RPG Insanity

Alright, since I set this all up on Friday morning, I and some other members have noticed that some pages seem to load slower than before. I've spoken with my host provider and they gave me some things to do to fix that - some I've already implemented, and some are so foreign to me that I'll have to do a day or two of reading to understand what they mean.

Meanwhile, the whole site needs to essentially be "re-indexed" by Google etc. because all the forum links are different. (Which I knew would happen, but I didn't think it would affect site speed...)

So in a couple days if pages are still loading slowly, I'll get back with my host provider and see what else I can do to fix it. It's also likely that some of the plugins I'm using are slowing things down, so I might have to drop some functionality until I can figure out how to write a better plugin to take its place (which, well.... could take awhile).

For sure, the basic forum features like posting a topic, replying to a topic, etc., are not going away - but the Visual editor, the method for adding images, the lack of an attachment option - these features probably will change over time. What we have now is the best I can do - but once the dust settles, so to speak, I hope to actually learn some real PHP, JavaScript, etc. and then I can most definitely improve some features.

The other thing I'm looking into, and it might change or it might not: I'm currently using a plugin for the forum links, that shortens the URLs when you get to a forum topic (i.e. it takes it from forum/kemco-games/exe-create/alphadia/topicname down to forum/alphadia/topicname, except, that it puts the topic # in front of it too, so like: forum/alphadia/432-topicname).

I'm happy with how this is working, but I'm searching for a way to shorten all the forum URLs, so that whichever forum you go to would be forum/name. That might never happen, so the forum URLs might stay the way they are now, but if I can do it that way, I will. Of course, either way it doesn't really affect the user; it's just me being nit-picky. I guess it could hurt my SEO if forum/kemco-games/exe-create got indexed, and then later I changed it forum/exe-create, but whatevs. (That's kid-speak for "whatever")

Anyway, now through New Year's I'm pretty much gonna be focused on improving site speed, and seeing if there's some plugins that maybe I need to get rid of in order to accomplish that - and of course making sure that the essential forum features keep working.  There's some other stuff I wanna do, to improve other parts of the site and to allow members to create walkthrough pages again, but a lot of that might have to wait until next month. So I just want you all to know where I'm at, and hopefully what to look forward to.

Sure sure,try your best,kekekekeke.

Haha thanks rimrazan. I do tend to overthink things sometimes. Gonna take today to relax and just enjoy it all.

Well well look like i fell asleep,hahahaha

Seems a little faster now (1:00 pm est)

Well, I think I've identified the worst offender when it comes to slow site speed, and have brought it down to a manageable size.

(Basically I just told it to shape up or I'd be sending 1oldtymer to pay it a visit, and whaddya know? I think things are faster now.)

There's still a lot more I can do but the rest will have to wait... Fairy Elements is calling to me...

Well, things seem to be fairly stable... (knock on wood)

Today and tomorrow (maybe for the whole week, if it takes that long), I'm going to be testing some different features in order to enhance the forums, and to set up members to create walkthrough pages once again.

And by "testing" I mean taking some things away, adding some new things in, figuring out what works and what to keep - and meanwhile, hopefully not block anyone from registering, logging in, posting in the forum, etc. (fingers crossed!)

So I just want everyone to know, so if things all of the sudden look different, it's just me testing things out. (But if something big doesn't work - like you can't log in anymore - then please post something on my Facebook page letting me know: https://www.facebook.com/rpg.insanity/

As you probably know (but I don't see anything recent posted), the problem of the site not appearing to be updated unless you login continues.  Twice today I posted, logged out, came back several minutes later, and my post didn't show in the listing of recent posts.  Also, even when I went to the forum where I posted, my posting was not visible.  If I logged in, then everything was just as it should be.

Thanks 1oldtymer; I actually wasn't aware that was still happening. Odds are there's some conflict with one or more of the plugins I have installed, so as I start to turn things off and on again, maybe I'll be able to pinpoint what's causing that problem.

So I've turned some features off, but I haven't turned the new ones on yet...

But I've noticed a significant change in site speed since turning things off. Especially on desktop, pages load FAST now. (And some day I'll know enough that I can make it even faster! Hopefully.)

Well tomorrow I plan on introducing the new features, so I'll be monitoring site speed to see if they slow it down too, or not.