How can the forums still work like crap?

I mean, a enterprise sized company like UT, shouldn't they be able to solve a problem like this in a few days? Move it to a cloud or whatever? Its been like this for months now and its getting worse.

Its not the most populated forum in the world, bigger forums run much smoother.

 

They work fine here. Just what is the complaint?

 

Long wait times and often timeouts

 

I've noticed the same for a week or so now although it's been ok today so far.

 

A number of us have been experiencing sluggish behaviour when visiting the forums. Occasionally it's accompanied by a minute or two of 503 error messages. We've got an actual thread and an admin commented on being aware of it a few months back but that's the last we've heard from them.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/forum-is-slow-as-molasses.528446/

 

This has been a problem for months. Sometimes it is fine, sometimes everything takes a long time before it starts to load.

A recent addition to the problem is sometimes when the loading is slow, the pages will not be formatted correctly when they do load. Images will be missing, all text in the same basic format (e.g. you cannot tell the difference between user name, quotes, and content), and spacing incorrect.

 

Yeah their CSS CDN seems fubar, that's what made me create this post, also when I tried to reply the first time I got this so I had to start over with this reply to you.

 

We're aware of these issues and we are currently working towards a solution to reduce the load times and timeouts that users are experiencing.

 

It’s been a pretty regular issue for me for quite a long time. Usually in the morning (pst) for a few hours, timeouts and slow loading.

As a mod, I am tempted to close this thread as a duplicate, since there are many threads on this already. As a user who encounters this several times a week... not so much.

 

Is this a geographic thing related to a specific server? I've never had a problem. (Not trying to deny it is a problem, just providing another data point that might be useful.)

 

It might be a side effect of geography. I notice the most timeouts during PST business hours. It might just be that load is highest then.

 

It would make sense that it affects servers differently. Ostensibly, they have servers in different locations to serve different regions. And certain region's servers are bunko.

I've worked at companies before where the server farms themselves varied in reliability. Even if the cloud service that organized them was the same throughout. I have tons of problems from here in Boston, MA. Basically 25% of the time I visit the forums, I get a 503 error.

If they are using a cloud service, the cloud provider is most likely the one to fix this by finding what is wrong with their farm at whatever location it's at. If they are using a server center and their own personal farms, then they need to find a different company to host their servers, because this gets pretty bad.

Either way, when they say that they are working to fix this, it doesn't likely require direct work from them, it requires signing a new contract, moving servers, and/or telling their cloud provider to fix their *blank* (and then waiting...).

And if they host all of their own servers at their own location(s), well then they need to start using a cloud service, or get new server architecture/infrastructure in the US location(s).

 

Lithium.. never forget

 

I have had no problems....But I am from Texas...

 

Experiencing slowdown too here in Asia. It even affects the Asset Store inside Unity and just displays a white page. Maybe this is one major reason that affected the numbers in your chart regarding the percentage of users as presented in the Unity Game Studios Report 2018 Fireside Chat video...

 

Only had a few timeouts on rare occasions.. quick refresh and it loads.

Besides compared to most the garbage shhit other companies use for forum software Unity's xenforo' forums are pretty good (just lacking some extensions )...should be able to live with the odd timeout because of server load...at least it's popular because it works right.

Better than a half dead forum built around some crappy javascrap framework or a some awful lame design layout.. like this crapazon forum for lumberlard https://gamedev.amazon.com/forums/index.html.

 

When it goes wrong it isnt just an odd timeout, its dozens and dozens of timeouts, blank pages, slow pages loads and other issues. It is very intermittent, some hours or days are ok, but sometimes it can be infuriating for hours on end. And its been going on for months, in contrast to forum behaviour before this problem emerged, where performance was fairly consistent and I never had these sorts of problems for many years.

I can well understand people who havent experienced this thinking it isnt bad, but those who have know it is bad! If anyone had told me months ago how long we would be waiting for Unity to fix it, I would not have believed them. But here we are.

By the way, this is the thread from the Meta forum where the issue has been iscussed since late April:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/forum-is-slow-as-molasses.528446/

 

oh ok.. maybe it's timezone differences, and I just miss the worst hours?

"If anyone had told me months ago how long we would be waiting for Unity to fix it"

classic Unity, we still waiting for asset store site/x feature etc to improve.

 

To temporarily alleviate the slowdown / improve loading speed, use a browser that helps bypass geographic restriction/blocking or maybe use a VPN.

 

I’ve tried vpn a couple of times, and it didn’t help, the timeout comes from the server(s).

 

hmm... I see. Right now it's working fine for me using a different browser. When I compared loading time for both (Chrome and the other browser that was supposed to bypass geo. rest.), the new browser was significantly faster. Will continue monitoring how this goes.

 

Unity has already acknowledged there is a problem on thier end. The most we can do at this point is wait until they fix it. The slow downs and time outs are only related to unity sites, not browser or connection or isp or anything like that.

 

Got alot of 503's just now. 11 AM CET

 

Same.

 

I think the best course of action is to simply reply here when it happens with this image (or the video clip):



Just kidding. I'm sure they are well aware at this point that it affects most people and is pretty bad.

 

On an off topic thought I just realized Unity's game dev meme thread needs a resurrection.. someone will do it right?