Woolgathering

Sadly, I conclude that Lightbox is causing Woolgathering to run slowly and I have deactivated it while I await conformation that the situation is improved. I love Lightbox and I don’t really want to do without it. But why is it less of a problem on other domains? It makes no sense!

I don’t know which change did it, but I think I detect an improvement.

Yes, I only changed one parameter at a time.

Yes, nothing changed when tested.

Yes, it got better on its own… which suggests to me that one of the changes I made worked but that cacheing somewhere along the line hid that improvement from me at the time.

So now I’ll wait to see if Gill detects an improvement and then slowly add stuff back in one at a time if she agrees that things have speeded up. When it slows again, I shall have identified my culprit. On the other hand, there may be no detectable improvement for the reader.

I hate computers.

Woolgathering seems to have developed a terminal sulk. I find that there are significant response issues but cannot track down a reason for them. I spent much of last evening investigating the database and unplugging plugins and changing templates - all to no avail. This morning Gill tells me that she is finding the site unresponsive too.

This is just to say that I am on the case, if a little stumped right now - and to invite comments below as to different readers’ perceptions of response times from the site.

Right now I am so frustrated that I am considering removing this wordpress installation and database and beginning again with a fresh one. Of course, I really don’t want to have to do that, but I know it isn’t my host per se, as my other installations/domains give me no grief at all… can it be the imported posts from wordpress.com that are causing the trouble? are my indices screwed? If so, why does the admin interface also respond slowly? The database itself checks out OK, it’s only 7MB and all the tables are healthy and optimised.

Ideas?