Firefox problem?

[PJPro]

The solution is simple. I've pointed it out on many occasions but no-one seems to listen. Use Adblock Plus to block the troublesome ads and scripts. Once you've added them to your block list, they won't trouble you anymore.

Adblock is free add-on for firefox.

 

[gpi]

PJPro:The solution is simple. I've pointed it out on many occasions but no-one seems to listen. Use Adblock Plus to block the troublesome ads and scripts. Once you've added them to your block list, they won't trouble you anymore.

Adblock is free add-on for firefox.

Thanks PJ. Do you have a link to that free add-on for Firefox for Mac and is there one for Safari for Mac? I find Safari must faster than Firefox and prefer to use that browser if at all possible.

 

[daveh75]

In FF click menu>tools>add-ons,when the pop-up box opens up click the get add-ons tab then type adblock plus in the search box!

For Safari http://burgersoftware.com/en/safariadblock

 

[PJPro]

In fact, I've stripped everything out from the site except the absolutely essential.

 

[gpi]

daveh75:
In FF click menu>tools>add-ons,when the pop-up box opens up click the get add-ons tab then type adblock plus in the search box!

For Safari http://burgersoftware.com/en/safariadblock

Thanks, I'll report back here when I've tried those solutions.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Yes, all very well, but for the site to be viable in the future, we need to solve the problems of making the whole thing appear, with ads, on everyone's computers. Otherwise no income, no site...

 

[gpi]

daveh75:
In FF click menu>tools>add-ons,when the pop-up box opens up click the get add-ons tab then type adblock plus in the search box!

For Safari http://burgersoftware.com/en/safariadblock

Sorry but both of these fixes do not work on my Mac. With Safari I was unable to use the ad blocker from that url as it requires Mac OS X 10.5 minimum and I'm runing 10.4.11. I searched for an older version and found SafariBlock which did successfully download and install but failed to prevent the pages going blank.

With Firefox I installed the adblock plus add-on but that again did not solve the problem.

As I said before, with problems like this one can spend hours and hours trying different things and not getting anywhere so I'm going to leave it for now.

 

[John Duncan]

the_lhc:
Ok I'm going to ask the "Five Star" question now, why is this website so ******* ****?

It's getting worse and it's not me, I haven't changed anything for weeks but for the last week or more it's been a nightmare, no page will load without several attempts, when they do start to load they never finish and again it's always www.google-analytics.com or stat.flashtalking.com, none of which adds anything useful to the user experience, I know it's all about the adverts but to be honest, that's your problem, not ours, we don't need the ads and we don't need the statistic collections, so until this stuff works properly, TAKE IT OUT!

Now you'll probably say "it's a firefox issue" but so what? Firefox is the second most popular browser out there, if there are page elements that don't work with it, remove them until you do get it working! Right now I'm seriously considering not coming here any more because it's such a painful experience and that would be a shame (well, for me, others might disagree...).

Incidentally, it's only on community. that I get this problem, www. is fine all the time.

Right.

Firstly, this site is not ******* ****.

On the plus side, in the last nine months response times have improved tenfold, error rates are down 97%, content gets on the website immediately instead of having to wait half an hour, you can now see archived reviews, not just the latest ones, blah blah. Furthermore, in the last couple of weeks we've set up a dedicated team so that this site gets even more attention than it used to.

On the minus side - whilst doing all this work (which has pretty much boiled down to a total rewrite), our search got better and then got worse again, which is one of the defects on our list, along with redirects (eg whathifi.com/forums doesn't work any more). Yes, the community site is slower than the main website, because it's the only part that needs direct access to the database - the main site is heavily cached - and sits on the same server as a number of other websites which also have high traffic. The solution to this is to put these forums on their own dedicated server, which is one of the things we're working on right now (and which is taking priority over fixing search, tbh), and which we hope to do in the new year. Until then, I'd ask you to bear with us.

Lastly, you say that you don't need the ads and you don't need the statistic collection. You do. Without either, there'd be no website at all, which to my mind would be more of a denigration of the user experience than the odd slow load

 

[The_Lhc]

JohnDuncan:the_lhc:
Ok I'm going to ask the "Five Star" question now, why is this website so ******* ****?

It's getting worse and it's not me, I haven't changed anything for weeks but for the last week or more it's been a nightmare, no page will load without several attempts, when they do start to load they never finish and again it's always www.google-analytics.com or stat.flashtalking.com, none of which adds anything useful to the user experience, I know it's all about the adverts but to be honest, that's your problem, not ours, we don't need the ads and we don't need the statistic collections, so until this stuff works properly, TAKE IT OUT!

Now you'll probably say "it's a firefox issue" but so what? Firefox is the second most popular browser out there, if there are page elements that don't work with it, remove them until you do get it working! Right now I'm seriously considering not coming here any more because it's such a painful experience and that would be a shame (well, for me, others might disagree...).

Incidentally, it's only on community. that I get this problem, www. is fine all the time.

Right.

Firstly, this site is not ******* ****.

I know, I just wanted to get a Five Star reference in... I like the site, however when it's not working, it's not very good!

Yes, the community site is slower than the main website, because it's the only part that needs direct access to the database - the main site is heavily cached - and sits on the same server as a number of other websites which also have high traffic. The solution to this is to put these forums on their own dedicated server, which is one of the things we're working on right now

Ah, so it isn't now? I'd assumed it was a different server to main site? Or do you mean putting it on a different server to the other magazine forums (If there are any)?

(and which is taking priority over fixing search, tbh),

I don't use search, so I'm not worried about that.

and which we hope to do in the new year. Until then, I'd ask you to bear with us.

Lastly, you say that you don't need the ads and you don't need the statistic collection. You do. Without either, there'd be no website at all, which to my mind would be more of a denigration of the user experience than the odd slow load

Well this is the point, it's not a "slow load", it's a no-load, when it's sitting there waiting for community.whathifi.com it will NEVER come back, that's why I have to keep cancelling and reloading. I pressed post at 11.34am on a meesage Saturday morning, went out for the day and came back over 6 hours later and the page was still sitting there with "waiting for community.whathifi.com". That's a little more than "slow"...

 

[gpi]

JD has long lunch breaks, during which he keeps a finger on a button which stops just you from opening the site.

 

[Anonymous]

try to reinstall it