ve never been able to make it work on the redesigned site.
West of the Rockies
The site works great for me (Samsung phone). We all appreciate the tremendous effort you put in here, WG, all kidding aside. No Zergnet? Great–then I don’t have to see that wretched picture of TFG cramming food into his pie hole.
Also, too, man, the damn smart wallet industry is blanketing all media with their product.
TomatoQueen
On the work machine, (Win10/Edge/HPLaptopofuncertainage) and the site is elegant and simple, wotevah ad that’s spozed to be up there isn’t showing at all so the gov’t adblock is working, and I am delighted to see the rotating tag rotating at probably top speed.
Nora Lenderbee
Everything is working fine, including the Visual tab. Win 10, FireFox 88.0.1. My ad blocker is turned off, but I don’t see the banner ad.
Benw
@WaterGirl: think of it like the Millenium Falcon – it may not look like much but it’s got it when it counts :)
Site basically hasn’t changed functionality for me all week – works fine. Macbook with Chrome, no adblocker
Auntie Anne
@WaterGirl: so excited about the Zoom tonight! Like you, I want to hear more about the event in DC. I’m not going to be able to participate until 8 pm, so hoping I don’t miss the event discussion.
Alison Rose
No ad issues to report, but seeing the word zerg everywhere is giving me nostalgia for my DAoC days and the Alb zerg.
If that means anything to anyone here.
satby
Site is acting about the same, I wonder if it’s the two types of adds (I see the banner ad but not the annoying Prosper ones lurking at the header and footer space) working together causing the slowdowns. Though when the Prosper ones comeback on we’ll see.
And all links attempted truncate to just the main news site, i.e. “www.cnn.com” instead of “www.cnn.com/story/2021-5-5”
I noticed other people have mentioned it in passing.
CaseyL
I’m not seeing any ads at all, which suits me just fine!
MacBookPro, Chrome 90.0.4430.212, but I do have adblock.
Old School
@Chief Oshkosh:
He did. Biden called it “very generous.” Trump’s description was a little more, um.., rambling:
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Sorry!!
I meant it in the “ironic”, endearing, quirky, unique, kinda way (though that doesn’t seem to be the most common usage). Like Jay Leno’s 1955 Buick Roadmaster is a bucket of bolts.
I do appreciate all you are doing for us. Very much so. I’m sorry that FYWP makes it so difficult.
Cheers,
Scott.
H.E.Wolf
Hooray! With Zergnet off, and banner ads on, I can use the “Visual” option for comments. (Zergnet’s presence on the site apparently removed the “Visual” option for me.)
Firefox 88.0.1, Mac mini, macOS Sierra 10.12.6.
Adding my thank-yous to WaterGirl and anyone else who helps keep the site functioning!
PJ
@H.E.Wolf: I can also now use the visual box for comments now that Zergnet is gone (previously that almost never worked). An added bonus is that I also don’t have to look at gross pictures of TFG or his supporters. Firefox 88.0.1 on MacOs 10.13.6.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Are you on a phone, a tablet or a computer?
WaterGirl
@Nora Lenderbee: so you don’t see anything like this at the top of the page?
ItinerantPedant
iPad Air 2, 14.4.2 iOS.
Ads slow up whether Zerg or GoogleAds Header. But ancient iPad may be more of an issue. iPhone SE with same iOS is taking a tenth of the time.
WaterGirl
@Auntie Anne: I think OJ is going to talk about the new law, which the event is related to, in his opening remarks.
You can probably ask a question about the event, even if you miss the intro.
They have agreed to come back to talk to us after the June 25 event – probably in early July – so we can hear about how the event went.
WaterGirl
@satby:
Yes, we are being scientific, adding each one alone at first. I’m sure we’ll get to the Prosper ads, just not yet.
WaterGirl
@satby:
I noticed that when I was first testing the site before rollout. So twitter would just show up as tco.com (or whatever it was). They changed it so it shows the whole URL and it’s been that way since rollout. Nothing related to that has changed on our end.
I wonder if there could be a certain browser that does that also? Hopefully others who are seeing that, too, can chime in so I can see if its happening on certain hardware or a particular browser.
HinTN
@Old School: Surely that’s from The Onion.
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: It seems like some of the ads, or some combination of the ads, slows the site down even if you have an ad blocker.
So i’m looking for feedback on speed of the site, as well as the site behaving or misbehaving.
billcoop4
I have not had issues with the site and ads either before the rebuild or now.
I just saw a remarketing ad for one of my company’s clients, so the placements are obviously doing what they’re supposed to in remarketing :)
BC
WaterGirl
@H.E.Wolf: Hmmm. Interesting. Except for the occasional “visual model gone” thing we see, the much more frequent version started when Firefox updated to version 85.0.
If Zergnet is player in that, that would be super interesting. With all the various hardware and operating systems and browsers and browser versions, and ads, I am kind of amazed that anything works consistently.
HinTN
@WaterGirl: Site is about the same as with Zerg only. I see the ad, comments work fine and Visual
spader’sappears (FFS) to be the default, replies work, as does the back button feature on my Samsung S8 running Chrome.I echo all expressions of gratitude for all you do here.
ETA: OK, that’s different. Editing opens a different looking box. It’s Visual, so ok.
Edited to say I checked the post with embedded tweets and they loaded fine.
WaterGirl
@H.E.Wolf: Let me know if the visual option is consistently there today and until we change ad types again for the next test?
WaterGirl
@HinTN:
And people wonder why we can’t always tell what’s real and what’s snark.
WaterGirl
@HinTN:
If that happens again, can you get a screen capture and send it to me?
ruemara
Working fine for me.
HinTN
@WaterGirl: Screenshot is on the way. The box appears to be narrower than I remember but I’m old so memory is always suspect.
StringOnAStick
Never any issues with my kindle, before, during the no ads test period, or after.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Old School: What a lunatic
Omnes Omnibus
Just a suggestion: You may want put up an Open Thread at the same time you do these so the fixing things threads don’t get filled with extraneous commentary.
Ruckus
The zerg ads caused crappy loading, like it took 4 or 5 tries to actually load. It seems better now.
Uncle Cosmo
Somewhat improved backarrow functionality (I can get as many as 3 in a row to work properly). Somewhat improved access to Visual screen (still need to invoke Text mode maybe 30% of the time).
Farfawks** 88.01, Win 7 (still!) (** note the Wesbahgawdvuhginnya pronunciation)
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
On iPhone XR, fully updated, I was always getting tco.com, on a blank page and twitter would then load. When I clicked the back arrow it would go back to BJ.
narya
Chrome/Windows/some Dell machine (work) and iphone SE
The banner ads are a bit of a screen hog on the Dell, but completely dysfunctional on the phone–the banner ad takes up two-thirds of the screen.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
The extraneous comments don’t bother me, but that’s a good idea.
I try to do that when I put up an I Got the Shot! thread and a thread announcing a zoom, so it makes sense to do that here, too
edit: oh wow. this has been the only thread for hours. I have been planting flowers in my garden so I didn’t realize that.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Is this a thing? The Ctrl-F option used to search for text in the thread does not seem to be working for Balloon Juice. Works for other sites.
Laptop. Win 10. Firefox 88.0.1
Betty
No problem with my Kindle with either one. I don’t do anything fancy though.
J R in WV
OK, added a comment to the COVID thread, and it allowed me to do that in the Visual comment box.
Then just for grins I hit the edit comment button, and got a totally empty Visual edit box… but the Text edit box had the normal ID/comment text. So strange.
This comment box has no ID as to Visual or Text, but it is acting like it’s the Text comment box…
WaterGirl
@Brachiator:
I am not aware of that issue. I use it all the time (though it’s Cmd-F instead of Ctrl-F on the Mac) and it’s still working for me.
Is anyone else having the problem with the Find feature that Brachiator just mentioned?
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Very odd. Definitely fails for me with Firefox, my preferred Browser choice for Balloon Juice.
Same computer. Works fine using Chrome Version 90.0.4430.212 (Official Build) (64-bit)
J R in WV
OK, I used commenting on the new Open Thread, and it acted a bit (lot) strange, so I detailed the strange there…
and will past the third (which looked a whole lot like the forth comment until after I posted it) comment here:
Frist?
Again I got an anonymous comment box which behaves totally as a Text box.
And now I have a visual behavior edit box. Go figure. And forth, who wants that?
ETA2: I swear I was forth, but now I’m third? And this edit I have no text in the Visual tab, standard data-mice BS in the Text edit box… Things are strange!
Current Firefox, Current Linux Ubuntu 18.04.5
J R in WV
Ctl-F works OK for me in this thread using Firefox on Ubuntu. FYI
Another Scott
Blah, blah, blah.
Blah!!
Edit – Text Tab – Blah!!
Edit – Visual Tab – Blah!!!
(Before posting this, I refreshed the page about a dozen times various ways, including the link above the editor box. Visual and Text tabs present every time.
Win10, Chrome, uBlock Origin.)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: There is definitely something that Firefox version 85.0 and higher doesn’t like about Balloon Juice. Or vice versa.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: You are usually more interesting than that! :-)
edit: I wrote this when you were still in the initial “blah blah blah” stage, and you hadn’t yet announced your results. It was my attempt at being funny.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Is it fair to assume that this is not always/usually the case?
HinTN
Blah, blah, blah
EDIT – WG, I cannot do diddly squat with that triangle thingy in the lower right. I get what you mean about the indent.
You don’t even want to know what happens if I rotate to landscape! Nope, nope, nope!
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Correct. Maybe 25% of the time (a rough guess, #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement) the tabs don’t show up for me and the editor is in Text mode. That’s fine as I prefer it, but it introduces additional steps and I don’t always catch it that I’m in visual mode when Embedding tweets, etc.
As a quick check, I just opened another B-J tab in this window, go to this thread, scroll down, Editor shows no tabs. So the issue is still there. (As I would have expected, given the intermittent nature…)
Win10, Chrome, uBlockOrigin.
HTH.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@HinTN:
I just checked on my phone. On the computer, I just hover over it and swipe/pull down only trackpad, and it gets longer. (not wider)
On the phone I have to press and hold for a second, then when I pull down with my thumb the window gets longer. Try that?
There go two miscreants
No difference from the last configuration. The cntrl-f find function works for me. I am entering in the Visual tab, but I just opened the site so this is the first post I am seeing (in full with comments).
FF 88.0.1 on Win10 Home 64bit.
ETA: Immediately after posting, the Visual tab no longer works. On editing, the Visual tab does not work; Text tab has the comment but with added mce data stuff.
Redshift
As a software guy, I suspect this will not be at all helpful, but it seems worth mentioning:
At some point in the past 24 hours, the Twitter stuff loaded really fast on my Android phone, which has never happened before. I think it was before the Z ads were turned back on, but after the post announcing they would be. I definitely didn’t see that improvement in the period when all ads were off, and I don’t see it now.
So it seems like the extremely slow Twitter loading on Android/Chrome is not unsolvable; there is some combination of factors that fixes it. Unfortunately, I can’t give you much information about what that combination is.
WaterGirl
@Redshift: So the tweets are back to being slow again? The ad changeover – from only zergnet to only banner, no zergnet – happened somewhere around 11am eastern time today.
If they were fast yesterday and slow today (after loosely 11am eastern) then it’s zergnet that is the culprit.
Does that sound about right?
Redshift
@WaterGirl: That sounds right. I’m pretty sure it was either after midnight last night or before 11am this morning that they were fast.
WaterGirl
@Redshift: okay, thanks!
craigie
This seems better – the Visual tab works straightaway, and the html formatting for blockquotes is less bonkers.
Kmax
At this time I see no ads on my phone. Samsung S7 not updated in over a year. Android 8 I think.
No adblock here but using Malware Bytes Pro.
Visual tab test
Underscore not working for me
satby
@WaterGirl: read what Redshift says again: zergnet on site loads faster, zernet off-banner on, site slows down seems to be what he’s saying. Your recap made that backwards.
satby
@WaterGirl: you always try to blame my Kindle. It also happens on my Android tablet using Chrome.
Steeplejack
The “Recent Comments” list remains so inconsistent as to be useless, even during “normal” blog hours. (Win10, Firefox; Android, Samsung browser).
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
The underlying “buffering” mechanism that (I surmise) screws up the “Recent Comments” list also causes notifications for new posts (via the “wing” tab) not to reliably show up. Not always, but quite often.
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: This makes sense to me – the caching used to attempt to minimize database hits seems to have issues. Many of the interface issues with the editor go away when we “click here to refresh” and apparently that bypasses that cache completely.
I assume that the ads come from a separate server and B-Js FYWP doesn’t cache them? Maybe there’s some sort of race condition where B-J is trying to quickly build the page, but is waiting for some ad to show up that messes up the timing so B-J just gives up?
(Presumably that could happen with any site that uses ads, so it must be a solvable issue.)
Might explain why many/most (but not all) of these issues go away when an adblocker is used.
(To be clear, I don’t know, I’m just spitballing before the Sandman shows up.)
Thanks again for all you do, Watergirl.
Cheers,
Scott.
PhaedrusOnBass
Hello!
IPad 6th gen, iPad OS 14.5x, Safari
The experience without the ads at all was wonderfully stable. Currently, it only fails when I’m on another site before here who doesn’t care nearly as much about things as you do (like Daily Beast). So, it appears that Safari gets confused when it crashes because of this, and needs a hard reset.
I greatly appreciate the effort you’ve put into this, @WaterGirl – I know how much patience is required to troubleshoot things like this. Great job so far!
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@WaterGirl:
Win10, Chrome, Adblock.
Everything is working OK. Did have occasional problems with the back button before. I did have to refresh to get the visual tab.
Thanks for all you do.
way2blue
WaterGirl. FWIW. On my iPad [12.5.2 ] with yesterday’s ad configuration—the site loaded fine, except it struggled to load the photos embedded in various posts.
RaflW
Dunno if this thread is monitored at all, but eghad the new nonstop/unavoidable video ad in the right sidebar — for VIDCRUNCH — is awful. The only way to make it stop is to move the side of the browser window off the right hand side of the laptop screen.
There is NO pause button. It won’t scroll away once the masthead info is up and out at the top.
Ahhhggg. Make it stop.
Thanks.