skirtcafe.org

Has anyone noticed the site being slow? I haven't profiled it, but it feels like it takes at least +1s or longer.

Coder wrote: ↑Thu Aug 21, 2025 4:31 pm Has anyone noticed the site being slow? I haven't profiled it, but it feels like it takes at least +1s or longer.

Yes, each page takes time. Thought it may be due to a VPN I was running, but taking that out of the link made no improvement.

It is actually at its "correct speed" right now, but indeed it is often slow. Like there are waves of slowness

I've also seen Chrome tell me my skirtcafe.org tab is using too much resource and offering to sleep it.

It is also hanging for me. Where a page used to load in 1-2 seconds it now takes between 5 and 15 seconds.

There have been periods of slowness on the site recently, but there have also been times where it's been pretty sprightly. I'm putting it down to an oversubscription of resources at the hosting facility where the software and the database run. This has happened in the past, and is usually cyclical, i.e. it speeds up and slows down in response to the load placed upon the physical servers and the backing databases.

We are just one very small piece of this. Give it time.

I would not notice. It is always slow for me and I know what the problem is; crap internet in rhe outback. 6.5 Mbps download and 0.3 upload ........ at best.

A quick update based on a passing observation: The issue seems to have something to do with the SSL keying and encryption. If SSL is disengaged (for testing purposes) then response time is quite sprightly indeed; however, with it engaged (as it customarily is) the slowness manifests.

This bolsters my opinion that it's likely a matter of load on the server that's at the root of this. It'll likely get fixed at some point when some big customer gripes. (We're too small to really count.)

Today I've been seeing 6+ second load times for the initial page, and then any dynamically loaded asset (ie, file.php) taking just as long.

If it's shared hosting there is generally little you can do... however...

I'm assuming you have access to the hosting control panel - sometimes there are some tools there you can use to dig in further, but I haven't had a DreamHost account in a long time, assuming that's the host.

I know CloudFlare has recently been adding rules to block AI web crawlers - I don't think crawlers would explain the slowness... but a review of web traffic could point to increased usage by bots/crawlers which could impact speed if they are using up the "allotted" bandwidth.

Lastly - and I'm sorry to bug you about this stuff but it's kind of what I do on a daily basis - have you chatted with the hosting support? It's possible they could identify a "rogue" actor on the shared hosting that's overusing server resources. It all depends on the plan level and type of hosting... but worth a shot.

Obviously, things like checking for slow queries, php warning's (ie, log files filling up rapidly) and storage space all could be things to look into.