Hi Everyone,

Is the forum being really slow since they changed it? I use two different internet systems and usually if one is slow the other is okay. It is taking absolutely ages to load screens, especially if I try using the orange square to take me to unread posts.

I'm sure it's not usually this slow for this long...

Edit: sorry about the typo in the title - my fingers were clearly working faster than my brain.

it doesn't feel any slower than normal to me.

It seems to be much better now than it was when I started the thread. Until the past 20 minutes, it had been taking a long time (3-4 minutes sometimes) to load pages, and had been doing so since they changed it - but maybe it was just coincidence.

It was certainly much slower yesterday, but seems to be back at speed for the 5 minutes I've been on it today.

EDIT: I take it back. It's taken two minutes for it to post this reply!

No doubt about it. The forum is MUCH slower than before the change

So, the new design and logo are generally greatly disliked, and the forums are crawling along.

ABRSM, can we go back to the way it was previously, please?

Far be it from me to quibble with you HG ... but whilst I would agree with your statement re the logo and the slowness, I think it's less clear cut re the design - a lot of people have said that they like the new design (myself included )

There's no accounting for taste, Skyers!

Been really slow over here too
I just get a white screen and loading for about 6 minutes when I try opening threads...I've taken to opening a selection of threads in different tabs and going to make a cuppa while they load. Almost certainly won't help in making them open any quicker, but otherwise I'd be here all day waiting for each to load and then post, and I'm thinking about opening a betting system on which will appear first haha!
It reminds me a bit of the days of dial up, sat waiting for agggges for things to load!

the forums arent hosted on their own server anymore, they used to be hosted at forums.abrsm.org - its own server, but now they are at abrsm.org/forums - now they are hosted on the same server as everything else, except i think for Exam Entries

are you sure about that? just being a different hostname (forums.abrsm.org instead of www.abrsm.org) doesn't necessarily mean it's a different server; a single server can host thousands of different websites with different hosts.

Found it was OK last night, on the slow side this morning, and OK now...

I'm hoping it's teething troubles with the new website...

Flossie you are not going mad, you are quite correct about it being slow aroung 12.30 and I had a similar problem in connecting via the orange squares.

I found it really slow yesterday late afternoon/early evening, but it seems ok today.

I wonder how many people this could apply to too... Sorry!

I think I'll remain neutral on the like/dislike front, but yes - it's certainly been slower for me at times than before.

It's very slow today

I'm sure the Board will get there...

Hope so It's amazing how quickly we get used to things - I'm sure it's no slower than when I used to first go on the internet, but now I'm used to having whatever I want to look at come up almost instantly.

Hmm. Well, when I logged on an hour ago it was impossibly slow - I couldn't open any threads at all (even after 10 minutes!). I gave up after half an hour and went for coffee, and it now seems to be okay again - and I didn't log out and in again or anything like that.

I don't know what's going on with the forum, but it does seem to be rather tempermental.

well, as i said, i haven't really noticed the slowness, but i have noticed something else that's odd. i usually read the forum via the 'new posts' link at the top, which shows threads in order of the most recent post. threads with unread posts have that orange square you can click on--but only if it has unread posts.

since the change, i've noticed that after loading 'new posts', then clicking the orange square, then re-loading the new posts a few minutes later, the threads i've just read still have the orange square on, even though they don't have any new posts in.

i'm sure it's not a cache problem, because if i reload new posts again when this happens, i get the 'searching too fast' error.

No, the forum is not slow, but the AB are most certainly slow to realise what a terrible hash they have made of things

Are we on the same forum Perhaps some people have always found the forum slow and the rest of us have been dumbed down to match


It could have been worse, they could have given us a red forum

I wonder if a red forum was ever seriously considered

It is painfully slow today.

It is still very slow - I gave up trying to post this after 5 minutes fruitless trying, went and had lunch and came back later.

(ed have just given up again and gone to post a letter - and the screen still hadn't moved when I got back).

I'm finding it really slow all the time. I gave up earlier this morning. I've had enough just now too and am getting bored again.



Edited to say: I've just realised what a grumpy brat I sound like! I'm really grateful for the forums and have good fun on them so I do hope these are just teething problems and they find a solution (like going back to the old logo?..... )

It took me nearly 4 minutes to get into this thread to say that it'd taken several minutes for a reply to another thread to get through.

This is stupid!

Skylark, re the website design, the problems aren't so much how it looks (not that I particularly like how it looks, I definitely preferred the old version), but how it works and is laid out: the unresizable windows and huge headers for example, which have definitely made it a lot less convenient to me and I think to lots of other people with relatively small screens.

This is the first time today the forums have even loaded for me!!!

It varies a lot, but when it is slow, it is really slow.

perhaps the ABRSM wants to close the forum, and this is just a plot to drive us all away.

Before the changes it was brilliant. The combination of unpredictable response times and inability to resize the screen now make it close to unusable. Will someone send me an eMail if it ever improves?

No, it clearly is very slow - I just used that as a set up line for the rest of my post

It's still having very, very slow moments...

Yes, indeed. Wretched thing just took about 4 minutes to post what I'd typed.

Looking at your title I was tempted to do a Victor Borge, and say "say - but the fiveum is even slower".............

I did note the typo on the first post - and apologised for it!

Reminds me (once again!) of the old joke about the mother who brought up a family of five with one hand while waiting in a telephone queue.

That's because it has taste...

Agree with everyone who's really fed up with the slowness of the Forum

True! Evidently it wanted to savour me all to itself before sharing me with the rest of the world....

Thats weird, I don't seem to be having any speed problems with the forum at all - it is just the same as it ever was for me (except for the header and footer of course)



I also don't have any unresizable windows, and I am on what is possibly the smallest computer ever (Samsung netbook - really tiny!). Another thing that puzzles me is someone mentioned orange boxes to see unread posts - Where do you find those?! I just have a linkt o choose "view new posts", which takes me to a list of all the threads since I last checked, but thats it.

I'm afraid I'm on a different forum from everyone else!!!

Slow - Slow - Quick - Quick - Slow!?!?

The windows are resizeable, but the forums boxes inside them are not, so if you have a low resolution, you won't be able to fit the whole box on the screen at once and will have to scroll across.



You can see the orange boxes to the left of each thread title

Of course you can re-size your windows. The problem is that the content no longer adjusts to the new size, as it used to before the changes.

This is a serious backward step. The AB's software developers should read a good book or two on interface design and usability.

These problems with resizing sound horrendous but I'm not having the same problems - is that because I'm using a Mac? I'm using a small-screen laptop (about 36cm across the diagonal), I have side margins of about 0.75cm (which I like), and everything else about the width is normal - the text fits into the screen without scrolling and I only have to scroll a little more at the top. Does anyone else with a Mac laptop find that it's not a problem?


Edit: I'm now on my iPhone and it's not a problem here either - the text fits within the screen and I only have to scroll if I want larger text, but I don't really need it, unless I'm posting.


Edit 2: I don't know when they've programmed the computer to update the forum but it's nice not to be thrown out at 1.04 like they used to - thank you for that, mods!

Nothing to do with the platform you are using - Mac, windows, iPhone - they all behave the same. The change is at the server end, and the way it formats the pages.

If you are happy to give all or most of the width of your screen to the browser running the forum then you won't have a problem. But you could already do that if it is what you wanted.

However, before the changes you could also reduce the width of your browser window and still have all the text of the posts visible, without having to scroll horizontally, because above a certain minimum width the forum web page resized itself to suit the width of the browser window. This was useful for all kinds of reasons. It is no longer possible. So some user control of how you use your screen has been taken away, and that is a BAD THING.

For some people, because of the way they like to work, this change will make little difference. For some of us it is a real pain.

This morning it seems to take ages to open certain threads.

It's back online

*on a break from teaching, and just had to look to see if the forums are back*

They were back about a minute after I texted you saying they were down.

Gotta try that one next time

Just replying to see how long this takes as I have never had a problem with the slowness of the forums.

EDIT: It is very fast and instant, which is how I have always found it.

I don't know why that would be the case I am afraid. Hope it speeds up for everyone else.

It (fingers crossed) appears to be OK tonight...

Last night, the forum was really quick and efficient.

This morning, it seems to have reverted to slowness.

I can see the people at ABRSM Towers screaming at the computer system when they come in to work this morning!...