LOL, and one more thing, I personally found that Rich text Editor slowed things down a bit too.

Oh, and to repeat, going to Javascript and de-activating smilies there DID NOT help.(That was the first thing I tried) I had to do it the way I described.

tonyh: Above the text boxes. (Next to "Change message area size")

Click it and it takes you to a Settings page. Scroll down. Near the bottom you will need to put a check mark in "Activate User Smilies"

I only have about 10 smilies now that load each time a text box shows up. (You know? When you click on the "Smiley" above the text box, the ones that show up that you can just click on to have them appear in the text box)

I have DSL. When the newer batches of smilies were added a couple months ago, any page with a text box started taking 15-20 seconds to load! (As opposed to 2-3 seconds for most other Brainking pages)

After I emptied it, I added back in my most frequently used smilies. The ones that I found that slowed things down most significantly were the tip-toeing smiley, and the newer blue smiley that bounces back and forth. (I didn't go much further than that in my experimentation)

rod03801: I turned off all smiley's.. so they don't load at all .. no change..

Fencer:  Why waste time by making options for the "know how guys"?  Normal players dont care about configuration profiles, changing smileys and so on, they want an easy accessable site where they can PLAY GAMES!

rod03801: Where do you find 'Change Smilies', please?

Rose: If your main problems are on discussion board pages, or pages where it is time to submit your move, (Basically any page where the text box shows up), I highly reccomend going to "Change Smileys" and emptying them out. I found that the more recent smiley additions must have "huge" smileys. (I'm talking about when the batch including the smiley was added). After I emptied it out completely, all pages where the text box shows up loaded at their normal speed of 3 to 4 seconds! I then gradually started adding smilies, and sort of found out which ones were slowing things down.

Shutting off smilies in Settings was NOT enough.

I was so frustrated for weeks. MOST brainking pages were loading in 2-4 seconds, EXCEPT any page that included the text box. Those were taking 15-20 seconds! (And I have DSL)

It's worth a try anyways! It worked for me! (I now only have about 10 smilies in my "change smiley" area.)

pauloaguia: Mmmmm. Interesting idea. But it could be done.

Rose: Check with different browsers. For instance, nowadays IE7 only displays a page after it was completely loaded - larger pages, like Boards with 100 messages, will simply take longer to display. Check if changing browser helps at all.
Also, it it's happening to some players and not others, then it may be because of their BK's configurations. There's loads of things you can enable or disable and some of them do have an impact on performance, no matter if Fencer syas the site is working great or not. I remember coan posted something about it some time ago. For instance, I have most of the game comboboxes disabled, only display 5 messages per page on boards, have no context menu, smilies popup disabled, etc.
But if if you try and disable certain features, and reduce the load per page, and see that the site starts getting faster then post it here - it will help others know what to disable and help Fencer know he has to optimize that feature...

Fencer - anych chance we could have different configuration profiles? That way I could simply choose a profile to use at home and another to use when I'm on a wireless connection with less bandwith.
It could also help on testing different configuration profiles - I'd change all settings with one click and could immediately see if it had any impact on the site's performance at all...

Purple: Oh I know.. Im avoiding most public boards due to the long load time.. Every page takes up to 55 seconds to load.. then youre in purgatory if you get doubles in gammon. That is a 5 min turn for sure.. Im just glad to hear Im not alone. I thought I was going mad.
But what does a person do when told there is nothing wrong with the site, the server that it is on or the connection speeds?

Purple: The short moments when the site works good are easy to count but  Fencer continue to swipe that problem under the carpet :(

Rose: Oh but it does work badly for others. My webtv is like a nightmare. It takes 5 minutes to get on any discussion board and then when you get there you see something brilliant like LOL. Hardly worth it at times.

tonyh: Same for me for the last two weeks. I play very few games due to the long wait for pages to load. I keep getting the same message when I ask, there is nothing wrong with the site. I dont get why it works great for some and horrible for others. NO matter where they are located in the world!
Frusterating to say the least.
I thought it was my machine but other sites work great. I checked my net connection, my router, my modem, different browsers, this and that.. All other sites I go to work ok.. Why BK works sooo bad for me but not for others stumps the heck outta me..

pauloaguia: It's been like this for weeks!!

tonyh: that I'm not experincing slowness and neither "Website not found" messages.
Of course, I posted my message 2 whole minutes after yours. Maybe Fencer was updating the site however. It usually gets offline for about a minute when he does that...

pauloaguia: What say you?

tonyh: Working fine for me...

Why is BK so slow in responding and why does it keep going to 'Website not Found'/

All right. I've sent Vikings the questionnaire. No more questions for him, please.


I've also asked Vikings to suggest someone else. Viking's made his recommendation and since she already had some votes from other people too I contacted her. Since she aggreed... she's next.


And so, from now on, all questions should be about...





All questions for...





First, (and to add to the suspense ), a new rule: it's true that the voting and the recommendation systems help select people that are more or less known in the community and that people may have an interest in knowing more about. But that also means that the interviewees will always be "famous" people. And sometimes it's well worth to learn something about someone we hardly know as well. SO I had to figure out a way to choose not so famous people as well.
It's also not fair to just ask all these tough questions and never be selected for an interview.
So, from now on, for every 5 questions you ask, it counts as a vote on you. The 5 questions don't have to be all in the same interview (and though you can ask more than 5 questions per interview, I'll only consider you asked 5 for this count). Maybe this will also be an incentive for some more people to start sending questions.

Now, where was I?


Oh, right!
And the next interview will be about...





Bubbles Pbarb2


You have until 11th November (11/11) to make up some questions for her.

In the meantime, you can keep sending suggestions for the next person to be interviewed after Bubbles.

Fencer, i just downloaded another Firefox Extension called Youlicit

Its a handy thing to have if you are looking for sites like the one you are viewing. Great for finding new games to play and also if you are looking for information any any topic really but without having to search for it, so useful for project work & things like that.

Anyway, when you hit the Y button from within BrainKing it comes up with lots of sites with lots of board games, thousands that i have never heard of, but maybe when you have a spare hour or so, you could look at some of them and the games that are out there, you maybe able to borrow some for the future here, or get some ideas

One thing that will please you, if you are on BugCafe (Scrabble, Canasta & stuff) and you hit the Y button, what comes top of there list with 100%......................................
........
........
........
........yes, you guessed.......

BrainKing.com

this post has been redicted to the tournaments board

Okay, thanks. I think what i did was when I right clicked and did not want to use anything, then I tried to escape by clicking on the "x" at the bottom, but that just disables the option all together, instead I have to left click again to get it off my screen

Czuch: I can not see why Firefox should have anything to do with BrainKing Settings

Firefox is all i ever use, and i use my context Menu all the time

Now it is happening all the time? Maybe something I have set in my firefox options?

I noticed that my context menu option on my settings page was turned off? (it was on last night) Is this a function of clearing my cookies? Its the only thing I have done, that I can think of.

What other functions are possibly affected?

wetware: Thanks, that sounds correct to me.

I guess if you want your own fellowship listed at the top, you have to add some symbols to the beginning of it, or make it bold letters, or something like that!

Czuch: Oh, and favourite boards appear to be in ascending alphabetical order by name.  I don't see a way to change that either.

I think they're in ascending order by "fellowship ID" number.  I don't think that's configurable by mere mortals.

Does anyone know how the order of our favorite boards and our fellowships lists are determined, and if there is any way to change the order?

Vikings: it does take some getting used to.

tippyc: you mean you feel like your going like now?

after reading all of this, i turned off the castle, and i like it

Bubbles Pbarb2: Someone's going to have to say how this was solved.  I feel as though I've been reading a mystery today, and need to know how it ends!

With the help of Czuch ..we got it off the castle. Greatly appreciated..Czuch. It seems to be working a little better now.

Vikings: Too late.. I already packed up that old box.. lol... It wasn't on the log in page I had, though. (Though, on webtv I have the friends page saved as a favorite.. so that's where I was entering through.) I doubt it would have been anywhere. Some things you can't switch with WebTV, don't even show up as choices.

rod03801: How about on the log in page?

Bubbles Pbarb2: I dunno, Barb... I am on my old webtv right now and I don't have the castle. But I also don't have the choices to switch styles, here or on my Settings page.

I switched to computer just in time! I don't know how ya deal with the new look on the TV screen. It's SO squished. Everything looks so much better on the computer screen. And I forgot how S L O W this is.. LOL..

Sorry, Barb. You might want to PM Fencer and see if he made some change. My only suggestion right now is to Power off completely and come back and see what happens.

Like I said, on webtv, I'm NOT seeing the castle theme right now. But that could be affected too, by how I have my settings. (Which I can't change all of them right now because with WebTV some settings don't show up since you can't use them)

Time to go back over to the computer! Sorry, I wasn't much help.

Vikings: It may not show up on WebTV like that. Give me a few minutes to finish my coffee Barb, and I will hook up my old webtv and see.

Bubbles Pbarb2: it's on the same page directly underneath the choices that you mentioned

Bubbles Pbarb2:
if you can see them then directly under them is the 3 fonts castle simple no fronts

Bubbles Pbarb2: I know Rob knows it all but he is not on.
I can get to the settings page. No problem there.
On top of that page it says this ..
Calendar
JavaScript
Game filter
Game settings
I have been to all of the and it does not show anything about the layout.

"Snoopy": you should see towers on either side of your page if you are in the castle layout, snoopys link should take you right to where you need to be, if not, you may have to ask someone that is more experienced in web tv. I know chucz has some experience in web tv

http://brainking.com/en/Settings?a=df&fwa=Board!bc=1#
this link may work

Vikings: I don't even see a castle. I just know I'm on it because in my games it says layout castle. My games are so slow. I can't get half way thru my main page and and it locks up. All I know is I have to get off the castle.

Bubbles Pbarb2: on every pother page other than your settings page it is in very small fonts

Bubbles Pbarb2: on the first page of your settings, at the top is says Main Layout and under that it shows you a picture of the three choices that you have, you probable accidentally clicked it on another page by accident while the page was still loading

Is there something I have checked or unchecked On my settings that shouldn't be?

Bubbles Pbarb2: I't possible that web tv cuts off the top of the page, try logging out and looking in the bricks at the top of the castle, click on "no fonts" and then logging back in

"Snoopy": All I have is Moderaors.. THen it goes to interviews. Hn there is a Red thing Rss Or R55. That is it.

"Snoopy": that's true, in fact, I think it is at the top of every page