ListPages is very slow to process

Bugs » #16


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Posted by cold_blood3dcold_blood3d on 21 Jun 2008 23:23, last edited on 04 Mar 2009 09:41

This bug has been fixed

Not completely fixed. Still happens some of the times.

Description

The ListPages module, under certain conditions, is extremely slow to load/process (sometimes taking a couple of minutes). This appears to be a processing lag on Wikidot's end rather than a connection speed issue. The lag occurs even on page lists that consist only of text and would normally take less than a second to load. The time for a list pages to process appears to increase dramatically when ListPages searches a category with a lot of pages.

Once a page with ListPages loads, its contents appear to stay "cached" by Wikidot. Therefore, it only affects the first visitor to the page, as well as visitors that go to the page after it leaves the Wikidot "cache".

Here is a demonstration of what happens:

  • Person A visits a ListPages page, waits 1-2 minutes for it to process and load, then leaves the site.
  • About 15 minutes later, person B goes to the same page. Person B will see the page instantly.

As seen in this example, the initial visit triggers Wikidot to process the ListPages and keep it cached. All visitors coming soon after person A will be able to view the page instantly. I have tested this using multiple computers to prove that it is not a matter of data being cached locally.

This is a problem because:

  • The first person will likely not wait 2 minutes and will quickly leave, so the page will never get cached by Wikidot.
  • The pages don't stay cached forever… If person B (in above example) went back to the page 4 hours later, they would have to endure the massive wait while Wikidot reprocesses it (assuming no one else visited it right before them).

How to Reproduce

To expose this problem, it's best if you have a lot of pages. Here's an example from my wiki, which currently has 200+ pages in the category ListPages is searching.

As described above, once a page is visited it will load fast for all subsequent visitors (only for a while). I included several copies of my page so you can find one that loads slowly.

http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/tag:boms-listpagetest
http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/tag:boms-listpagetest2
http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/tag:boms-listpagetest3
http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/tag:boms-listpagetest4
http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/tag:boms-listpagetest5
http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/tag:boms-listpagetest6
http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/tag:boms-listpagetest7
http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/tag:boms-listpagetest8

See this thread in which other users confirm the bug.

Browsers

Experienced in all browsers.

Workarounds

To keep your ListPages loading fast for everyone, you can:

  • Manually visit the page constantly throughout the day, so Wikidot keeps caching it.
  • Setup some kind of program or bot to automatically visit your pages that have a ListPages module.

Note: The wait time is drastically reduced if you paginate your content by using a low "perPage" value.

Contact

mmclean89 does not match any existing user name

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