How slow? Can you quantify it?

My observation is that the site's responsiveness varies dramatically, and unpredictably.

Unfortunately, I don't think there is much that can be done. Two factors:

1. The framework on which the site is built — the "PerlMonks engine" — is intrinsically inefficient, in that the rendering of each page involves loading and evaling many little bits of perl code from a MySQL database.
2. We're getting hosting services from a company which is donating it to us for free, so we're not really in a position to demand server upgrades and so on.

Of course, it's likely that there are places where the code can be made more efficient. You're welcome to join pmdev and submit patches.

How slow? Can you quantify it? My observation is that the site's responsiveness varies dramatically, and unpredictably.

For me, over the weekend as I was reading from my phone (whether on WiFi or on 5G network, so two different routes), I was often getting 15 or more seconds for page loads, and an estimated 10-20% of attempts ended in the browser timing out the connection (which I think is at 30sec, on my phone browser) rather than getting the page. And during one stretch, I was getting consistent timeout, such that even IsItDownRightNow agreed that the site was down.

Today, it's been better than that (less than a couple seconds to load a page). But, despite the uptime improvements compared to the April outages, I still frequently get at least a few times per week when all I get are timeouts when I try multiple times in a row; when I move on to something else, and then come back an hour or two later, it's usually back to responding.

Hmm, Chatterbot regularly accesses the site 24/7 anyway. I think i could log the access time in the future.

Edit: I started logging today (Tuesday 20th August, 15:00 UTC). It will take me a few days until i have time (and enough data) to write and test the code that generates the visual outputs (PM and off-site).

PerlMonks XP is useless? Not anymore: XPD - Do more with your PerlMonks XP
Also check out my sisters artwork and my weekly webcomics

I will look into doing some sort of benchmark. I think people using the site (at least it's true for me) get the feeling that it's much more laggy than a typical site. It would be interesting to try and quantify that. As far as optimizing the code, I wouldn't mind looking into it, but there are much more qualified people here.

not the same here using my monitor:

Fri Aug 16 12:20:55 2024 checking perlmonks.org at 66.39.54.27 216.92.
+34.251
--------------------------------------------------------------------
perlmonks.org @ https://66.39.54.27/index.pl?           200 OK 39.8203
+ Kb (40776 bytes) in 1.161444 seconds 34.2852 Kb/s
perlmonks.org @ https://216.92.34.251/index.pl?         200 OK 39.8203
+ Kb (40776 bytes) in 0.98396 seconds 40.4694 Kb/s
[download]

..but at least you were able to login (sorry could not resist ;)

L*

you can't argue about that.

I can :-)

The site over the last month has been much more responsive, and consistently so, than over the previous year. We are back now to how it used to be, with most normal nodes rendering in around a second. That's much faster than lots of the rest of the web, so I'm perfectly happy with that level of speed. YMMV.

this site is distressingly slow

Is it?

It seems suitably speedy to me...I've not performed any benchmarks but it's not slow enough to make it worthwhile.

Having said that, last evening access was impossible for half an hour or so, but that's different from slow!

So is anybody looking into this? Right now it's taking 20-30 seconds to load a page and I'm on a ~150 Mbps connection here. With those kind of delays, most people will already have clicked away assuming the site is down. Even if the site is no longer as active as it once was, it's still a massive knowledgebase, but if people are Googling Perl questions and encountering a site that's "apparently down", that's really not good for this site's reputation.

If it helps, the browser dev tools say the TLS handshake is taking about 30 seconds.

You created your account in 2016, so this post surprises me a little. Like any on-line community, it does take time to get used to what's 'normal' and 'usual'. People here have nicks -- some of those are nicks that they've used elsewhere, and some not. Some of them are real names, some of them are made up. Any use who comments without logging in defaults to Anonymous Monk.

The beauty of Perlmonks is that it's a basic website. It has resisted the ensh*ttification that happened to other websites, so it still looks like something from the late 90s or early 00s. And that's perfect -- we don't care so much about the visual impact of website; the information is the point here. And if you want a different look, you can upload your own CSS that the website will use. We also run lean, so allowing an image for each post would require too many resources. Finally, users can display their work experience and availability on their bio, or not.

This is not Facebook or LinkedIn. This is a technical community for people who want to share questions, issues, announcements, and answers about Perl.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

Thanks PJ. We owe you so much. Groklaw -- RIP -- 2003 to 2013.

The beauty of Perlmonks is that it's a basic website. It has resisted the ensh*ttification that happened to other websites, so it still looks like something from the late 90s or early 00s.

I generally agree. It's a relatively clean visual design, no cat pictures and you can usually find what you need quickly (unless SuperSearch times out.... again).

But the pre-Dotcom-bubble codebase also has its downsides. chatterbot exists mainly because it's less painful to generate stats and the ability to "scroll back in the current chat" externally than within the site itself. And there is pretty much no problem, none, with the monastery codebase for which you could quickly google a solution or pull an upstream patch.

Not to mention that JavaScript support would make sense in a lot of places. Input validation, visual editor, autosave-to-scratchpath while working on long posts, better chatterbox, etc.

But it's still one of my favourite sites on the internet.

PerlMonks XP is useless? Not anymore: XPD - Do more with your PerlMonks XP
Also check out my sisters artwork and my weekly webcomics

eyepopslikeamosquito which I imagine as a mosquito pest control guy ... The word "choroba" reminds me of an unbeatable chess program

While I found your interpretations amusing (and may be of interest to psychologists ;-) you can discover the true origin of these two names in replies to this classic old node:

• Re: Name Space - My head is hurting, my right eye feels like it's going to pop like a mosquito drinking from an expresso addict with high blood pressure, I want to crawl somewhere damp and dark and quiet and I consider never to touch a keyboard again
• Re: Name Space - choroba means "disease" in Czech (BTW an emoji for this name can be found here)

harangzsolt33, I have no idea of the origin of your PM name (why 33?), so I'd like to see you reply to George_Sherston's classic old node.

I was surprised LanX hasn't replied to that node yet, and hope he does so in the future.

Then there's LanX which reminds me of the Cox cable guy who hooks up the internet at people's houses

Interesting. For some reason I always imagine him clad in Lederhosen eating gingerbread under the Christmas tree :-)

👁️🍾👍🦟

> was surprised LanX hasn't replied
1. Not everything needs to be commented
2. Dunno what a cox cable in lederhosen is. I'm ignorant about porn...

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

Zsolt is my real first name. The word "harang" means bell in Hungarian. It's just a random word I decided to throw in, because I guess "zsolt" would be already taken. And 33 is also just a random number. So, I didn't put much thought into creating my username. I just stumbled upon this website somehow and wanted to try it and ask a question, and I had to think of a username. I was so impressed by the helpful nature of people here that I decided to come back frequently even when I didn't have a question. I found that I can learn a lot by simply reading the questions others ask and the answers given, or using the search feature, which I have used a lot... You know, I'm surprised why when I search for an answer on Google, generally the first thing I see is a link to StackOverflow rather a link to PerlMonks. It's almost as if this website was somehow purposely suppressed by Google. (?) I don't know why that is.

I would have never guessed the meaning of eyepopslikeamosquito, but now I understand it, and it makes sense. Thank you for explaining it.

But if I had to add some new features, I would allow people to upload a small picture as an avatar. Maybe add a bio like LinkedIn, so when you click on someone's profile, you could see their work experience, education, etc. It would be nice.

In my opinion, I don't need to see anyone's work experience, or a picture, or anything else that could easily be fabricated, distorted or misconstrued.

Stay around long enough, or simply read the post history of someone, and you'll get a picture of their experience, knowledge and personality.

My resume is my post history, and the software I have published. I feel that the way I am treated by others here is a direct representation of how I've presented myself. It matters not where I have worked, what I look like or where I went to school (I didn't; I'm a high-school drop out).

...besides... all of the things you said you'd change here were long available on LinkedIn, and according to your very own words, that didn't turn out so well (and I won't even make a single comment on Facebook... I gave up all social media a decade ago).

Also, the names you mentioned in your post would all be listed as part of the group of Perlmonks whom I hold extremely high regard and respect for in both their technical knowledge (programming and otherwise) and in the way they personally present themselves to both questions and people. There are several others here much like them.

So clearly PerlMonks isn't your place. Why are you even still here?