Site Issues

[Jahvon09]

The site has not been working as of late for seemingly no reason. What's been going on?

 

[SkyriseCities]

We did have server issues for a while but should be fine now. Any current issues?

 

[Suffolk 83]

We did have server issues for a while but should be fine now. Any current issues?

Been fine lately other than a month or so ago

 

[stefal]

Is this happening to anyone else? Any file size I try to post isn't converting/embedding properly. I don't think I had an issue when I was uploading 4MB photos before. This is occuring with photos 1.9-2.9MB.

 

[Blackbird]

The new whole-page ads are pretty annoying. It was easy-ish to close them on my phone, but now that I'm on my laptop I'm having a harder time seeing the X in the upper corner.

 

[HenryAlan]

The new whole-page ads are pretty annoying. It was easy-ish to close them on my phone, but now that I'm on my laptop I'm having a harder time seeing the X in the upper corner.

You can edit the URL after the ad pops up to cover everything in the page. Just delete what you see after archboston.com -- that's what I've been doing.

Edit to add:

What you delete is the following text string: "#google_vignette"

 

[kmp1284]

Ad blockers are your friends.

 

[Riverside]

Ad blockers are your friends.

I mean, yes. But. I know there are costs to maintaining ArchBoston, a service I value and appreciate. If possible, I'd like to avoid using an ad blocker, precisely because I do want to support the site -- I just find the new full-screen ads to be significantly more disruptive. Furthermore, historically @SkyriseCities has been pretty receptive to feedback, so, here's the feedback.

 

[kmp1284]

I mean, yes. But. I know there are costs to maintaining ArchBoston, a service I value and appreciate. If possible, I'd like to avoid using an ad blocker, precisely because I do want to support the site -- I just find the new full-screen ads to be significantly more disruptive. Furthermore, historically @SkyriseCities has been pretty receptive to feedback, so, here's the feedback.

Covering costs is one thing and there are better and less intrusive ways to do that but the ads are nothing but monetization for the sake of monetization and at this point it’s obvious that the user experience is secondary. Everyone has to make a living somehow but the viability of someone else’s business isn’t my concern.

 

[HenryAlan]

Generally on the side of ads being a necessary evil, so I tend not to use ad blockers. But after a week of these google vignette ads, I'm done. They interfere with my browser activities, and the work around I suggested above no longer works, because it causes the original page to reload, while at the same time marking the destination page as read. That breaks the ability for me to open the page to the first unread post. So these ads kill site functionality. I'll be installing an ad blocker in the next few days unless @SkyriseCities switches to some less problematic ad format.

 

[Riverside]

Returning to this -- the ads really are disruptive. They don't render well on mobile, meaning that the "x" close button is miniscule and hard to successfully tap on a touchscreen. @SkyriseCities, hopefully we can find a happy medium here?

 

[bigpicture7]

Returning to this -- the ads really are disruptive. They don't render well on mobile, meaning that the "x" close button is miniscule and hard to successfully tap on a touchscreen. @SkyriseCities, hopefully we can find a happy medium here?

Yes, echoing this! Many/most of us are understandable about accepting ads on the site, but a few weeks ago they switched to a new format of full page splash screen ads that need to be "x'd" out to be able to see the site. Not sure if you meant this / were aware. Feelings entirely aside about site advertising in general, there are serious user experience / site usability issues with this particular format of ad. Are there other formats that might strike a better site usability balance?

 

[stick n move]

Has anyone noticed when you paste something in a post when you click enter in the post it deletes a few previous parts of the post each time you press enter? This has been happening for a while and its pretty annoying.

 

[Equilibria]

Anyone else seeing substantial performance issues the last 2 days?

 

[bigpicture7]

Anyone else seeing substantial performance issues the last 2 days?

I had, definitely, but they seem to be resolved for me as of this morning. Site has been flying as of 7am - now on my end; but past several days prior to that it was almost uselessly slow

 

[bigpicture7]

On a separate but potentially related note: I wish @SkyriseCities had considered and responded to the comments upthread about the introduction of annoying pop-up ads several months ago (some of which block buttons and are hard to click off of, though "refreshing" solves it). Most of us certainly understand the desire/need/right to monetize the site; what is unclear, however, is how aware SkyriseCities is about recent shift to the low-quality, highly-intrusive nature of this particular form of advertising. Yes I know some people use pop-up blockers (which have their own tradeoffs/issues), etc, but frankly the present configuration is a downgrade of the site quality in general. The gracious request is not to eliminate advertising, but simply to look into whether the configuration has to be as sucky as it presently is ; )

 

[bigpicture7]

I had, definitely, but they seem to be resolved for me as of this morning. Site has been flying as of 7am - now on my end; but past several days prior to that it was almost uselessly slow

For completeness, I am reporting back that the quickness I experienced early this morning was a mirage and the site is back to being incredibly slow (for me at least) as of 10am

 

[DZH22]

Site has been brutally slow all day today. (Friday 9/1)

 

[bigpicture7]

Site has been brutally slow all day today. (Friday 9/1)

Agreed; brutally slow to the point of it basically being unusable. I have a few photos to post but I don't have time to bother attempting that until the site is back up to reasonable speed.

 

[Delvin4519]

Site has been brutally slow all day today. (Friday 9/1)

I've tried resetting cookies and clearing cache, the site has been brutally slow during the day yesterday and today to the point I couldn't even use the site at all, sometimes doesn't load anything at all. I'm only able to post this right now since at the moment it seems to load okay-ish.