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What Can We Do About This Site?


Rod Sorensen

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Sorry guys for bad spirit but... Until when we will have to suffer photo.net 2.0 bad performance?

Not going to renew my subscription until looking pictures doesn't feel a nightmare... It is so bad.

Admins should set a performance target and try to achieve it in X months, if not possible then roll back.

 

Performance for me is excellent. I wonder if there's some user problems keeping some from fully enjoying the excellent experience.

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Some specific issues with the gallery section.

1. Takes a looong time to load the photos (depending on time of the day). It seems, the kind of computing power that makes such dynamic fast loading of photos possible in sites like instagram is missing in PN. This is understandable, since PN is much smaller in terms of revenue and resources than those other mega-sites, but IMO its best to eat what one can swallow. The old site was more proportional in that respect.

 

2. From within a particular gallery, if I click on a photo, it takes me to the photo's page. Then if I click the back button, instead of taking me to the source gallery (which is the intuitive behavior), it takes me back to the profile page. I then have to scroll down again to find which gallery I was viewing.

 

3. I can't see all the photos in a gallery, even after clicking 'load more'. For example, I have 146 or so photos in one of my galleries. I can hardly see 50% of them.

 

4. The order in which the photos are displayed in a gallery is not clear. Usually one would expect the latest photos to be shown first, but that's not the case. Also, there is no option to order the photos by date, views, admires etc.

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I think that the developers need to know more about or OS and hardware and connectivity to diagnose the issues. I'm running Window 10/65 and a 4.2mhz processor, with 16GB of RAM, through a 100mb cable connection. I have absolutely no problems with the site.
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My problem is how long will this site still be around. I am here for the great infos I get from other people (thank you everybody), which is free, and for the storage of a few photos that I can show to different kind of people when necessary. This is why I am paying, and I will not renew my subscription because I have lost trust in the future of PN, And I dont want to invest any more tme in moving up photos here that I will have soon to upload elsewhere with my present stock.
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My problem is how long will this site still be around. I am here for the great infos I get from other people (thank you everybody), which is free, and for the storage of a few photos that I can show to different kind of people when necessary. This is why I am paying, and I will not renew my subscription because I have lost trust in the future of PN, And I dont want to invest any more tme in moving up photos here that I will have soon to upload elsewhere with my present stock.

 

If you're concerned, then you might describe the system your using. To cite an extreme case, you could be using 32-bit, Windows XP, with a 1.2mHz processor, on a dial-up connection. That would be hopeless and no one would design a system today, just to meet those needs. I suspect that many users are somewhere in between my, "no problem" mode and your frustrated user mode. Perhaps the administrators should sponsor a survey of user systems vs. satisfaction, to see what correlation they see, that might lead to some enhancements for the broadest cast of users.

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If you're concerned, then you might describe the system your using. To cite an extreme case, you could be using 32-bit, Windows XP, with a 1.2mHz processor, on a dial-up connection. That would be hopeless and no one would design a system today, just to meet those needs. I suspect that many users are somewhere in between my, "no problem" mode and your frustrated user mode. Perhaps the administrators should sponsor a survey of user systems vs. satisfaction, to see what correlation they see, that might lead to some enhancements for the broadest cast of users.

 

 

I don't think the problems I am facing regarding the slow loading of photos is related to my computer setup or bandwidth. My computer is a 2013 model Macbook pro with core i7 processor and 16 GB RAM. I have high-speed broadband internet (TWC, 100Mb/s) at home, where I have no problem streaming 4K videos from youtube. The problem is with the PN servers and how they are optimizing the webpages.

 

The other issues I mentioned have nothing to do with computer setup or internet bandwidth.

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I don't think the problems I am facing regarding the slow loading of photos is related to my computer setup or bandwidth. My computer is a 2013 model Macbook pro with core i7 processor and 16 GB RAM. I have high-speed broadband internet (TWC, 100Mb/s) at home, where I have no problem streaming 4K videos from youtube. The problem is with the PN servers and how they are optimizing the webpages.

 

The other issues I mentioned have nothing to do with computer setup or internet bandwidth.

 

What part of the country are you in? I'm in Colorado, with no consistent problems with the servers. I have had one or two momentary slowdowns, but that's been very rare. I use Chrome as my browser, BTW.

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Performance for me is excellent. I wonder if there's some user problems keeping some from fully enjoying the excellent experience.

 

I have recently tried out Flickr and SmugMug, and routinely look at photos from PDML colleagues on a variety of sites.

 

NO, it's NOT my hardware or connection. Photo.net is badly, badly broken, and hope for recovery is fading.

 

Rick

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I have recently tried out Flickr and SmugMug, and routinely look at photos from PDML colleagues on a variety of sites.

 

NO, it's NOT my hardware or connection. Photo.net is badly, badly broken, and hope for recovery is fading.

 

Rick

 

I use all those sites and my experience here is consistent with those. The problems are apparently not nationwide with this site. I wonder if there's problems with the servers, interacting differently in different parts of the USA. I wonder what our international users see.

 

The site works fine in Colorado. With the addition of BBCode, I'm participating way more than I did before the excellent upgrade. At least it's an upgrade for me.

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What part of the country are you in? I'm in Colorado, with no consistent problems with the servers. I have had one or two momentary slowdowns, but that's been very rare. I use Chrome as my browser, BTW.

 

I am in California (LA) using Safari browser. I tested on Firefox and Chrome as well with no difference in performance. I think, the speed and performance have improved from the first days of the new site, but I wish they were still better. Especially, every time I hit the back button, I have to wait for the last page to reload. In the old site, the images were simply cached and the loading was instantaneous. Moreover, the same waiting time is involved whether I click on a single photo or a person's profile, or a gallery view (a single photo should take less time to load compared to a gallery full of images). I timed it just now. Loading a gallery for me takes about 4-6 seconds. Loading a single photo takes 4 seconds, and then 4 more seconds to load up all the comments. I can live with this, but it just makes the viewing experience lot less smooth.

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I use all those sites and my experience here is consistent with those. The problems are apparently not nationwide with this site. I wonder if there's problems with the servers, interacting differently in different parts of the USA. I wonder what our international users see.

 

The site works fine in Colorado. With the addition of BBCode, I'm participating way more than I did before the excellent upgrade. At least it's an upgrade for me.

 

Thats a good point, dcstep. Can you time your loading of galleries and photos and may be we can compare to mine (posted above).

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There has been a recent upgrade that some of you may (or may not) have noticed which will improve the gallery user experience. Its a simple modal, on all photos within the Explore tab. So when you click on a photo, the modal appears, which is only the photo and in the lower left hand corner instructions to "click photo", which then functions appear that allow you to follow, admire, favorite and comment or critique - once done, you click X and you are back where you left off. This modal will be implemented in additional areas in the coming days. Our dev ops crew is working on speed. Our tests indicate that international users experience longer load times and we're trying to address that - but will provide a more comprehensive update soon. 1723892784_ScreenShot2017-05-30at5_36_38PM.thumb.png.4da83bf342a7526dd495334256586064.png
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I am in California (LA) using Safari browser. I tested on Firefox and Chrome as well with no difference in performance. I think, the speed and performance have improved from the first days of the new site, but I wish they were still better. Especially, every time I hit the back button, I have to wait for the last page to reload. In the old site, the images were simply cached and the loading was instantaneous. Moreover, the same waiting time is involved whether I click on a single photo or a person's profile, or a gallery view (a single photo should take less time to load compared to a gallery full of images). I timed it just now. Loading a gallery for me takes about 4-6 seconds. Loading a single photo takes 4 seconds, and then 4 more seconds to load up all the comments. I can live with this, but it just makes the viewing experience lot less smooth.

 

Interesting. For me, with Chrome, a Gallery is instantaneous, but an individual image is about 4-sec.. Back-button takes several seconds, but if I right-click and use the drop-down and select the next page back, it's instantaneous. (That's the way I usually back-navigate). Don't know what's going on there. The fact that some things for you are instantaneous and some are slow does point to a program fault.

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Folks, I am sure similar topics have been debates numerous times, mostly on the Site Help Forum. Whenever there are changes, some people will like them and some will not; that is inevitable. I have my share of reservations about photo.net 2.0, and I can only speak for myself. As far as I know, one main issue with the old photo.net was that it was written in TCL some 20 years ago. By now, the software is hopelessly out of date and very difficult to maintain. I have graduate degrees in computer science and have been in software development for over 30 years. My experience is that TCL is rarely used, especially in these days. It is not a programming language I am interested to learn since there is no demand and market for it.

 

In any case, I am afraid that the Nature Forum is not the place to debate this issue.

 

Shun, I agree with the content of your last statement wholeheartedly. Honestly I don't frequent the nature forum, so I can't attest to the content of the posts it contains. With all due respect, though, I find the statement somewhat misguided. Issues like those Rod raised, and many other issues pertaining to PN2.0, have been discussed ad nauseam in Site Help.

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Interesting. For me, with Chrome, a Gallery is instantaneous, but an individual image is about 4-sec.. Back-button takes several seconds, but if I right-click and use the drop-down and select the next page back, it's instantaneous. (That's the way I usually back-navigate). Don't know what's going on there. The fact that some things for you are instantaneous and some are slow does point to a program fault.

 

With the implementation of the modal mentioned above, the need to use "back" will be dramatically reduced if not eliminated once it is implemented site wide.

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Some specific issues with the gallery section.

1. Takes a looong time to load the photos (depending on time of the day). It seems, the kind of computing power that makes such dynamic fast loading of photos possible in sites like instagram is missing in PN. This is understandable, since PN is much smaller in terms of revenue and resources than those other mega-sites, but IMO its best to eat what one can swallow. The old site was more proportional in that respect.

 

2.) From within a particular gallery, if I click on a photo, it takes me to the photo's page. Then if I click the back button, instead of taking me to the source gallery (which is the intuitive behavior), it takes me back to the profile page. I then have to scroll down again to find which gallery I was viewing.

 

3. I can't see all the photos in a gallery, even after clicking 'load more'. For example, I have 146 or so photos in one of my galleries. I can hardly see 50% of them.

 

4. The order in which the photos are displayed in a gallery is not clear. Usually one would expect the latest photos to be shown first, but that's not the case. Also, there is no option to order the photos by date, views, admires etc.

 

Answer 1: We've been working on speed and do have some new devOps chops working on the case. Speed has been a priority since we launched, it has improved but not to the degree we all want. International users experience higher load times.

 

Answer 2: Modal is being rolled out which - when a photo is clicked on it will overlay the page clicked from. When done viewing, commenting, favoriting, admiring - simply X out the modal and you are back to where you started.

 

Answer 3: devOps guys are aware and we're working on pagination over "load more".

 

Answer 4: Order to photos by date, view, admires, etc is coming!

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With the implementation of the modal mentioned above, the need to use "back" will be dramatically reduced if not eliminated once it is implemented site wide.

 

Glenn,

The modal view is convenient when viewing a single photo and it avoids reloading the previous page. Its a good idea. However, the modal view still takes 2-4 secs to load for me. I wish, PN was as fast as flickr for example.

 

BTW, when I click on the 'click photo' link on the bottom left of modal view and get the two buttons 'View comments' and 'Comment', the 'comment' button is disabled. So to write a comment, I have to go to the photo page, which takes longer time.

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Glenn,

The modal view is convenient when viewing a single photo and it avoids reloading the previous page. Its a good idea. However, the modal view still takes 2-4 secs to load for me. I wish, PN was as fast as flickr for example.

 

BTW, when I click on the 'click photo' link on the bottom left of modal view and get the two buttons 'View comments' and 'Comment', the 'comment' button is disabled. So to write a comment, I have to go to the photo page, which takes longer time.

 

Two things - 1.) modal comment button is greyed out until you write your comment in the comment field. If you write a comment, the button state will change and allow you to submit your commit written in the modal. 2.) Bad news is our load times as of this moment are a 8.5 out of 10 (10 being worst we've seen) - good news is the guys are able to see what it is that is causing it and they are addressing it now. My hope and expectation is we get faster load times as a result.

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There has been a recent upgrade that some of you may (or may not) have noticed which will improve the gallery user experience. Its a simple modal, on all photos within the Explore tab. So when you click on a photo, the modal appears, which is only the photo and in the lower left hand corner instructions to "click photo", which then functions appear that allow you to follow, admire, favorite and comment or critique - once done, you click X and you are back where you left off. This modal will be implemented in additional areas in the coming days. Our dev ops crew is working on speed. Our tests indicate that international users experience longer load times and we're trying to address that - but will provide a more comprehensive update soon. [ATTACH]1189920[/ATTACH]

Thanks for your explanation, hopefully here in Europe we can continue enjoying PN... looking forward for results in speed for international users.

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If you're concerned, then you might describe the system your using. To cite an extreme case, you could be using 32-bit, Windows XP, with a 1.2mHz processor, on a dial-up connection. That would be hopeless and no one would design a system today, just to meet those needs. I suspect that many users are somewhere in between my, "no problem" mode and your frustrated user mode. Perhaps the administrators should sponsor a survey of user systems vs. satisfaction, to see what correlation they see, that might lead to some enhancements for the broadest cast of users.

Not a problem of speed (Strasbourg France). Just trust based on ~overall quality. Don't ask me to elaborate, my command of English is not good enough for me to risk walking on this kind of slippery ground.

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