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View Full Version : Ticker / Countdown Clock Generator to use?


jasff
09-19-2013, 07:41 PM
I am a member of one of the Disney forums. They have this great customized "Ticker" to make countdown banners, which generate a code to be posted in a members Signature.

On my forum, a lot of members plan Meet & Greets all the time and this would be a feature they would love. I know there are a lot of free generators on the Internet to use. However I would like to know how this is done through my forum...meaning I want members to be able to generate from my domain, and everything be customized to us.

Any help is appreciated. Here's the ticker page for the disney site. Walk through it and see how cool it is. http://distickers.com/ticker/stepone/event.html

Thanks in advance!

pityocamptes
09-19-2013, 09:17 PM
Maybe take a look at their source code (view source)?

jasff
09-19-2013, 09:26 PM
Oh, I don't know what that means or how it's done. New to it all. But have launched a very successful forum :)

Max Taxable
09-19-2013, 10:09 PM
Experience tells me to avoid all such, tickers, clocks, etc. They just leech the resources of your visitors and users.

Your site is slow enough already and has myriad of problems besides, here's the web page test.

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130919_M4_14SP/

jasff
09-19-2013, 10:16 PM
Your site is slow enough already and has myriad of problems besides, here's the web page test.

Max, that wasn't my question. I didn't ask to have anyone run a test on my forum and post the results out on the forum. You could have at least sent me a PM instead!

Max Taxable
09-19-2013, 10:27 PM
Hey, just trying to be helpful. Tickers, clocks and etc just annoy people, use processor time and suck bandwidth. And it's just habit of mine to test sites. That one was a firefox browser, here's what IE 10 sees:

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130919_MM_14ZP/

And here's what your mobile users get in the way of performance, took so long to load on a i-phone in Dulles VA the test timed out.:

http://mobitest.akamai.com

My point being, I personally would work on improving the speed and performance of my site, rather than add resource leeches to it.

Just friendly advice from long experience friend.

EDIT: I got a android in Dulles to load your site... 59 seconds and a blank page. (Tapatalk)

http://mobitest.akamai.com/m/results.cgi?testid=130919_SF_89

TheLastSuperman
09-19-2013, 10:28 PM
I don't think he was being rude but was instead simply saying "hey check this out, maybe fix the loading speed before adding stuff that slows it down" is how I took it and besides know you now a link to a handy tool ;).

I've used that before, one client ran me ragged making sure his site loaded prim & proper but I didn't mind was fun making it fast and btw don't be ashamed of that page load speed, your site is loading faster than mine LOL just so long as it truly does not take ages or hang you'll be just fine, I find that often times some tend to place too much emphasis on that (ohh the serious ones on here will disown me for saying that just now :p) I say if the site works, loads in moderate time and content is good then no worries.

Edit: Ahh posted about same time as Max but yeah see he was being helpful as I suspected ;).

CAG CheechDogg
09-19-2013, 10:30 PM
Max, that wasn't my question. I didn't ask to have anyone run a test on my forum and post the results out on the forum. You could have at least sent me a PM instead!

Wow, jasff Max is one of the better members of this site and has helped out many people. The reason he is giving you that advise to avoid the counter is because you are going to end up adding a counter of some sort to your site and then you are going to come back right here to these forums and ask for help because your site is getting shut down by your host.

Learn to take advise from others when they give it to you, and good luck trying to find what you are looking for.

Max Taxable
09-19-2013, 10:32 PM
The reason he is giving you that advise to avoid the counter is because you are going to end up adding a counter of some sort to your site and then you are going to come back right here to these forums and ask for help because your site is getting shut down by your host.Or worse, hacked/defaced. How many times have we seen that?

CAG CheechDogg
09-19-2013, 10:33 PM
I posted at the same time as well...jasff...we are only trying to help you out ...while that counter on that disney site looks cool and all, it "will" eat up your bandwidth and quite honestly none of the tickers that are available here on v.org are even worth using on a site like yours.

jasff
09-19-2013, 10:33 PM
Thanks everyone for your advice. Max, I apologize.

CAG CheechDogg
09-19-2013, 10:34 PM
Or worse, hacked/defaced. How many times have we seen that?

I can't even count lol....there is a counter here but it doesnt work like that one...If i see it I will post the link...

Max Taxable
09-19-2013, 10:35 PM
just so long as it truly does not take ages or hang you'll be just fine, I find that often times some tend to place too much emphasis on that (ohh the serious ones on here will disown me for saying that just now :p) I say if the site works, loads in moderate time and content is good then no worries.

Edit: Ahh posted about same time as Max but yeah see he was being helpful as I suspected ;).:D

Web Stress: Understanding the neurological impact of poor performance (http://velocityconf.com/velocityeu2013/public/schedule/detail/30503)

Not to mention, how Google and other valid crawlers hate slow sites and will rank them lower because of it.

But you're right, I have seen alot worse than the OP's site. :up:



Thanks everyone for your advice. Max, I apologize.No worries Mayng. I have very thick skin.:D

jasff
09-19-2013, 10:54 PM
well, I gues I should ask....

1. Since you guys are the smart ones :o what is it that I need to focus on then?
Those reports are beyond my bank of knowledge. What seems to be the problem?

2. As for the Tickers, I was looking for a generator program that I can load onto my server to generate from my own site. I didn't want to use or be linked to an external generator. I'm sure they are loaded with junk.

Thanks in advance ;)

TheLastSuperman
09-20-2013, 12:21 AM
Start by saving images as jpg, they can save at a smaller file size which means the page loads quicker and images are typically an issue if you've customized your site and not thought of that while doing so.

Max Taxable
09-20-2013, 12:39 AM
You have 76 objects requested on pageload of main page, from the link I posted earlier. Many of the later ones which are slowing you down, using most bandwidth and CPU, are third party applications, images, mostly from google and youtube. In the image below I grabbed from the link, you can see them numbered 45, 54, 55, 65, and 67-76.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2013/09/10.jpg

I am not familiar with most of these and don't know their purpose, but I do know they increase your load time, bandwidth usage and CPU utilization way out of proportion to your native calls. (Note the graphs at bottom.)

Third party objects will load or complete only as fast as their own 3rd party server lets them. So that if google or youtube is really slow, you're going to be really slow as a result.

But again like Superman said - your speed isn't atrocious. Everything is loading in under 4 seconds. It's nothing to lose sleep over, but by contrast my site does only 34 calls and loads in just under one second, very consistently. But then again, I have made it a point to achieve that speed.

--------------- Added 1379641264 at 1379641264 ---------------

2. As for the Tickers, I was looking for a generator program that I can load onto my server to generate from my own site. I didn't want to use or be linked to an external generator. I'm sure they are loaded with junk. The thing is, every ticker I have seen no matter if it's third party or not, relies on the USER'S resources, not yours. Making THEIR CPU do all the work, and using THEIR bandwidth.

CAG CheechDogg
09-20-2013, 04:27 AM
Also, from the test results here : http://gtmetrix.com/reports/slotfanatics.com/pgb3ihtk , it is asking you to specify image dimensions something that vbulletin just doesn't put enough emphasis on which actually slows your site down quite a bit because it doesn't tell the browsers what size these images are and it makes it work harder to render them.

It is only 30 images most of which are the collapse icons and other smaller icons used for the whos online and category icons. I also see that you don't have your attachments and avatars being server from your file system and instead they are being served from your database. Moving your attachments and avatars over to the file system takes you about 2 mins to do and will decrease your servers workload.

To switch them to your file system go to your attachments menu, click on attachments storage type and just move them to your file system. You might have to create the directory for them but usually vbulletin already has it done automatically.

Do this for your avatars as well and you will see an improvement.

For the other images that it's asking you to provide the image dimensions, just do a template search for the image, i.e., collapse_40b.png , sometimes you only need to look for the file extension which is (40b.png) and then you add the correct dimensions of that image like this,

<img width="16" height="16" title="if needed" alt="if needed" src="images/styles/your-theme/path/collapse.png">

This is going to take you a couple of hours to find all the images to add their dimensions but it is worth it , believe me!

If you need any more help just ask.

Also in your htaccess you will want to add some custom code to give your forums some Leverage browser caching ....I will give you what I use if you want it so you can check it out before you add it to your htacces file.

Hope this helps you out my Man !!!