Slow load times and latency issues

[nightstreak]

Anybody else have the forum become virtually unusable in the last few days or just me? Saw @AlvinofDiaspar's suggestion of ads using up resources and tried turning on an ad blocker for the site. Not only did it help, while I want to support the forum I was not sad to see the absolute worst type of chum box ads gone from every page. Do the site admins have the option to exclude chum box type ads? The scammy clickbait made with AI ruins the experience here. I posted a separate thread regarding the ads.

 

[PinkLucy]

@Edward Skira

 

[Johnny Au]

Anybody else have the forum become virtually unusable in the last few days or just me? Saw @AlvinofDiaspar's suggestion of ads using up resources and tried turning on an ad blocker for the site. Not only did it help, while I want to support the forum I was not sad to see the absolute worst type of chum box ads gone from every page. Do the site admins have the option to exclude chum box type ads? The scammy clickbait made with AI ruins the experience here. I posted a separate thread regarding the ads.

Sometimes, UT won't load at all while on cellular data for me. I am with Freedom Mobile by the way.

 

[nightstreak]

Sometimes, UT won't load at all while on cellular data for me. I am with Freedom Mobile by the way.

It started loading for me once I blocked ads from admaster.cc outbrain.com and taboola.com (known chumbox scammer ads). Unfortunately, that seems to be all the ads Urban Toronto is serving so no ads appear other than the occasional first party UT banners. I'd be happy to be served ads by Google or other ad providers that don't serve cheap AI generated clickbait ads that append so many trackers that it slows load times and sometimes even crashes the site. It's a real problem.

 

[JasonParis]

It's 12:45 ET now and everything is loading exceptionally slow.

 

[nightstreak]

It's 12:45 ET now and everything is loading exceptionally slow.

Unlikely to be a coincidence that when running on my phone on WiFi where I don't have any ad blockers, the forum is just absurdly slow. When running on my computer with the chumbox IPs blocked, the forum is buttery smooth. Turning off the IP blocker the forum slows down. The amount of trackers and scripts that are being blocked alone explain what you're experiencing. The administrators of this site really should be looking at switching ad providers, if not to avoid subjecting users to scammy low quality ads fit for a Toronto Sun type audience, then at least for technical reasons.

The folks at work have no issue with us spending a few minutes between projects on some personal browsing, but when my boss walks behind me and sees this, it's not the kind of "personal browsing" she's talking about.