The Gretsch Pages: Discussions: About the Gretsch Pages:

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is there something wrong with this site?

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- Rated: 1 ↑
May 12, 2008 1:01 p.m. jonhundt:

I registered with the Gretsch Forum because I wanted to talk about, and learn more about, Gretsch guitars.

But it is so difficult to use this forum! It takes forever to load pages, half the time the page never does load. So far I can't figure out how to do a search; if I search with Google, the pages won't load.

If I try to switch forums - forget it! The forum won't load.

Maybe it's my computer, but I don't think so. I look in at the TDPRI and several other forums every day and never have any problem.

It is very frustrating... I have just ordered a 5129 and I hoped to get some information from others who play Electromatics - but the site is so full of bugs I just don't have the time to try to figure it all out.

Thanks for trying, anyway.
- Rated: 17 ↑
May 12, 2008 1:06 p.m. tommy59:

Some times are better than others. Most of us, in spite of the frustration, find it worth our while to keep trying.

Welcome.

Cheers

tommy
- Rated: 194 ↑
May 12, 2008 1:14 p.m. Proteus:

Bax, come on man! I know of regular members who have given up, and others on the verge - along with frustrated new guys like this.

It's getting serious. Please?

And maybe a script for new registrants that routes them to one of the how-to-search threads first off? The search button itself could come back, linked to such an article as well.

We lub ya man, and appreciate the massive effort and difficulties, but we''re all suffering here!
- Rated: 47 ↑
May 12, 2008 1:30 p.m. Curt:

Maybe just go back to the old forum? I liked being able to make the background GENUINE Cadillac Green.
- Rated: 94 ↑
May 12, 2008 1:42 p.m. Setzer:

I hope it survives the Joe C. in Tx. event coming up. This site will be bogged.

I go back to the old GDP a lot and search/read and hang out. It is lonely there but I like it that way. I got the place all to my self!

Good ole GDP of yore!
- Rated: 39 ↑
May 12, 2008 1:55 p.m. Richard Hudson:

Time is a precious commodity.
- Rated: 39 ↑
May 12, 2008 2:53 p.m. Ric12string:

Jon, don't bail completely ... yet.

Up until about two weeks ago, everything was moving along much better than it has been the past two weeks. We have been hit hard by the dreaded proxy error message of late. But, like tommy59 stated, the temporary and intermittent inconveniences seem to be vastly outweighed for most of us by the high quality exchange of information and ideas, as well as generally friendly interchange, that occurs on the GDP.

Welcome, Jon, and stick around with us for a while. I think you'll be happy you did.
- Rated: 22 ↑
May 12, 2008 3:26 p.m. audiodrome:

I agree that it's frustrating at times, but once you've dug in, you'll be hooked, and you'll be willing to put up with the minor inconveniences. This place is a treasure trove of not only Gretsch information, but guitar information in general.
- Rated: 25 ↑
May 12, 2008 3:54 p.m. Scott:

audiodrome said: I agree that it's frustrating at times, but once you've dug in, you'll be hooked, and you'll be willing to put up with the minor inconveniences.

I agree with this, but...

Richard Hudson said: Time is a precious commodity

...I also agree with that.
- Rated: 24 ↑
May 12, 2008 4:46 p.m. Beatles6120:

It's time for a server upgrade.
- Rated: 6 ↑
May 12, 2008 5:46 p.m. Nobster:

This is a great forum but I have to admit, the performance is terrible. Sadly it's often unusable, so I just give up. I don't know if it's the server's hardware or the software/db that Bax is using for the site/forums that is to blame.

Another problem that irks me (I'm probably a minority case, for the time being at least): I currently spend a lot of time browsing here on a tiny screen on my telephone while travelling back and forth to work, etc. Here in europe at least that's the way things are going. All the telephone companies offer web access on phones.

This means of course that there's not much room on the screen and that the huge areas of whitespace and header logo images etc, well, just get in the way of the important stuff - reading the posts.

I appreciate Baxters lovely layout but it just doesn't work for small screens. Often the phone has a tiny cache so large logo images get reloaded very often.

It would be so much nicer to have an option for a stripped back, bar bones forum, with a search and without all the extra white space and that dreaded Mellita bridge graphic that I have to download on my phone over, and over, and over again.

Now Bax has added RSS feeds and I've tried to use those to get bare text forum posts, however that also has issues. Sometimes the RSS doesn't seem to be getting refreshed. Sometimes it's very slow to load. Plus more often than not, even after scanning the RSS feed you'll want to go to the original postings to read the full thread of a post.

Sorry for the negative nature of the post. I'm not exactly a frequent contributor here but I really do enjoy reading and absorbing information from the wealth of expertise available on this site, when I can get it.

Maybe an option would be to somehow "feed" the GDP posts to some other, more standard forum implementation, dare I say it... like the old one?
- Rated: 8 ↑
May 12, 2008 8:38 p.m. Diga:

It does get very frustrating trying to get on. Many many proxy error statements and sooooo slow.

I love the forum but it is getting harder and harder to use.
- Rated: 10 ↑
May 12, 2008 9:32 p.m. reddog:

IT CAN be a hastle but the company is worth it, welcome to the greTsch family, and welcome to the pages. patience is a factor here. OH! yeah I almost forgot, I might get a Digitial camera so I can post pics soon... I'll keep you posted
- Rated: 33 ↑
May 12, 2008 9:33 p.m. tartan phantom:

Baxter, We had this problem once before, and didn't you clear out the post count table or something-or-other? I seem to recall that helped tremendously. On the other hand maybe it had nothing to do with the problem at hand.

I know nothing about how this site is hosted and I know nothing about the software either, so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. Just offering blind suggestions. I'll shut up now.
- Rated: 61 ↑
May 12, 2008 9:44 p.m. Antik:

It was once thought that large files used for avatars is putting a substantial burden on the server. I do not know how much it contributes to the problem but there really is not reason for some to use a large file for an avatar. I'd think 5 Kbytes is more than large enough for a 90 x 70 pixel image. There are several avatars in use that are more than 200 Kbytes. From what I understand, the server must resize a large image every time it appears on a page each time it is viewed by somebody. So if a large avatar appears 3 times on a page and that page is viewed by 10 people, the server must process that 200 Kbyte file 30 times in addition to the normal database stuff. But I am not sure that is how it works. It's possible the burden to resize a large avatar is on the browser in which case the server only has to serve up the large avatar file.

Again, don't know if that is the main cause of problems but I suspect it does not help make the board speedier.
- Rated: 194 ↑
May 12, 2008 11:17 p.m. Proteus:

People with overlarge avatars could have their contact info turned over to the IRS for special attention to their tax returns.

Another option is the NSA.

Or simple execution.
- Rated: 81 ↑
May 13, 2008 12:09 a.m. Mark Synchro:

Or complex execution.
- Rated: 40 ↑
May 13, 2008 12:42 a.m. Timthom62:

The avatar issue could certainly be a contributing factor. On my fairly modern home computer I only have pages 'proxy out' during times of very high traffic volume, but on the over-clocked Commodore 64s my employer uses, pages with multiple large-sized avatars seem to fail more than those without.
- Rated: 17 ↑
May 13, 2008 12:49 a.m. Dr Nyl:

Money will in most case and for most people make things easier, therefore im donating $20 for the mission "MakeThisSiteFaster", as a starter!

The "Donate" button is always easy accesible on our right side under the sponsors.
- Rated: 21 ↑
May 13, 2008 3:04 a.m. Gretschmaster:
I don't believe that I have contributed to one of these ever more frequent "GDP meltdown" threads before but after reading the comments of everyone (particularly Curt and Setzer's) I feel the urge to chime in.

To start off I want to say, it is always nice to look back on the "good ole days" (or maybe "good ole pages" would be more fitting in this circumstance) but in doing that, the "bad ole" problems of yore are often overlooked. Remember, near the end of the "f-hole and g-brand" gretschpages era, the amount of spam threads that were posted?

That was the reason for the new pages, was it not?

This forum has most-definetly solved that problem but it has created new problems that are even more serious.

It would seem, to me at least, that the ability to regularly log on to the site would take importance over the unsightliness and intrusive feeling that spam threads bring to the forum.

Or my memory could be shot and the reason for switching over is completely unrelated to the abundance of spam in the previous version of GDP.

Nonetheless, I have fond memories of the board that was only meant to be Gretsch Pages purgatory. A bridge between the truely old gretschpages (that I originally joined yet can hardly remember) and this sleek new forum.

So now I will try to provide arguments for both sides of a theoretical Gretsch Pages forum reversal debate. (yep, I'm bored as hell)

Side 1: Those who would like to go back to the pages of old.
- layout was much clearer. smaller font and smaller sizes of posts made for a much more organized viewing experience. this also made it much easier to keep track of long posts because scrolling wasn't necessary every couple of paragraphs.
- the layout of thread titles was also much clearer. you could see about 30 threads when you entered any particular subforum as opposed to being able to see four or five.
- it didn't f@&% up constantly
Side 2: those who are happy with what they've got.
- forum has unique look. predominantly white background makes it look "peaceful".
- no spammers
- slow speed weeds out the people that don't have enough dedication to become exclusive full time members.
- newer members would have to create new accounts if they had not previously registered on the old forum.
- some people might be angry to lose their "vote-ups" that they have accumulated on the new board.
So there it is. I came up with less arguments than I thought I would but I think its an OK start. Anyone else care to contribute?

I'm just about done this long meaningless post but before I shut up I would like to extend my most sincere thanks and appreciation to Baxter. Please don't take offense to anything I have written in this post. In the end, it is all up to you and I am sure you will make the right decision that balances your needs with the needs of this ever-expanding online Gretsch community.

Cheers, man.
- Rated: 42 ↑
May 13, 2008 5:26 a.m. Tsar Nicholas :

I'm sure Bax will sort it out. He's only human for god's sake. Maybe he's taking a holiday or something? We can't expect him to look after this place all the time, he does the best he can.
- Rated: 18 ↑
May 13, 2008 5:48 a.m. Robert:

Yeah, I guess if our idea of a bad day is that we had to sit on our butts waiting for a page to load, things are actually pretty good. The best thing is to step away for about 5 minutes, watch some news, do some laundry, maybe some sit ups, read something on a printed page, if you're at work, go back to work or heaven forbid, play your guitar.
- Rated: 85 ↑
May 13, 2008 6:34 a.m. Baxter:

Sorry guys. Time has been at a crushing shortage. As an experiment, I'm going to put everyone on the default avatar and lets see what that does.

I think it's one of the major factors.
- Rated: 22 ↑
May 13, 2008 9:02 a.m. Boyko:

Well Bax, I don't like the lack of avatars but its definitely working. I'm at school using a library computer and I usually have issues getting on here, but none today so far. Maybe an avatar cache like the one on Fender's forum would be good if this is indeed the problem.

Or make it a requirement that avatars be of a certain size, or they won't be accepted in the profile modification page? Dunno how hard that would be to set up, but it could be like one of those things were you need to fill in a required field, if you don't it won't let you go on. Same idea, but required field is small size and if you don't have the right size "no avatar for you!"

Just flinging ideas. Thanks Bax!
- Rated: 85 ↑
May 13, 2008 9:29 a.m. Baxter:

I don't really like it either, but if it IS the big cause, at least I know where to start fixing it.

Problem is a lot of people either don't know their avatar is huge, don't care, or don't know how to resize it.

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