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indieclick, I want to help you

ogalthineogalthine Registered User regular
edited August 2010 in H.Q. Reception Desk
Dear Indieclick,

Your service is terrible. I'm not sure what you do at "optimize.indieclick.com" but it sure as hell ain't optimizing. I just want to browse my internet jpegs, lovingly crafted by Messrs. Krahulik & Holkins, but your goddamn servers are eternally timing out on my requests. There should not be a 30 second wait to view an 885KB page. The fact that your company is apparently so hipster that it bleeds emo tears is just salt in my wounds at this point.

Sincerely,
Ogalthine

Curious if anyone has these problems. They're intermittent for me - but when they occur they really make browsing the PA archive very annoying. Most of the page (the pieces served on the PA servers) will load fine, but then everything will freeze while something is requested from optimize.indieclick.com. This can sometimes result in a wait of more than 30 seconds. You can refresh the page a couple times to get out of it (usually), but that's hardly an optimal web experience.

(If a dev is curious, the offending file is spc.php, served from http://optimize.indieclick.com/www/delivery/spc.php. This problem usually goes away after a while, possible because of browser cacheing. I can almost always recreate it by flushing my cache.)

ogalthine on
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Posts

  • ASimPersonASimPerson Cold... ... and hard.Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Never really noticed an issue. I don't have them blocked either.

    ASimPerson on
  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    edited August 2010
    Contact indieclick.

    Tube on
  • ogalthineogalthine Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Contact indieclick.
    I'm not one of Indieclick's customers - Penny Arcade is. I'm just pointing out that the ad system integrated with the PA website causes annoying slowdowns for me when viewing comics. If no one else seems to have these problems then hey, great, there's no reason for the PA guys to change things. However, on the offchance that it wasn't a fluke, I thought they might want to know.

    ogalthine on
  • ogalthineogalthine Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Sorry, didn't mean to sound nasty there. If no one else has experienced this problem, that's a good thing. If anyone else is, though...

    ogalthine on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Figure out how to make your browser display the page as it loads, rather than finishing loading then displaying. There's a configuration option in Firefox, but I forget its name.

    Something about delayed painting.

    It's a relic of the dial-up era which should be taken out back and shot.

    MKR on
  • Shorn Scrotum ManShorn Scrotum Man Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    I've had some issues in the past where I couldn't click the buttons (like to get to the forum) until after the ads have finished. Might be the same issue.

    Shorn Scrotum Man on
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  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Yeah, indieclick usually takes a good few seconds to load for me as well. I don't see why I should complain to that company, I'm not a customer of them.

    Aldo on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Aldo wrote: »
    Yeah, indieclick usually takes a good few seconds to load for me as well. I don't see why I should complain to that company, I'm not a customer of them.

    The same reason complaining to Ramius won't make vB not suck. It takes more than one person or organization complaining when they have tens of thousands of customers. PA could complain, but that wouldn't matter as a single act.

    MKR on
  • AldoAldo Hippo Hooray Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    MKR wrote: »
    Aldo wrote: »
    Yeah, indieclick usually takes a good few seconds to load for me as well. I don't see why I should complain to that company, I'm not a customer of them.

    The same reason complaining to Ramius won't make vB not suck. It takes more than one person or organization complaining when they have tens of thousands of customers. PA could complain, but that wouldn't matter as a single act.

    I'm just informing PA that one of the companies they do business with is acting up. If PA does not want to do anything about it that's just fine, but I feel like they should know. I hope that's not a problem with anyone.

    Aldo on
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    I'll see what I can do. We are friends with the indieclick guys. I'll ask their techs take a look at it. It might involve you guys answering some questions to help me debug. :wink:

    I'll keep you guys posted.

    Älphämönkëy on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Well that's a horse of a different color.

    MKR on
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    ogalthine wrote: »
    (If a dev is curious, the offending file is spc.php, served from http://optimize.indieclick.com/www/delivery/spc.php. This problem usually goes away after a while, possible because of browser cacheing. I can almost always recreate it by flushing my cache.)

    It shouldn't be browser caching as the http headers forbid caching (both through Cache-Control and Expires).

    Älphämönkëy on
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Please vote in the poll up top, it will help us determine how widespread the issue is.

    Tell your friends.

    Älphämönkëy on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    I never see this. Located in Florida on fast cable.

    I guess indieclick is some sort of advertising or analytics thing. Those being slow is not an uncommon problem. There are some nifty jQuery snippets here and there to easily load those things in asynchronously WITH dependencies, so you don't have to worry about the browser loading one out of order.

    I worked on an ecommerce site that had about 50 of these damn things and that did end up helping.

    Jasconius on
    this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz

    we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Jasconius wrote: »
    I never see this. Located in Florida on fast cable.

    I guess indieclick is some sort of advertising or analytics thing. Those being slow is not an uncommon problem. There are some nifty jQuery snippets here and there to easily load those things in asynchronously WITH dependencies, so you don't have to worry about the browser loading one out of order.

    I worked on an ecommerce site that had about 50 of these damn things and that did end up helping.

    The indieclick platform is a turnkey ad solution. We are using them to host our house promos at the bottom of the page.

    Helping them find latency bugs is one thing, but asking them to rearchitect their frontend might be pressing my luck. Still, I appreciate the advice :)

    Älphämönkëy on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    My vote should be "all the time." I voted thinking this was talking about the forum. I get 3-5 seconds lag on the main page.

    MKR on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Jasconius wrote: »
    I never see this. Located in Florida on fast cable.

    I guess indieclick is some sort of advertising or analytics thing. Those being slow is not an uncommon problem. There are some nifty jQuery snippets here and there to easily load those things in asynchronously WITH dependencies, so you don't have to worry about the browser loading one out of order.

    I worked on an ecommerce site that had about 50 of these damn things and that did end up helping.

    The indieclick platform is a turnkey ad solution. We are using them to host our house promos at the bottom of the page.

    Helping them find latency bugs is one thing, but asking them to rearchitect their frontend might be pressing my luck. Still, I appreciate the advice :)

    Its something you can do on the penny arcade side. Basically rendering the page completely and then going back for the slower stuff, avoiding a perceivable hang for the user. But if you are actually showing ads then its a different topic. However the php file linked in the above post appears to be a javascript snippet.

    But yeah, ultimately they should be diagnosing their slowness.

    Jasconius on
    this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz

    we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Jasconius wrote: »
    Its something you can do on the penny arcade side. Basically rendering the page completely and then going back for the slower stuff, avoiding a perceivable hang for the user. But if you are actually showing ads then its a different topic. However the php file linked in the above post appears to be a javascript snippet.

    But yeah, ultimately they should be diagnosing their slowness.
    Immediately after I wrote that reply, I thought "oh man, I could...." and then half an hour of my life was given to the javascript deities.

    The software package they are using is a customized version of OpenX (based on the file names) and it looks like that js file changes based on software updates. I have added it to a urlwatch and I'm testing the new async version on my machine. If it passes the smell test I'll push it out.

    Älphämönkëy on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Isn't it great to have a community full of helpful, knowledgeable people? :rotate:

    MKR on
  • ogalthineogalthine Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Jasconius wrote: »
    Its something you can do on the penny arcade side. Basically rendering the page completely and then going back for the slower stuff, avoiding a perceivable hang for the user. But if you are actually showing ads then its a different topic. However the php file linked in the above post appears to be a javascript snippet.

    But yeah, ultimately they should be diagnosing their slowness.

    The slow file (or at least the one that's slow for me) determines which ads get displayed - it returns a javascript array containing IMG tags. If they "fix" the problem on the PA side, then it'll be great for us (page loads instantly! woo!) but bad for PA (ads won't get displayed until many seconds after the user views the page / at all). Hopefully IC can provide a long-term remedy soon...

    ogalthine on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    PA has lots of seconds worth of text on every page. I doubt that's a problem.

    MKR on
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    MKR wrote: »
    Isn't it great to have a community full of helpful, knowledgeable people? :rotate:
    Oh you guys are the best.

    I try to be pretty upfront with the problems we have here at PA for just this reason.

    Älphämönkëy on
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Can you guys try this page out and post :^: or :v: and what OS / Browser you are running?

    I'll try to push it out tomorrow.

    Älphämönkëy on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    :^:

    Firefox 3.6.8 and XP SP3.

    MKR on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    :^:

    Safari on iPad 3.2

    Jasconius on
    this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz

    we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
  • AegisAegis Fear My Dance Overshot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    I'm going to assume :v: for me since all I see to be getting are:
    Promo 0

    Promo 1

    Promo 2

    Promo 3

    Promo 4

    Promo 5

    As bolded text in that exact sequence and no actual ads like I'm assuming I should be getting?

    Firefox 3.6.8 on Windows Vista SP1. Have adblock but it has penny-arcade set to whitelist so it's not blocking anything on that page (or shouldn't be).

    Aegis on
    We'll see how long this blog lasts
    Currently DMing: None :(
    Characters
    [5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
  • JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    :v:

    Opera for Wii.

    JaysonFour on
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    I can has cheezburger, yes?
  • L|amaL|ama Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Aegis wrote: »
    I'm going to assume :v: for me since all I see to be getting are:
    Promo 0

    Promo 1

    Promo 2

    Promo 3

    Promo 4

    Promo 5

    As bolded text in that exact sequence and no actual ads like I'm assuming I should be getting?

    Firefox 3.6.8 on Windows Vista SP1. Have adblock but it has penny-arcade set to whitelist so it's not blocking anything on that page (or shouldn't be).

    Getting this too, with uhh XP Professional and Firefox 3.5.3? Library needs to upgrade. This is on campus, I'll check again when I get home.

    L|ama on
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Weird. It works in Win 7 / Firefox for me.

    Now to investigate!

    Opera for Wii? Hoo boy. I'll see what I can do.

    Älphämönkëy on
  • BroloBrolo Broseidon Lord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Aegis wrote: »
    I'm going to assume :v: for me since all I see to be getting are:
    Promo 0

    Promo 1

    Promo 2

    Promo 3

    Promo 4

    Promo 5

    As bolded text in that exact sequence and no actual ads like I'm assuming I should be getting?

    Firefox 3.6.8 on Windows Vista SP1. Have adblock but it has penny-arcade set to whitelist so it's not blocking anything on that page (or shouldn't be).

    :v:

    ff 3.6.8 and vista as well

    adblock has penny arcade whitelisted

    Brolo on
  • EndEnd Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Works on Chrome on Win7 and Linux. Tried FF 3.6.3 for the hell of it on Linux and got the non-working other people see.

    First thing I noticed was that it was it was taking a while loading google apis. I'm guessing it failed to load jquery, because my error log contains a "JQuery not defined" and several "$ not defined". Trying to load jquery directly from the google api url..well...under firefox it's just not working strangely with a timeout. What the hell.

    End on
    I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
    zaleiria-by-lexxy-sig.jpg
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Give it another shot. I changed the way the script is invoked slightly.

    Älphämönkëy on
  • AegisAegis Fear My Dance Overshot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Success :^:

    Aegis on
    We'll see how long this blog lasts
    Currently DMing: None :(
    Characters
    [5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
  • EndEnd Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Well, now I'm convinced there's something wrong with my firefox install..or something.

    It still doesn't work for me under FF, sadly, but that's probably a bad data point. It basically doesn't work for anything. :?

    End on
    I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
    zaleiria-by-lexxy-sig.jpg
  • BroloBrolo Broseidon Lord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Can you guys try this page out and post :^: or :v: and what OS / Browser you are running?

    I'll try to push it out tomorrow.

    works now!

    :^:

    Brolo on
  • L|amaL|ama Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Works on Chrome, Vista

    L|ama on
  • JaysonFourJaysonFour Classy Monster Kitteh Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    :^:

    It works now!

    The ads are back on the main page, too. Alpha can certainly kick some code.

    JaysonFour on
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    I can has cheezburger, yes?
  • ÄlphämönkëyÄlphämönkëy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    <3

    You guys are the best.

    I've updated the code on the Penny Arcade mainsite to reflect the recent changes. It should unblock the page when indieclick slows down. Obviously, I'll continue working with them to figure out what's going on as far as latency spikes go.

    Älphämönkëy on
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    edited August 2010
    :^::^::^:

    32 bit XP service pack 3 with Chrome 5.0.375.126

    Donovan Puppyfucker on
  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Aegis wrote: »
    I'm going to assume :v: for me since all I see to be getting are:
    Promo 0

    Promo 1

    Promo 2

    Promo 3

    Promo 4

    Promo 5

    As bolded text in that exact sequence and no actual ads like I'm assuming I should be getting?

    Firefox 3.6.8 on Windows Vista SP1. Have adblock but it has penny-arcade set to whitelist so it's not blocking anything on that page (or shouldn't be).

    That's what I thought I was supposed to be getting. I figured it was a bunch of placeholders. D:

    But yeah, that's what I was getting. Now I see the images.

    MKR on
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