[Sticky] The New Forum

Not sure it just me but I can't get to the classifieds section. If I click the hamburger menu in the top left of the site, the classifieds link is at the bottom but is covered by an ad which I can't seem to close.

Something is afoot with the Likes.

(from here)

Have we found out why the forum takes ages to load a page or post a reply?, I was under the impression that the new “forum” would be much faster

edit - 12 seconds to post above.

Mine doesn't take as long as that.

Edit: maybe 6 seconds?

Posted by: somafunk

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Have we found out why the forum takes ages to load a page or post a reply?, I was under the impression that the new “forum” would be much faster

It's rapid for me, aside from posting taking a few seconds.  Certainly no slower than any other website.  What are we doing differently?  How long is "ages"?

Posting that reply took about 15 seconds.  A page refresh was sub 2 seconds.

iPad/iPhone using safari,  iMac using safari, all updates done.  

This is the only website/forum that has this slow issue, could it be a routing/node problem?. 

I’ll time how long this page takes to post

edit : 19.27 seconds to post the above as the little green spinny “working” icon popped up in top right corner of page on iPad Pro 

I’ll time how long it takes to post my edit. 

edit to my edit : only took 5.68 seconds to post.

Have we found out why the forum takes ages to load a page or post a reply?, I was under the impression that the new “forum” would be much faster

Bookmarks --> select BBC News - the page comes up in less than 1 second

Bookmarks --> select Singletrack forum - it takes about 7 or 8 secs to load the list of threads.

Android and Chrome on a Samsung phone, nothing out of the ordinary. The time lag is similar on the laptop. I can certainly live with it, but it suggests something is slow serving the data.

(OK, I appreciate BBC servers may be a bit more chunky, but that was just an example, I have several other bookmarks which are equally quick)

Yeah, editing does seen faster than initial posting.  Why, I have no idea.  

How long are your page loads taking?

Posted by: thelawman

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Bookmarks --> select BBC News - the page comes up in less than 1 second

Bookmarks --> select Singletrack forum - it takes about 7 or 8 secs to load the list of threads.

The (chat) index takes 3-4 seconds to load for me.  I have a beefy Internet connection but my PC is ancient.

I generally stick to the Latest posts index, but the individual ones are similarly taking 7 8 9 secs too

If you've been to the pages already then a lot will be getting served via your browser cache so will seem very fast...I'm guessing there is a lot on this site that isn't static so needs to get reloaded every time.

Firefox Dev Tools shows the initial GET taking 5s to load before anything else is loaded.  All the subsequent requests are much  quicker.

Nah….this site used to my #1 site/forum to visit but it’s not worth the hassle nor time anymore with how slow it is and page hangs/spinny green “working” wheel. The forum page not sizing correctly for iPad/landscape, etc….

Its all very well having 15+ years of threads but if it takes as long again to view or find them then it’s fubar. 

David Beckham hasn't aged well, but well done for getting him to pose for STW in the red sweatshirt splattered all over the forum! 😉 🤣 

My first visit to the site for a couple of days. When I try and visit the cookies banner fills the page then the agree/decline buttons are instantly covered by the jersey subscription offer leaving me stuck in limbo. I put a help message on Threads but it doesn't look like threads is monitored. I've made it here by using incognito mode but its not ideal.

I try expanding the image that @verses posted at 13/05/2025 3:55 pm but the website opens the image that @Cougar posted at  13/05/2025 12:45 pm instead. 

I am noticing huge difference in load times not being logged in and logged in. Logged in being a lot worse. 

Also the five clickable forum icon links disappear when not logged in. They are literally just clickable text. 

Had same issue as johnnystorm on my mobile since at least yesterday evening, couldn't confirm my privacy choices as the STW sweatshirt ad down the bottom covered the buttons and the "X" to close the ad did nothing.

In light mode there is a lot of elements that fails the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines for contrast. Dark mode is slightly better but still 49 errors on this page alone. Makes it very annoying to view content and must be even worse for people with bad eyesight. 

Anyone else find the way that the link in email alerts takes you to page 1 of the thread rather than the post in the email a bit annoying?

Posted by: n0b0dy0ftheg0at

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Had same issue as johnnystorm on my mobile since at least yesterday evening, couldn't confirm my privacy choices as the STW sweatshirt ad down the bottom covered the buttons and the "X" to close the ad did nothing.

Mine seems to be fixed now but it is really slow.

Posted by: Thomas

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I try expanding the image that @verses posted at 13/05/2025 3:55 pm but the website opens the image that @Cougar posted at  13/05/2025 12:45 pm instead. 

This is my biggest gripe at the moment. Click on a pic and some random pic comes up in its place. Scroll through the pics and it seems like a lottery as to what you'll see

Posted by: somafunk

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Nah….this site used to my #1 site/forum to visit but it’s not worth the hassle nor time anymore with how slow it is and page hangs/spinny green “working” wheel. The forum page not sizing correctly for iPad/landscape, etc….

 

Its all very well having 15+ years of threads but if it takes as long again to view or find them then it’s fubar. 

This +1, this forum is dead now, Trump thread not been updated in 19hours despite the bilge he's been spouting today? My own longer running threads are just echo chambers nowadays.

I use Pistonheads (!) nowadays for my casual chat fill - photo hosting works normally, it instantly hosts posts and it's free with unobtrusive ads. It's actually a revelation how 'normal' functioning it is!

I've not really moaned before because I appreciate STW is a small enterprise and it's not fair to have a dig but come one this forum is bad and hasn't improved. 

Same. STW used to entertain me all day long at work and it's crap now.

I haven't used Pistonheads for years but it's very basic and retro looking yet functions perfectly.

I'd go back there if I still cared about cars.

Just realised my typo and over use of the word 'nowadays' but I can't edit after 15minutes which seems archaic.....{insert another word instead of nowadays}

Posted by: RNP

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I use Pistonheads (!) nowadays for my casual chat fill - photo hosting works normally, it instantly hosts posts and it's free with unobtrusive ads. It's actually a revelation how 'normal' functioning it is!

The downside of course being that it's full of pistonheads users.

I dropped out of using it and my membership as I found it was unusable and frustrating.

I've popped back in a few times, but it's barely any better, sadly. And, it seems post numbers are down. Way down. Every time I come back its a different error or issue.

See my screenshot of today.

https://flic.kr/p/2r5mU9J

I've been an STW magazine subscriber since magazine 2. I'm sorry for the team who run it, but I'm not renewing until it actually works. Which is then chicken and egg, because I'm presuming subscribers and as revenue is down so that there's not the money to do up the forum....

I keep getting a video that takes up the whole screen. When I kill it, it’s back within a few seconds. As per MOAB, I no longer pay as I think the forum has gone downhill. 

Posted by: RNP

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This +1, this forum is dead now, Trump thread not been updated in 19hours despite the bilge he's been spouting today? My own longer running threads are just echo chambers nowadays.

@RustyNissanPrairie

I'd argue the politics threads have driven a lot of casual forumites away and sucked the fun from this place - they're aggressive and you can't post anything without a full thesis to back up your post or you are lynched.

I'd set up a Politics forum tab* (and not included it in the Overview view) and let the big-hitters play in  their own sand-pit.

(*possibly dump the members forum as it's barely used!).

Posted by: the-muffin-man

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Posted by: RNP

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This +1, this forum is dead now, Trump thread not been updated in 19hours despite the bilge he's been spouting today? My own longer running threads are just echo chambers nowadays.

@RustyNissanPrairie

I'd argue the politics threads have driven a lot of casual forumites away and sucked the fun from this place - they're aggressive and you can't post anything without a full thesis to back up your post or you are lynched.

I'd set up a Politics forum tab* (and not included it in the Overview view) and let the big-hitters play in  their own sand-pit.

(*possibly dump the members forum as it's barely used!).

I run a motorbike forum and that's exactly what happened over there, the politics and trump, brexit and conspiracy theory stuff completely wiped out a chunk of posting, in the end i had to ban a guy who then threatened legal action, so i completely deleted his account and all his posts...  It's honestly pathetic that people can't discuss things now days, it's all "my opinion is right, all of yours are wrong"

As for this place, i don't do the political threads at all, i don't even open them.

But the forum is a lot less than it once was, a chunk of that is down to response times... People can flannel it up all the want but EVERY other forum i've ever visited is <1s per posting time, <1s per opening time, <1s per editing time, a refresh, yup, that's <1s time... I come here and everything posted, opened etc is 10s.... 10s  FFS, really... It's a drag.

However, the knowledge, content and people here are the only thing holding this place together.

edit. From pressing 'send' on here to it showing up as posted was 15s.... thats 14s longer than any other forum.

Posted by: weeksy

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As for this place, i don't do the political threads at all, i don't even open them.

same here.

I like to see posts on rides and pics, plus some of the travelly ones where folks are heading on hols etc, cheery stuff not the sort of stuff I see (or read) in the news everyday 🙁

Posted by: weeksy

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Posted by: the-muffin-man

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Posted by: RNP

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This +1, this forum is dead now, Trump thread not been updated in 19hours despite the bilge he's been spouting today? My own longer running threads are just echo chambers nowadays.

@RustyNissanPrairie

I'd argue the politics threads have driven a lot of casual forumites away and sucked the fun from this place - they're aggressive and you can't post anything without a full thesis to back up your post or you are lynched.

I'd set up a Politics forum tab* (and not included it in the Overview view) and let the big-hitters play in  their own sand-pit.

(*possibly dump the members forum as it's barely used!).

I run a motorbike forum and that's exactly what happened over there, the politics and trump, brexit and conspiracy theory stuff completely wiped out a chunk of posting, in the end i had to ban a guy who then threatened legal action, so i completely deleted his account and all his posts...  It's honestly pathetic that people can't discuss things now days, it's all "my opinion is right, all of yours are wrong"

As for this place, i don't do the political threads at all, i don't even open them.

But the forum is a lot less than it once was, a chunk of that is down to response times... People can flannel it up all the want but EVERY other forum i've ever visited is <1s per posting time, <1s per opening time, <1s per editing time, a refresh, yup, that's <1s time... I come here and everything posted, opened etc is 10s.... 10s  FFS, really... It's a drag.

However, the knowledge, content and people here are the only thing holding this place together.

edit. From pressing 'send' on here to it showing up as posted was 15s.... thats 14s longer than any other forum.

Do folk genuinely get so upset over what is written that they no longer read the forum?, that sounds kinda ****ing stupid....who gets so heat up that they throw a strop over what strangers write on a forum? - I just do not understand how this is a thing?.................. if folk get that upset over words and others not agreeing with them then that says far far more about what is not going well in their own lives, they then come on here and demand to be heard and listened to.

If someone disagrees with me on here or calls me a bad word, or calls me out, or demands I explain myself......  I laugh....I laugh and have a wee giggle to myself and shake my head at the idiots.

Posted by: somafunk

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Posted by: weeksy

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Posted by: the-muffin-man

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Posted by: RNP

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This +1, this forum is dead now, Trump thread not been updated in 19hours despite the bilge he's been spouting today? My own longer running threads are just echo chambers nowadays.

@RustyNissanPrairie

I'd argue the politics threads have driven a lot of casual forumites away and sucked the fun from this place - they're aggressive and you can't post anything without a full thesis to back up your post or you are lynched.

I'd set up a Politics forum tab* (and not included it in the Overview view) and let the big-hitters play in  their own sand-pit.

(*possibly dump the members forum as it's barely used!).

I run a motorbike forum and that's exactly what happened over there, the politics and trump, brexit and conspiracy theory stuff completely wiped out a chunk of posting, in the end i had to ban a guy who then threatened legal action, so i completely deleted his account and all his posts...  It's honestly pathetic that people can't discuss things now days, it's all "my opinion is right, all of yours are wrong"

As for this place, i don't do the political threads at all, i don't even open them.

But the forum is a lot less than it once was, a chunk of that is down to response times... People can flannel it up all the want but EVERY other forum i've ever visited is <1s per posting time, <1s per opening time, <1s per editing time, a refresh, yup, that's <1s time... I come here and everything posted, opened etc is 10s.... 10s  FFS, really... It's a drag.

However, the knowledge, content and people here are the only thing holding this place together.

edit. From pressing 'send' on here to it showing up as posted was 15s.... thats 14s longer than any other forum.

 

Do folk genuinely get so upset over what is written that they no longer read the forum?, that sounds kinda ****ing stupid....who gets so heat up that they throw a strop over what strangers write on a forum? - I just do not understand how this is a thing?.................. if folk get that upset over words and others not agreeing with them then that says far far more about what is not going well in their own lives, they then come on here and demand to be heard and listened to.

 

If someone disagrees with me on here or calls me a bad word, or calls me out, or demands I explain myself......  I laugh....I laugh and have a wee giggle to myself and shake my head at the idiots.

 

 

 

IME, yes, they take the politics like a personal insult, then they start throwing insults back even if it's just calling someone "stupid" for their ideas that oppose their own, then it escalates.  Which is something i just can't fathom. OK, if you're insulting my wife, or my boy, that's something else. But insulting a political party, lol... wtf.

Do folk genuinely get so upset over what is written that they no longer read the forum?

Probably not, probably just get tired of it and go somewhere else.  The forum certainly is quieter these days

Posted by: Rubber_Buccaneer

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Probably not, probably just get tired of it and go somewhere else

yep if I want political point scoring and diatribe I'll go to the BBC HYS comments (which I don't).

I don't understand this argument.

If you don't like the politics threads then... don't read them? 🤷‍♂️ It's not mandatory to read every last post across the entire forum.

If someone starts slinging insults around then that's what the Moderators are for, report the post and it will be reviewed.  Anyone breaking forum rules will be given a warning and/or a holiday.

I don't understand this argument

that’s ok

Posted by: Cougar

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I don't understand this argument.

If you don't like the politics threads then... don't read them? 🤷‍♂️ It's not mandatory to read every last post across the entire forum.

If someone starts slinging insults around then that's what the Moderators are for, report the post and it will be reviewed.  Anyone breaking forum rules will be given a warning and/or a holiday.

Some people like the politics, they just don't like being told they're wrong. 

You not understanding it doesn't mean it doesn't happen 🙂

Often it's not a 'report' scenario, it's only an insult to the person who's told their opinion is completely invalid. See Politics, Trump, War, Gaza, etc etc threads... 

People disagreeing, cry more, that's what forums are for (and we've been accused many times of being an echo chamber).  If the vast majority of posters are telling you that you're wrong then maybe, just maybe...

People making personal attacks is verboten on STW and should be reported.

My point wasn't about the politics of threads but about the lack of posts. I don't get involved in heavy debate so I'm not concerned about heavy hitters - I'm an 'information poster'

For the Trump thread not to be updated for 19 hours whilst he was spouting about Springsteen / Swift shows that this forum is pretty much dead. The Eurovision thread was another that was far lighter than previous years.

It's the mechanics of this forum that have killed it, (image linking, responsiveness, layout etc). I know Pistonheads is the antithesis of STW but for posting threads like my £500 Porsche its refreshing how well it just......works, and it's free. My PH litter picking thread even gets comments!

STW is/was good as a community - there are eye watering offers of help and assistance, and it feels like it was a good size where you got to know posters. 

I was hopeful after the forum refresh but honestly it's just worse than it was. I feel sorry for Mark - I couldn't / wouldn't know what to do in this situation but I've wandered off to pastures new and I doubt I'll renew my subs in November (I've only ever been web subscriber).

<<<<<<<<working>>>>>>>>

Posted by: RNP

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For the Trump thread not to be updated for 19 hours whilst he was spouting about Springsteen / Swift shows that this forum is pretty much dead. The Eurovision thread was another that was far lighter than previous years.

To be fair, I'm (unusually) usually prolific on the Eurovision thread and this time with no trace of irony I was at a Springsteen concert instead.

Posted by: RNP

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It's the mechanics of this forum that have killed it, (image linking, responsiveness, layout etc).

This I don't follow.  Image posting is the easiest it's ever been unless you've been using computers for thirty years without discovering copy and paste.

Responsiveness was well documented from the outset, this was expected prior to the upgrade.  It was always going to be slow until migration was completed.  Page loading is now, what, 2 seconds?  That's comparable with many other sites.  Posting is sluggish sure, maybe 10-15 seconds, but I can't think of anything so vital that I can't just hit Submit and then alt-tab into a different thread whilst it commits.

Layout seems fine to me aside from the fixed-width rendering which is larger than my ancient monitor.  Mobile may be different but I rarely use that.

Re. Image hosting.

I know there's an image hosting built in now but I've always hosted on Imgbb.com and pasted the html code. It works on other forums and used to work on here however since the upgrade older threads (my £500 Porsche thread for instance) are now an utter mess. I'm on mobile (iOS) 

[img] [/img]

For me, the forum is mostly working OK now, even though it's taken a good while to get here. Posting is sometimes a bit laggy and the occasional weird formatting on some pages, but it's a lot better than it was in the first couple of months after the migration and mostly usable. Posting images as an example seems straightforward and simple to me now. It seems user experience varies massively though and the posts above show some are still having issues.

However it does seem to have lost a lot of its spark during the turmoil. Threads are quieter, responses fewer and some familiar usernames are posting less or not at all. I used to love a dynamic thread on an interesting topic where you'd refresh after 10 minutes away from it and there'd be 15 or 20 new posts. It was hard to keep up sometimes. That just doesn't happen any more. It's a negative feedback loop too, as the relative inactivity by others makes me less inclined to visit or post so often, exacerbating the issue. I really hope that's temporary and somehow people start to drift back, as problems aside I still love it here.

Wow, just came on to browse and I'd been logged out. Became immediately faced with a cookies message and the accept/reject buttons were then immediately covered by an ad I couldn't get rid of (the X not working), so I was stuck on a page I couldn't move onwards from. 

I opened STW another 3 times before I was fast enough to press the cookie accept button before the ad popped up and covered it. I was then able to log in and normal service is resumed.

Android/chrome. 

This issue is a show stopper for anyone not logged in and is going to kill the forum traffic if it hasn't already 

works fine and looks fine, but then i only surf STW from a laptop and firefox/brave.
lack of traffic has become obvious though and i can only assume its the experience for mobile users 🙁
its 20yrs this year since i became Skive off out biking Alias.

Posted by: Rubber_Buccaneer

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Do folk genuinely get so upset over what is written that they no longer read the forum?

Probably not, probably just get tired of it and go somewhere else.  The forum certainly is quieter these days

TBH, the decline is probably mostly down to usability of the site/forum, both the look and feel and the slowness - that has driven people away, and the decline in traffic has only added to the bad experience. I hardly come to the site any more these days as a result, and when my membership renewal came to me recently, I decided not to renew. 

(just to add - on windows pc here - it took nearly a full minute from clicking "add reply" for that post to save and load.)

Safari on iPhone 15 horribly laggy for the last few weeks.  Multi-page navigation is a joke.

I have to say, i find the forum pretty usable for speed tbh. About 2s to load a thread on my laptop, about 3s on my android phone with firefox. Not exactly blistering speeds, but fine. It's interesting that some have such different experiences.

I do, ahem, run plugins that block certain things. I wonder how much that helps.

Edit - this post took about 15s to go through, posting on my phone. So again, not amazing but certainly not the minutes experienced by others.

☝ Pretty much my experience.  I'm kinda struggling with the narrative that "the forum is dead because the pages take two seconds to load, you're all literally worse than Hitler" when it's sunny outside.

I use a Bulletin Board System called Monochrome.  People were predicting "the death of Mono" since like 1992.  It is today essentially a museum piece, but it's still going.