Intermittent SLOW page loads

Backlight 4 & 5 Support
#1

Hi wonderful TTG crew…

Thanks again for the fix on my last topic!

I am now having intermittent, sometimes quite slow and sometimes extremely slow, or “stopped responding” page load issues with my site. My hosting provider, Telus (which is actually Hostopia on the backend - cPanel site) has essentially pointed the finger at my website and “the system I’m using” after some deep diagnostics and a re-issuance of my CSR for a new SSL Certificate. We have now completed that, ensured the DNS updates have been completed, removed the old cert. completely from the system and put a test html file on the server…

Cleared browser caches completely, tried different browsers, etc. For half a while, everything loads quickly, then for a time, it loads very slowly or doesn’t load at all - sometimes I can load it in one browser and can’t load it in another on a different computer / device. This, of course, includes my Backlight back end, so also impacts things like uploading/configuring new client proof galleries, etc. This has been going on for a few weeks now, possibly, although not certainly, related to the update following the “disappearing images” on touch or mouse-over issue.

When I’m having the slow loading issue, it appears that “hello.html” will load just fine, every time (this is the test file that the senior tech threw up quickly for us to test with), but my main site won’t load quickly, regardless of which page on my site I (or others, on different networks, in different cities who I have asked to test for me) try to load. My friend who was testing two nights ago found that it would start to load in a flash and then he experienced “hang times” in excess of a minute, looking at a progress bar somewhere between 15 and 30%… this is what I have experienced as well, again, sometimes resulting in a server stopped responding error.

Is it possible that there is something within Backlight causing this? Any suggestions on things I can try on my end? The site in question is dstroyer.ca… all pages, some of the time, other times, all / any of it, loads in the blink of an eye.

Thanks!

~ds

#2

can you post a link to the site?

#3

Hi Rod,

It is:

www.dstroyer.ca
dstroyer.ca
www.dstroyer.ca/hello.html - the test the hosting provider’s support person put up

Again, this is a sometimes thing - every few minutes, for a few minutes, or longer. It’s been tested from multiple cities now, on different internet providers, mobile networks, etc. and all get the same sort of behaviour.

Thanks in advance,

~ds

#4

Generally speaking, Backlight is coded to be highly performant on a wide array of modestly provisioned hosts. In the past, issues with load times have been due to the host’s server configuration, and not due to any shortcoming in Backlight.

Also, the “disappearing images” issue you reference was purely a CSS issue affected Webkit-based browsers (Safari, etc.), arisen from recent changes to the Webkit engine now acting on styling that was previously Chromium-specific and which Webkit had ignored. The change was that Webkit no longer ignored the code, and was not trying to do things with it different than Chromium browsers do.

Anyway, I am inclined to point the finger back at the host. It’s likely something has changed in their server config. And typically when you talk to host support, you’re talking to a telephone jockey in a call center, and not to any of the engineers responsible for provisioning or configuring the servers; it’s that guy’s job to deflect, and good odds he wouldn’t know what, if anything, has changed at any given time.