Has something changed in recent versions of Discourse that would impact page-loading?

Some users are complaining that our forum has been loading noticeably slower for them recently. On looking into this further it appears as though avatars are being force reloaded on the forum in question (as well as one other forum running recent/the latest version of Discourse) but this is not happening on forums running older version of Discourse (they’re all on the same server) or over here at meta. It happens even when using the stock style or with all components disabled.

Here’s a video that demonstrates the difference: video

  1. meta.discourse - avatars load with main page content
  2. (running older Discourse version) - avatars load with main page content
  3. (running latest Discourse version 3.1.0.beta5 0790e9f4f1) - avatars load in after main page content
  4. (running latest Discourse version 3.1.0.beta5 0790e9f4f1) - avatars load in after main page content

As mentioned 2,3,4 are all on the same server. I also checked other forums we are running which are on older versions of Discourse and they load the same as (1) and (2), so it appears to only be happening with recent versions/3.1.0.beta5.

Any ideas why this might be happening? Do you run a different version of Discourse over here at meta that might explain the difference? Has anyone else noticed this?

1 Like

Hi!

Does it happen as well logged out or in safe mode?

Can you reload these topic lists with your browser dev tools, Network tab, filter by img, and tell us what you see in the Size and Time columns?

I have one forum using 3.1.0.beta4 and two using 3.1.0beta5. I don’t experience this issue with any of them.

Yep, it happens logged out as well and is pretty similar in safe-mode: (vid)

Here’s a vid (let me know if you need a different format/anything else)

The older versions I am using are quite a bit older (see below) and I’d say these issues may have started/worsened over a good few months according to the feedback we’ve received.

Some of the forums running older versions (where it doesn’t happen) are at:

  • 3.1.0.beta2
  • 2.8.0.beta7
  • 2.9.0.beta4

Please let me know if you need anything else!

Are you still seeing this issue @AstonJ ?