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Regular BlaBla visitors may have noticed that myself and Greg have not been posting much lately. Or not. And that The BlaBla Blogs‘ front-end face has changed significantly in the last few days.
Loading ...The reasons for this are simple: a number of reports of the site timing out, of error messages, of “page not found” problems, and a general slow-down of the site. We were getting reports from some of our friends over at Gatorpeeps that the Blog had literally ground to a halt, and was taking many minutes to load for some visitors. A couple of our posters were also having problems with some of the previous versions (java-based) commenting system. All of this is totally unacceptable to us, and we apologise to those who have suffered through our shoddy system.
As a result of all of this, we’ve stripped out as much of the Blogs’ unneeded bells and whistles, and applied one of the most streamlined themes that we could get our hands on. We’re working on the Keep It Simple, Stupido! principle to see if access and functionality can be improved.
All of these changes obviously have taken time to plan and implement. As it happens, we’re still not entirely convinced that the changes have been successful. Our good friend Robert Bravery, for example, still reports that he is struggling to access the site, and to load pages quickly. Even after the changes. Which just makes us sad, angry, depressed and confused. But we’ll get through it.
So, to help us get some insight into the state of play now, I’d be very pleased if you would rate the site speed now using the simple poll form below above. Consider both accessing the Blog initially, and also the speed at which pages load in general.
If you’d like to add any comments or suggestions on this, or on any of the changes we’ve made, feel free to drop them into the Comment section below.
12 Comments
Working fine for me. Like the simpler commenting system myself – found that having to hover over the comments to reply was a little weird. You’ll have to mail me info on updating the thing in my LiveWriter though…
Thanks for the input Jo. Will let you know via mail re LW updating – real simple actually.
I must say, I am not jumping up and down about the "look" yet I do understand the reasons, the one thing I do miss is the Zementa plugg in……..for Wiki and all.
Morning V! Ta for the feedback. So you're not so keen on "plain vanilla" then?
I'll be prettying things up again soon – a couple of images and a decent banner. Some chocolate sprinkles and nuts for you. We will try to keep the front-end plugins to a minimum though – especially those that rely on outside linking as they seem to be the biggest culprits in slowing things down.
As for Zementa – as it's a back-end plugin, no reason (that I can think of at least) for it to slow things down out here, so am off to reactivate it just for you….
Hello to you. I am located outside Delhi and your blog does load fine for me. one thing I noticed is that theere are recent comments and recent posts in sidebar that are centered text. This looks a lot strange to me. Otherwise, site is fine. Well done and thank you for the information.
Thanks BLA!
I was away for a week and was a bit mystified when I logged in on my return. But I have to say that I like it a lot.
A little slow to get in, but once the first page loads getting around seems very good. As for the look, simple works for me.
I'm Happy, the speed was a problem for me in the past, but seems much better now! Good work. Any chance on getting my car washed??
I see your blog on mobile with opera mini. It is def quicker now than prev. And I also can now even vote which I cant do before. Good work!
I'm just happy because I can comment!! Thanks for making the changes
Vanilla 'anything' is sometimes the best!
Things have been pretty busy around here today, it seems. Proof enough perhaps that the changes made are for the best?
Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions.