Is this the slowest Internet site?

morsify · Jun 21, 2017

Is it me or is this just about the slowest site there is?
For me, on two different computers, it is just about too slow to use any more. It has been this way for some time now, but I thought it was time I gave feedback as I might finally have to give up and find another sim site to use.
It's the same with both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer. (Win 10)

I understand the theory behind encouraging people to pay for premium membership to get rid of adverts, but some of us have enough outgoings already, and it might also be fair to say I have contributed to this site in other ways with mods that have been popular for a number of years.

But that is beside the point, the fact is the overloaded site presented to non-premium visitors is just too slow and keeps freezing constantly, & does not encourage people to use the site.

Am I the only person who experiences this?

Anyway, I hope this feedback is taken in the spirit it is meant. I have a reasonable laptop and a powerful gaming computer, 37Mb download speeds, but this is genuinely the most troublesome site for me, with constant 'stopped responding' messages & long pauses for advert reloads, I thought you should know.

Benutzername · Jun 21, 2017

Hmmm, some months ago some other guy posted the same thing.
I can say that is certainly not a problem of the site, as far as i can remeber the problem was not from the site. For the majority the site runs smooth and it is not related to the premium thing.

I try to find the old thread when i am home. For sure this problem can be solved

Bram Hengeveld · Jun 21, 2017

Keith Windsor said:
encouraging people to pay for premium membership.......
Anyway, I hope this feedback is taken in the spirit it is meant.......

Was actually willing to reply and help diagnosing your problem but when i read this sentence I having second thoughts Keith as I am growing really really really really really tired of such remarks, bah. Can we for once just post the contents of a question in a somehow constructive way without seeing big conspiracies everywhere. The broader sim racing community produces enough drama already.

Some people, including yourself, should really stop making up such theories. How on earth can we make a site slower to encourage people to buy premium. How does that work: making the experience shittier so people upgrade? It's the other way around. People who enjoy the experience and service upgrade often as a token of appreciation and helping to pay the bills. Others upgrade because they are using our racing service every day. Of course when you are premium the sitespeed will always be faster because there is less stuff to load on each page. But the normal pages aren't slower than normal.

Premium is cheap for what you get for a full year, secondly you are free to use the site to do whatever you wish without being premium also. For those that don't have a premium membership (99,999999% of the visitors) we have a couple of ads to help pay for the bills, which includes a data bill of 80 terrabyte each 30 days, These ads load asynchronously so they are never interfering with the page load times of the website.

The site can be slow(er) on peak times because it's being used heavily*
* we are the largest, most visited, most engaged sim racing site there is offering more than any other site out there for free.

Keith Windsor said:
does not encourage people to use the site

Keith a team of people are working their butts off day in day out to try and give everybody the best possible experience and the results speak for themselves.

This is the visitor trend from January 1st 2012, the day we have been using ads for the first time, till present.

If you want to resolve any issues you may have please let me know the following

Which browser are you using
Which add-ons are you using in the above browser
Post a screengrab with results from speedtest.net

Ad 1) if the answer is Internet Explorer or Edge: install Chrome or Firefox. IE is asking for troubles on the web.
Ad 2) Disable ALL add-ons and see what the effect is.

Bram Hengeveld · Jun 21, 2017

Oh I see you posted Edge. Well there you go. Using a Microsoft browser on the web is not recommended even in 2017, although Edge is a big improvement over Internet Explorer, which is really not worth having. http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/best-browser-which-should-you-be-using-932466

morsify · Jun 21, 2017

Thanks for your comments, and for trying to help, but I must stress first that you have misconstrued me when you read my meaning as 'conspiracies'. That is NOT what I was saying at all. I was simply saying that I believe the site is bogged down by an excess of adverts. I mean, for example, I often get the same adverts on both sides of my screen, and I sit waiting for them to finish loading before I can ever start to navigate anywhere. You advertise that becoming a premium member removes the adverts, so therefore logic says that things will load in quicker if I become a premium member.

Also, when I then said 'I hope it's taken in the spirit it is meant', I simply meant, 'I hope it's not taken personally', nothing more, nothing less.

I was just trying to give honest feedback without offence.

Thanks for your suggestions, but what I posted is still true - the RD site is extremely slow here, & I am not lying when I tell you that I have 37Mb download speed.

The pattern is clear - Other graphic intensive sites like MotoGP, Formula1, work fine, but RD, Crash.net and other advert heavy sites, are extremely slow to load.

I was simply reporting the fact in case you don't receive this honest kind of feedback.

Andy_J · Jun 21, 2017

@Keith Windsor To fix the problem though, why don't you get premium? It's only 10 euro's. That's 0.027 cents per day. I don't think you can buy a cheap packet of crisps for that. Might be worth it for the problem of your adverts and slow loading.

morsify · Jun 21, 2017

Yes maybe I will, thanks Andy.

For the record, I was expressing disappointment/frustration & offering some honest feedback after comparing load times of a few sites (BBC News, Reiza forum, MotoGP, F1, RD), I did not mean to cause offence Bram. Please by all means close this thread.

Bram Hengeveld · Jun 21, 2017

Keith Windsor said:
For the record, I was expressing disappointment/frustration & offering some honest feedback after comparing load times of a few sites (BBC News, Reiza forum, MotoGP, F1, RD), I did not mean to cause offence Bram. Please by all means close this thread.

Don't need to close it as we still want to fix your issues. Same like your frustration we have ours when it comes to running / browsing this site

In our defense BBC, Reiza, MotoGP, F1 and plenty of others top sites run low of ads as they have other sources of income to pay for their bills and don't need to rely on crappy advertisements. We don't have a government to pay for the bills (BBC), Reiza (game sales), MotoGP and F1 (entry tickets, merchandise, tv rights) etc so we can't "compete" with those site loading times.

Keep in mind that on top of that more than a million times per month people visit our site and a large chunk of this traffic downloads huge files. All this together can sometimes slow down the site at peak hours but that is maybe once a day.

Just to compare try installing Google Chrome as your browser as in general that browser is a lot faster than IE not to mention it has less bugs

Maybe that will solve the issues you may have?

Warren Dawes · Jun 22, 2017

FWIW, I can confirm Bram's advice re browsers.
Living in Australia, our internet speeds are poor, and overall I used to have very poor performance with RD, mainly due to the ads.
Then I switched to Chrome, and immediately, the performance improved dramatically. Yes, I was using IE 11 prior to the swap. Never again.

Simple fix is to change browsers.

morsify · Jun 22, 2017

Thank you all, Chrome is a definite improvement.

On Edge or IE, it definitely appears to be the ads and/or addons that control the videos within ads that cause my slowdowns. All other sites load almost instantly. It helps if I do a full reset of Edge or Explorer, but the problem creeps back in after using the same sites for a short while, and I don't want to keep doing a reset.

I had already tried Chrome but I removed it because it did not do some of the things I needed, the main thing being some of my banking security software did not work properly on Chrome, only on IE. Also, the Sky TV addon only works on Internet Explorer because Sky haven't got round to making it compatible on other browsers.

But it definitely improves RD instantly, so I might just have to use different browsers for different things.

Isn't technology supposed to improve and simplify things?

quicksilver384 · Jun 22, 2017

Glad you got it sorted.

Keith Windsor said:
Isn't technology supposed to improve and simplify things?

Yes but MS want to rule the world thus windows 10S

Andy_J · Jun 22, 2017

Bram said:
We don't have a government to pay for the bills (BBC)

Just for the record Bram, the Government does not pay for the BBC or its programming. Us Brits do. We pay a TV licence fee of about £150 per year to the BBC. And it's law that we have to pay it too.

alexSchmurtz · Jun 23, 2017

Keith Windsor said:
Isn't technology supposed to improve and simplify things?

I keep telling quite often that computers have been invented to make our lives easier...

Dave Stephenson · Jun 25, 2017

Keith Windsor said:
Thank you all, Chrome is a definite improvement.

On Edge or IE, it definitely appears to be the ads and/or addons that control the videos within ads that cause my slowdowns. All other sites load almost instantly. It helps if I do a full reset of Edge or Explorer, but the problem creeps back in after using the same sites for a short while, and I don't want to keep doing a reset.

I had already tried Chrome but I removed it because it did not do some of the things I needed, the main thing being some of my banking security software did not work properly on Chrome, only on IE. Also, the Sky TV addon only works on Internet Explorer because Sky haven't got round to making it compatible on other browsers.

But it definitely improves RD instantly, so I might just have to use different browsers for different things.

Isn't technology supposed to improve and simplify things?

I use Firefox as a reasonable middle ground, it's not quite as fast as chrome for some types of sites but doesn't some of the issues I have in IE. It also works with Sky apps. May be worth a look.

Benutzername · Jun 25, 2017

By the way, this is the old thread i was talking about, which has many suggestions on what the problem could be.
Maybe some of i could help here aswell. Even if it seems to be improved already with Chrome.

http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/this-site-is-so-slow.112244/

Aaron Markham · Jun 30, 2017

I'm having issues with downloads speeds through RaceDepartment. I am currently trying to download the updated AMS Track Pack & it is telling me 1 day!!!! My download speed is between 3 to 9 kbps. My normal download speed anywhere else is around 150kbps.

Dave_6 · Jul 8, 2017

I have ~300 mbps speeds and right now it's taking 2 hours to download a 132 MB skin pack. I'm guessing it's just server issues at the moment.

Rupe Wilson · Jul 8, 2017

just downloaded
Road America (3 seasons) 1.05
194mb track from AMS in about 8 seconds using chrome

Ricoow · Jul 9, 2017

Andy Jackson said:
Just for the record Bram, the Government does not pay for the BBC or its programming. Us Brits do. We pay a TV licence fee of about £150 per year to the BBC. And it's law that we have to pay it too.

You always pay for it since you pay the Government taxes and stuff

Bram said:

Would you happen to know what those peaks up are?

Dave_6 · Jul 9, 2017

Rupe Wilson said:
just downloaded
Road America (3 seasons) 1.05
194mb track from AMS in about 8 seconds using chrome

That's how fast mine usually is (I use Chrome too). It seemed to have gotten better last night but it's really slow for me again this morning. Just tried to download an updated mod and it was saying ~5 hours for 374 MB so I just cancelled it and I'll try again later.

EDIT: Left the site, browsed a few other sites then came back. Downloaded the 374 MBs in ~11 seconds.