Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I do see that a lot, but I often feel that it's not the culprit- because the page generation time is high on those times when I'm feeling it's slow loading.

Have a check and see, if the page generation time (printed in the footer) is short, but it's still taking a while to load for you - it could be at fault.

Yeah, I also feel like load times have increased considerably in recent months. For me on average a VS page takes almost half a minute to load, while the reported page load times are usually in between 2-10 seconds. As far as I've noticed the connections taking up the time are:

static.chartbeat.com
ping.chartbeat.com
www.neatorama.com
static1.videosift.com

Then again, I guess we can't be sure which, if any of these is the bottleneck.

page generated on web1 in 9.5085 seconds
page generated on web2 in 9.0297 seconds

Yep, slow right now!

it only sticks on static.chartbeat and ping.chartbeat for a split-second for me

Mine bogs on ping.chartbeat.com every time it is slow.

Yes. It's sort of spoiling the experience a bit if it's the cause.

^Word. That's what I'm saying. And if it's spoiling the experience for VS addicts like us, I can only imagine what the casual visitor is experiencing. I know when I visit sites with slow page-loading times I tend to wander away from them rather fast.

Is Chartbeat really more useful than less invasive stat software like Google Analytics, or do you use it more to satisfy your addiction to stats, even if the usefulness of some of them are questionable? I'm not trying to be a stick in the mud; I just want this place to perform at the level it should.

Or is it the servers themselves that are being overburdened? Is it time to upgrade again? Hell, I don't know. I barely finished kindergarten.

I haven't noticed any slowdowns lately.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

OK, we've turned off Chartbeat for now. let us know if it makes a difference.

I've noticed significant slowdowns recently as well, though I haven't been taking note of what's loading during those problem times.

Google Analytics has long been a major problem-causer, so I'd have to vote against switching to that. I can go to almost any site on the web and, if it hangs for 10+ seconds while loading, it's damn near a guarantee that it's waiting for GA.

NoScript is probably the most convenient way to deal with these sorts of issues.

FYI, for those who are unfamiliar, if you're using Firefox you can install the YSlow extension (from Yahoo). It breaks down for you all the components downloaded on a page and how long each one took to retrieve.