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ad4.netshelter.net
Takes forever to load, and no XDA content loads while waiting.
This is poor web design.
Please revise XDA so that site content loads BEFORE advertiser content.
MintJulep said:
ad4.netshelter.net
Takes forever to load, and no XDA content loads while waiting.
This is poor web design.
Please revise XDA so that site content loads BEFORE advertiser content.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are there any ads in particular that are taking a particularly long time to load? Please provide a screenshot if so. We hate ads that slow down the site too!
Theres a lot more flash that usual. Small price to pay, I figure. Im not exactly on the top donations list. Quality versus quantity is the point, I think.
No specific ads
The XDA page header loads.
Then beige nothingness for about 30 seconds or so while "connecting to ad4.netshelter.net".
I assume something eventually times out, and the rest of the page loads.
MintJulep said:
The XDA page header loads.
Then beige nothingness for about 30 seconds or so while "connecting to ad4.netshelter.net".
I assume something eventually times out, and the rest of the page loads.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thirty seconds is very long! Where are you located? Also, please benchmark your bandwidth at speedtest.net and paste the graphic result here.
I'm also experiencing this! I'm located in the Netherlands with Ziggo as provider. Sometimes about 30 seconds is correct. I'm also getting this a lot with media.xda-developers.com and pubads.g.doubleclick.net.
This is not always the case btw. Also it's not my internet connection because every other site loads just fine. Also the connection is 120/10 Mbit.
I'm using an Android tablet to access the forums and the Best Buy adds are making the site extremely annoying to use. I have to click on the add since I don't have flash automatically loading them, then I have to click on the "x" to close the add. It didn't use to be this bad but now it is happening on almost every page.
Yeah, Im getting tired of the ads all over the site. I am REEEEEAAALLLYY tired of the ones that are popping up from the bottom and block the forum until I click on the X to close. Now some dont even have that close option.
Right now its that stupid best buy buy back program ad.
As a donator I think they really need to go XDA.
You can disable the shockwave flash object in your internet settings, but then you still have this stupid box with a red X that floats around the middle of the page because it cant load.
If the mods need it, here is the (shortened) link for that ad....http://dcom.me/cD9wm
We hear you guys and are working on getting the annoying Best Buy ads disabled. It's a constant battle between paying the bills and not annoying users. We do our best to err on the side of not annoying the users, but sometimes we make mistakes. Thanks for understanding.
I don't mind ads, but the best buy ad at the bottom of the page is horrible. It actually keeps the area at the bottom of the screen from being "clickable", even when you close the ad.
skullvet said:
I don't mind ads, but the best buy ad at the bottom of the page is horrible. It actually keeps the area at the bottom of the screen from being "clickable", even when you close the ad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
I understand the ads, and I'll click on them every once and awhile to help out, but that best buy one is very aggravating.
i agree with this! i feel as if we could make the ads on this site load alot more conveniently.
I notice that the Best Buy ad at the bottom is gone, thank you!
I don't mind the ads but that Best Buy ad was seriously driving me insane! lol Thank you!
Best Buy ad should be officially removed. Let me know if it anyone sees it.
Thx!
svetius said:
Best Buy ad should be officially removed. Let me know if it anyone sees it.
Thx!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much. I understand the adds, you have to make money. That add at the bottom made it to hard to use the site, and i actually installed an adblocker just for it today. Now i have disabled it.
svetius said:
Best Buy ad should be officially removed. Let me know if it anyone sees it.
Thx!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much! All is well again.
A prime example of the damage that one bad ad and/or one slow ad delivery server can cause. I wonder how many people downloaded AdFree or AdBlock Plus or added a line into their hosts file tonight all because of a lousy Best Buy ad and a slow server halting progress on the page.
Is there any procedure in place for vetting new ads before they are served to this site? I get that the idea of an ad server is to exist in the background so that publishers can focus on the content, but is there any way to specify formats, types, and other parameters of the ads served here? If NetShelter was serving that Best Buy ad to all its tech publishers, there were probably a lot of pissed off users tonight across the network.
ZachPA said:
A prime example of the damage that one bad ad and/or one slow ad delivery server can cause. I wonder how many people downloaded AdFree or AdBlock Plus or added a line into their hosts file tonight all because of a lousy Best Buy ad and a slow server halting progress on the page.
Is there any procedure in place for vetting new ads before they are served to this site? I get that the idea of an ad server is to exist in the background so that publishers can focus on the content, but is there any way to specify formats, types, and other parameters of the ads served here? If NetShelter was serving that Best Buy ad to all its tech publishers, there were probably a lot of pissed off users tonight across the network.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Often it's hard to control the adverts you see on a site.
I use ad blockers on a number of sites, but more for giving me a "stripped down" experience on slow loading sites...
There is usually little control over what adverts you show, since it is the ad agency that does the placement of the adverts, and you use code that "includes" whatever advert they choose.
When it comes down to it, if needed, the code can simply be removed, which is what I believe was done in this case.
I have only worked with ad solutions that give me fixed control over the parameters and appearance of the adverts, so I don't know how this one worked.
I use AdBlock Plus and ad blocker add on for Firefox. They work great and block 99% of pop ups.
After a spirited browsing session here at XDA -- peaking at about 15 tabs and 50 pages -- I find that my browser will permanently increase its memory footprint by 100-300 MB. Even once I close all the XDA tabs, that memory is not freed up until I restart the browser.
I have observed this behavior for years, and always with various versions of my main browser: Opera. This site has many great features, and loads fast, but it would still be nice if this wasn't happening.
Have you guys observed the same heavy RAM usage and/or leak?
My system:
Win 7
i7 920
6 GB DDR3
Actually yes I just did with firefox. In the past I never had this problem actually but lately I only use chrome for xda because firefox always gets stuck.
Firefox is not as bad as ie. But when I load up any page from xda in ie, it is so intensive on my processor that it makes the cpu fan ramp up. Then when I scroll, it is scroll and wait for the page to actually scroll and stop before I can click on anything. It is that intensive on system resources.
well an i7 920 and 6gb of ram is a pretty beastly pc, you don't need a 8-core cpu and 16 gigs (like i have) to surf a forum
It is very normal. Because web is powerful today.
For example, Firefox use a lot of memory: 10 tabs = 250MB memory
Firefox 11 improved memory usage, but still high.
All browsers has the same issue.
Maybe it the time to upgrade your memory. Memory is very cheap today
I am NOT upgrading my pc because one website is not acting right
Obvious, but have you tried clearing cache & temp internet files? There must be a reason because I've got a 2.4 AMD (dual core) with 4GB RAM and I never have the problem. I use Chrome 100% of the time though, so can't vouch for any of the other browsers.
I'm afraid I can't help you with opera but you can try firefox with memoryfox addon. It actively frees memory blocks. Visit www browsermemory.com
One or two times I noticed the problem too but for me it wasn't such a problem to deal with it. I had a quick look on the source of the site and it looks okay, the only active contents are ajax and javascripts, rest is just text, static images & css. The hog might be one of the ajax/javascripts.
I also use Opera (still prefer Firefox though ) and according to the task manager: Memory usage = 16k (average) & Virtual memory = 151k (average) when browsing XDA alone (1 tab).
85gallon said:
I am NOT upgrading my pc because one website is not acting right
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a mighty presumptuous statement. Regardless of if I'm browsing XDA or not, at any of the forums I frequent and if I have many tabs open eventually my Browser begins to Hog my memory, Such is the way the web is.
Do any of the people with the issue use ad-blockers? Ads are generally the culprit with things like this as the site has no (or little) control over what content they load. Also, having 50 flash files playing on separate tabs will definitely have an impact. As tigermess said, the site is mostly just text and images so it's next to nothing.
That would explain why I don't have the issue as I don't have ads turned on.
JimmyMcGee said:
That's a mighty presumptuous statement. Regardless of if I'm browsing XDA or not, at any of the forums I frequent and if I have many tabs open eventually my Browser begins to Hog my memory, Such is the way the web is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are the one making the presumptuous statement. I don't use tabs. I usually have one site open at a time. In the rare instance I have more than one site open, it is in a separate browser session. And that is rare. I have deleted cache and temp . I don't run an ad blocker on my pc.
I am actually running on a fresh (but updated) restore of my hard drive from factory condition. I restored last week. It was doing it before and it's still acting the same way. Both in ie and ff. The only common thread is Eset smart security. I have not disabled to test that. I am leary of doing that here with all of the trash that loads with the ads here.
But when you are browsing fine, and you browse to this web site and your computer slows to a crawl, and the only thing open is this site, then that, sir, is not presumptuous!
Archer said:
Do any of the people with the issue use ad-blockers?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't, but I also don't have Flash installed\enabled in Opera.
85gallon said:
You are the one making the presumptuous statement. I don't use tabs. I usually have one site open at a time. In the rare instance I have more than one site open, it is in a separate browser session. And that is rare. I have deleted cache and temp . I don't run an ad blocker on my pc.
I am actually running on a fresh (but updated) restore of my hard drive from factory condition. I restored last week. It was doing it before and it's still acting the same way. Both in ie and ff. The only common thread is Eset smart security. I have not disabled to test that. I am leary of doing that here with all of the trash that loads with the ads here.
But when you are browsing fine, and you browse to this web site and your computer slows to a crawl, and the only thing open is this site, then that, sir, is not presumptuous!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fair enough.
And not to sound like a jerk, but here are your options.
1) Deal with it
B) Don't come to XDA.
In all honesty I could see that you are experiencing problems, but XDA is built on vbulletin. Which while vbulletin scales pretty good to work with XDA, its still a crappy program. Then again the sheer amount of activity on XDA precludes us from using other Forum software, and makes our site run slow on some peoples set ups.
XDA is the site that uses less memory on my PC and i don't have a super machine.. unlike is a pc of the stone age..
I use chrome with adblock plus, my pc is a celeron D 360 with 768 mb of RAM..
What & where's the problem?? I recommend you use an ad blocker and/or another browser..
Flash isn't friendly with any cpu and ram..
JimmyMcGee said:
1) Deal with it
B) Don't come to XDA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
iii) Discuss it. Maybe someone with some insight on the back-end of XDA will chime in with advice. Maybe they don't even know some people have a problem and they will be able to make a change on their side. Poor performance and/or ad blocking aren't in anyone's best interest.
Other vbulletin forums don't gobble memory for me. I think that XDA is unlike the average vbulletin forum.
My computer is a single core hyperthreading 3.21GHz <--- (basically a wannabe duo core) with 1gb ram. I use chrome, with adblocker and my browser NEVER lags or anything, even with MANY XDA pages open...
mhhd said:
..snip.. I think that XDA is unlike the average vbulletin forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There in is the rub. XDA is a very large forum, we have a full time person, optimizing and maintaining our servers, as I'm sure you can imagine. SO I will hit him up and see if he says anything. But we have discussed this before, in the year or more have upgraded many of our servers to improve the speed.
So while I may have seemed like a jerk, its not because I don't care, its because we are constantly trying to improve the performance of XDA. However, with the numerous different computer setups and internet connections, not everyone is going to have a blazing fast experience, some of that it outwith our control.
Thank you. All we ask is to have your person look into it.
I will do what I can from my end. I don't think it is a vbulletin problem. That and server issues would only account for slow page loads. They wouldn't account for bringing a computer to its knees. When the page loads fully and I scroll my mouse, there is a 5-10 second lag before the page actually scrolls.
I like xda and I don't want to use ad blockers if that is the culprit as that it's how you survive and pay the bills. But there is some bad code somewhere.
I saw a few add blockers that will let you select what adds to disable. Maybe I can narrow it down some.
All we are asking is to look into and not a canned like it or leave it option.
JimmyMcGee said:
...we are constantly trying to improve the performance of XDA....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It shows. For me, the XDA experience is great in all the most important ways: speed, features, and community. I guess complaining about memory usage is a bit of a nit pick =P
Hi - My internet browser is Firefox, and I have been using NoScript for years.
There is only one website that causes me constant problems when browsing: XDA Developers.
I use NoScript constantly with a lot of stuff disabled by default: Everything Facebook is always disabled, along with doubleclick and a bunch of other tracking websites.
With NoScript on, the XDA screen is constantly jumping around, with various websites constantly trying to refresh about twice a second. It is so jumpy with embedded websites continuously refreshing, that I can't even control NoScript well enough to enable whatever disabled website(s) are causing the problem.
I wouldn't be frustrated if this happened to me all the time, but XDA is the only website I see this problem on. I would expect a high-tech developer website like XDA to have less problems instead of more problems.
Sigh. I wish somebody at XDA could fix this.
¿GJ?
NoScript has a whitelist feature. If you don't want to use it, you can't expect it to be "fixed" (actually, modified to fit your needs would be a better choice of words) anytime soon, as the forums (and many other forums, in general) rely rather heavily on scripts.
I personally have XDA added to my whitelist.
As for the refreshes, did you make sure it's not another add-on that's conflicting? Start FF in safe mode and check if the issue persists.
Don't know if this helps, but I just tested XDA with NoScript without any issues.
That being said, a lot of features rely on JavaScript, so no guarantee what would happen if you only turned on some of them.
Huh.. I use NS on FF, and have seen no issues. To be sure it is NS, have you told it to temporarily allow all, and see if that fixes it? It could certainly be another issue..
What he could be speaking of is the portal constant refreshing (not on the forum), which also occurs on my differents computers with NS (with xda on whitelist).
For me, everytime I scroll on the portal main page, it refresh itself.
It's weird - Something changed between yesterday and today. Yesterday, this page wouldn't sit still until I was able to do enough "Temporarily allow all this page" button presses (about 5 or 6) to get the page finally stabilized.
Now, everything was stable when I entered XDA with the same "allow" list I had yesterday.
I'm not a big fan of "White List"ing sites, since so many sites have Facebook embedded in them (amongst many other tracking sites I don't like). Ever since Facebook violated my privacy and sucked up my personal contact information without my explicit approval, I ... ...
... well, let's just say I won't "Like" Facebook.
I appreciate the feedback from y'all, and I wish I knew what changed.
Thanks!
¿GJ?
bitpushr said:
Don't know if this helps, but I just tested XDA with NoScript without any issues.
That being said, a lot of features rely on JavaScript, so no guarantee what would happen if you only turned on some of them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Divine_Madcat said:
Huh.. I use NS on FF, and have seen no issues. To be sure it is NS, have you told it to temporarily allow all, and see if that fixes it? It could certainly be another issue..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some forum features won't work: dropdown menus (e.g. "Go to Page" next to the page numbers, "Quick Links", "Rate thread") search boxes not being cleared automatically when you click them, username/device completion in search boxes or using the new mention feature, share buttons (they won't show how many times X got shared), etc. The WIYIWYG editor obviously doesn't work as well.
The portal's layout is a bit messed up, too.
It's all fixed by adding xda-developers.com to the whitelist. I think you both already have it added (I removed it for testing), which is what you're supposed to do for websites you trust anyway.
---------- Post added at 12:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:53 AM ----------
¿GotJazz? said:
It's weird - Something changed between yesterday and today. Yesterday, this page wouldn't sit still until I was able to do enough "Temporarily allow all this page" button presses (about 5 or 6) to get the page finally stabilized.
Now, everything was stable when I entered XDA with the same "allow" list I had yesterday.
I'm not a big fan of "White List"ing sites, since so many sites have Facebook embedded in them (amongst many other tracking sites I don't like). Ever since Facebook violated my privacy and sucked up my personal contact information without my explicit approval, I ... ...
... well, let's just say I won't "Like" Facebook.
I appreciate the feedback from y'all, and I wish I knew what changed.
Thanks!
¿GJ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would suggest using something that will block them on all websites, then. You can probably do it using NoScript's advanced filtering options, but I personally already use AdBlock Plus, and there's a neat list you can subscribe to that will block all those buttons. Get the "Annoyance Block List" from here.
¿GotJazz? said:
It's weird - Something changed between yesterday and today. Yesterday, this page wouldn't sit still until I was able to do enough "Temporarily allow all this page" button presses (about 5 or 6) to get the page finally stabilized.
Now, everything was stable when I entered XDA with the same "allow" list I had yesterday.
I'm not a big fan of "White List"ing sites, since so many sites have Facebook embedded in them (amongst many other tracking sites I don't like). Ever since Facebook violated my privacy and sucked up my personal contact information without my explicit approval, I ... ...
... well, let's just say I won't "Like" Facebook.
I appreciate the feedback from y'all, and I wish I knew what changed.
Thanks!
¿GJ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the opposite problem it seems, in that if I white-list the site then quite often one of the scripts goes haywire
and refreshes the page repeatedly for several refreshes or until the server complains with an error message about being overloaded.
It has been suggested to me that this may be a 2013 theme problem, so I'm trying the 2010 one for a few days to see if that fixes it.
Nameless One said:
I have the opposite problem it seems, in that if I white-list the site then quite often one of the scripts goes haywire
and refreshes the page repeatedly for several refreshes or until the server complains with an error message about being overloaded.
It has been suggested to me that this may be a 2013 theme problem, so I'm trying the 2010 one for a few days to see if that fixes it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@Nameless One: Yes, I've been seeing the "Server Overloaded" error message as well. I wasn't sure if it was NoScript related, though I was beginning to suspect it. I would open the same XDA pages in IE or Chrome without any problem, but see the "Overloaded" error only with Firefox. Usually (but, not always), temporarily enabling all sites fixed that problem for me.
¿GJ?
I have the same constant refresh problem.
The site only works if I set noscript to allow everything globally or if I use IE (ouch).
It feels to me this site is overburdened with ad/tracking scripts and blocking them forces the site to break (admins anti block?).
I will try the 2010 theme idea and report back, also I do have the main domain whitelisted.
--edit--
2010 theme fixes it, so I guess a 2013 theme issue.
Yep - Dumped the 2013 Theme and went back to 2010 Theme.
Everything's groovy now.
¿GJ?
¿GotJazz? said:
Yep - Dumped the 2013 Theme and went back to 2010 Theme.
Everything's groovy now.
¿GJ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2013 relies heavily on javascript so I imagine that is why you are having some issues. 2010 uses it much less but you may still see some issues relating to Javascript being blocked, such as menus not working and that sort of thing.
For the past couple months, the XDA forums have crashed chrome on my computer and multiple browsers on 3 different android devices. Recently, it's been occurring much more regularly.
I'm pretty sure it has something to do with malicious ads. When I'm browsing on my androids, i frequently get redirected to google play (candy crush and others). I don't have many apps, and I take good care of what I download. I only get redirected when on the xda forums.
On chrome (pc), pages will freeze a tab and usually flash or javascript will claim to be the culprit.
I consider myself a pretty technical person, I'm 99% sure I don't have any ad/malware running on my devices.
jamus28 said:
For the past couple months, the XDA forums have crashed chrome on my computer and multiple browsers on 3 different android devices. Recently, it's been occurring much more regularly.
I'm pretty sure it has something to do with malicious ads. When I'm browsing on my androids, i frequently get redirected to google play (candy crush and others). I don't have many apps, and I take good care of what I download. I only get redirected when on the xda forums.
On chrome (pc), pages will freeze a tab and usually flash or javascript will claim to be the culprit.
I consider myself a pretty technical person, I'm 99% sure I don't have any ad/malware running on my devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bump, this is happening to me too. It's very frustrating because it always seems to happen on very large threads which contain ROMs, making it hard to check them out, download them, or get support from the devs.
Yup these issues are getting worse. For a site dedicated to mobile, the xda forums are not very mobile friendly: advertisement reloads, page redirects, Google play redirects. Even chrome and Firefox on my PC crash on the forums. No other site gives me these issues.
Post these issues here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2399691
candy crush redirects
jamus28 said:
For the past couple months, the XDA forums have crashed chrome on my computer and multiple browsers on 3 different android devices. Recently, it's been occurring much more regularly.
I'm pretty sure it has something to do with malicious ads. When I'm browsing on my androids, i frequently get redirected to google play (candy crush and others). I don't have many apps, and I take good care of what I download. I only get redirected when on the xda forums.
On chrome (pc), pages will freeze a tab and usually flash or javascript will claim to be the culprit.
I consider myself a pretty technical person, I'm 99% sure I don't have any ad/malware running on my devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems like the Candy Crush redirect is back. I found that Dolphin Browser has a setting under User Agent called desktop. That setting causes the browser to go to the full desktop site and NOT the mobile site. That has completely stopped the redirect. Don't know if the other browsers have a similar setting. The problem seems to be specific to the mobile formatted pages (m.url.com for example) as best I can tell. I've tested it a few times on sites that I have a lot of redirects on with the standard android browser and always get redirected. Same site with Dolphin set to android for user agent and get redirected. When switched to desktop, it's gone. Hope this helps...
I started having problems with this today while trying to view some threads. Can't seem to find much info on how to fix it.
@rpdeuce, have you reported it here yet?
rpdeuce said:
I started having problems with this today while trying to view some threads. Can't seem to find much info on how to fix it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use the Official thread in place for reporting. If it advertising issues, or if just general site issues you can still report it here or use the Report button.
You have huge animated ads all over every page. That is a very poor way to optimize a web page. I have a low end gaming rig and it's powerful enough that I should be able to browse the web. Yet this site crashes all my browsers. Also I refuse to use adblock because it spits viruses causing popups into chrome which make me have to reinstall chrome. However when I did have it installed other than the random mouse click popups it caused the site worked fine. I know you need to make money but it's not easy to make money if you are making a slow website that causes issues when trying to navigate the site. You don't have to have gigantic poorly animated banners all over the site that are honestly rough on the eyes. Thus making me look away from the ads. Please! please! please! Optimize this site better. This is why people use ad blocking software! Thanks. =)
@s4shield, post here.
NOOK!E said:
@s4shield, post here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was going to the only thing is that it's most of the ads on the site. Not a specific ad. Thanks