I noticed the site become so slow as to be barely usable. Also, the blogs have been thrashed - formatting has been ruined.  For instance, embedded videos have changed to plain text non-clickable links. Posts that once had images embedded, are now replaced with just the name of the image in plain text. What on earth is going on? This used to be a great site.

Have you noticed these issues consistently, or just on your current visit?  Mobile, desktop, or both?

Apart from one hiccup earlier in the day that I assume was a transient issue the site has been pretty snappy today and recently, at least for me.  The homepage is a little slow on a clean load but nice and fast on subsequent loads from cache, and the rest of the site (excluding more intensive tasks like search or activity feeds) are nice and quick.

Are there specific blog entries you're seeing problems with?

Checking over a couple of the most recent blog entries, as well as a few of your most recent ones, the formatting looks ok to me, and I see a number of embedded videos in recent updates.

1 hour ago, jbadams said:

Have you noticed these issues consistently, or just on your current visit?  Mobile, desktop, or both?

Opening a gamedev.net tab is always slow but slower on mobile devices because of their CPUs. On my extremely powerful laptop, it takes 10 seconds to open gamedev. On my phone, which is a 2.5 years old Samsung S5 Neo, it takes forever.

1 hour ago, jbadams said:

Are there specific blog entries you're seeing problems with?

Go check his blog post. I opened the link 3 times. The first time, the images didn't load, only the names were displayed. The other 2 times it worked.

1 hour ago, jbadams said:

Checking over a couple of the most recent blog entries, as well as a few of your most recent ones, the formatting looks ok to me, and I see a number of embedded videos in recent updates.

Recent blog posts seem unaffected, as if it was a huge update from gamedev that changed the data format of blog posts and the transition from old data to new data wasn't perfect.

28 minutes ago, thecheeselover said:

> On my extremely powerful laptop, it takes 10 seconds to open gamedev.

so, it's not just me...

>Recent blog posts seem unaffected, as if it was a huge update from gamedev that changed the data format of blog posts and the transition from old data to new data wasn't perfect.

Yeah, the blog entry I'm looking at is a year old.

34 minutes ago, thecheeselover said:

Opening a gamedev.net tab is always slow but slower on mobile devices because of their CPUs. On my extremely powerful laptop, it takes 10 seconds to open gamedev.

The home page or another area? I think we're looking for clarification on what areas are slow.

The home page is pretty intense right now for load times and is going through a few iterations to find the right balance of content/performance. But everything else should be relatively quick.

35 minutes ago, thecheeselover said:

Go check his blog post. I opened the link 3 times

I haven't been able to duplicate this.

What browser is being used? 

I've looked at the server. There was a spike in activity in the last 2 hours that increased server load and could have caused problems. This may be what you've experienced - or is this an all-the-time problem?

Well, the front page is definately slow. Forums seem to be sluggish too. I use palemoon

4 hours ago, khawk said:

The home page or another area? I think we're looking for clarification on what areas are slow.

The home page is the slowest but other pages are also slow (from my perspective as of 2018 standards, which again is also my opinion).

4 hours ago, khawk said:

What browser is being used? 

Google Chrome for Windows (10), Version 66.0.3359.181 (Official Build) (64-bit). On mobile, I also use Chrome for Android.

4 hours ago, khawk said:

This may be what you've experienced - or is this an all-the-time problem?

It used to be frequent when the huge gamedev update was pushed. However, nowadays it's pretty rare and the images not loading are mostly on old blog posts.

Same for me, slow on front page and forums. I use Win10, and tried with different common browsers with same slow effect.

I don't have a clear answer for why the server performance was so bad, but I made various configuration changes to better handle the 2x incoming traffic the site experienced. I also fixed a bug in the front page that could have impacted performance, and after installing the update and clearing the cache the server's utilization responded favorably. I'll continue to monitor it and figure out more ways to improve the front page's impact on the server (which would impact forums, blogs, etc.).

Loading the front-page takes around 15 seconds here, before the browser (firefox at a desktop) shows anything from the site. It usually continues to load more several seconds afterwards, probably stuff further down the page.

I noted it seems to load the full stories (or at least a large part) of the list 'recent <something>' at the front page, and then a script kicks in to show just the first 2 or so lines. That looks like a waste of bandwith!