Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

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Mrs Doyle
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Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by Mrs Doyle »

Hi,

For a while we have been experiencing 'Intermittent slow loading of forum pages' on our forum lofcforum.com

When the problem occurs, a page load may take 30-60 seconds but will load eventually without an error

Other than the host(bluehost) being rubbish, I'm not sure what the problem is, here's what I have tried.

Purge cache
Optimise and repair databases
Update forum to latest version 3.3.4
Run Firefox dev tool that tells you what a webpage is doing

Its not my connection or device.

Any tips?
Last edited by Mrs Doyle on Wed May 12, 2021 1:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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thecoalman
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by thecoalman »

Open the ACP >> System tab >> php information link on left

Find the value for max_execution time, this is likely less than 30 seconds. If the page load times are exceeding that the bottle neck is elsewhere. The likely culprit is one of your neighbors is running a CPU/data heavy script. I had similar issue many years ago on a VPS and the host was giving me the run around. Moving servers solved it. ;)
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Mrs Doyle
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by Mrs Doyle »

The max_execution time is set to 30. Guess I'll get back onto Bluehost
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janus_zonstraal
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by janus_zonstraal »

lofcmb.com
no website there?
Sorry! My English is bat ;) !!!
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warmweer
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by warmweer »

Mrs Doyle wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 11:08 am For a while we have been experiencing 'Intermittent slow loading of forum pages' on our forum lofcmb.com
In previous posts you mentioned https://lofcforum.com in which I notice no slow loading at all.
lofcmb.com doesn't seem to exist.
Spelling is freeware, which means you can use it for free.
On the other hand, it is not open source, which means you cannot change it or publish it in a modified form.


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Mrs Doyle
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by Mrs Doyle »

Of course its lofcforum.com :oops:
Mrs Doyle
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by Mrs Doyle »

warmweer wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 12:57 pm
Mrs Doyle wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 11:08 am For a while we have been experiencing 'Intermittent slow loading of forum pages' on our forum lofcmb.com
In previous posts you mentioned https://lofcforum.com in which I notice no slow loading at all.
lofcmb.com doesn't seem to exist.
Unfortunately it seems to occur at totally random times. I have noticed it occur when only a few users are logged on.
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david63
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by david63 »

If it is only happening at random times then I would suspect that it is to do with server resources. If you are on a shared server then it is possible that one, or more, accounts on that server are hogging the resources.
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janus_zonstraal
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by janus_zonstraal »

0 hidden and 39 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Probable bad bots, so block them I'm almost sure the problem is solved
https://www.johnlarge.co.uk/blocking-ag ... apers-bots
Sorry! My English is bat ;) !!!
Mrs Doyle
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by Mrs Doyle »

janus_zonstraal wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 1:35 pm
0 hidden and 39 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Probable bad bots, so block them I'm almost sure the problem is solved
https://www.johnlarge.co.uk/blocking-ag ... apers-bots
Thats interesting, I'll see if I can find anything in the logs to support this. Although it is a forum for 'Leyton Orient' fans, I dont think we have many fans in China.

In the past I had daily spam registrations until I turned on a captcha type thing.
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by P_I »

Mrs Doyle wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 1:49 pm
janus_zonstraal wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 1:35 pm
0 hidden and 39 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Probable bad bots, so block them I'm almost sure the problem is solved
https://www.johnlarge.co.uk/blocking-ag ... apers-bots
Thats interesting, I'll see if I can find anything in the logs to support this.
My forums got hit hard with these back in November 2019. See viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2529326 that discussed the issue in great detail.

The most obvious clue we found is looking at 'Who is online', are there an abnormal number of guests visiting the site? If so, use the display guest link and look at the user agent strings.

If you do follow the above link to block the bad bots, read down through the comments, the https://www.johnlarge.co.uk/blocking-ag ... ment-11823 post contains the 'optimized' solution.
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Mrs Doyle
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by Mrs Doyle »

Thanks,

I've added the code to .htaccess that is in public_html directory, is that the right one to edit?

Cant see a display guest link.
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janus_zonstraal
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by janus_zonstraal »

I've added the code to .htaccess that is in public_html directory, is that the right one to edit?
What code did you use?
Cant see a display guest link.
Click on "who is online"
And than "display guests "
Sorry! My English is bat ;) !!!
Mrs Doyle
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by Mrs Doyle »

I pasted in the code from the link

Code: Select all

BrowserMatchNoCase "libwww-perl" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "wget" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "LieBaoFast" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Mb2345Browser" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "zh-CN" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "MicroMessenger" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "zh_CN" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Kinza" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Bytespider" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Baiduspider" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Sogou" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "Datanyze" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "AspiegelBot" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "adscanner" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "serpstatbot" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "spaziodat" bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase "undefined" bad_bot
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from env=bad_bot
Mrs Doyle
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Re: Intermittent slow loading of forum pages

Post by Mrs Doyle »

Looking at 'awstats' on Bluehost, looks like I'm getting a lot of hits from Ukraine and Russia :shock:
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