Stop adding features and start working on performance!

Gamespot.com is my number one gaming website, I visit it frequently several times a day and I keep getting amazed by it's content and features, however there's only one reason I haven't become a Total Access user yet (and I've thought of it for a long time now).

The reason is simple: the site is far too slow! I have high speed broadband, I browse several websites with tons of content, images, effects, etc but none are as slow as Gamespot. It's a shame being such a great website that you can't work more on performance and speed. Some pages take such a huge amount of time to load that it takes my memories back to the old dial-up modem times...

Seriously now, some serious work needs to be put into this, you can't say it's because of the amount of content because I know many sites with lots of contents without slow-downs. You can't say it's because of the amount of traffic because there are sites (for example the video-sites out there) that have a lot of traffic without hindering the browsing experience.

So before you start adding new cool features start working on speed!! And I will join you as Total Access in no time! I'm even willing to pay more than the 3 bucks a month it costs.

Well, this is new. I was expecting at least someone with the same "problem".

I use Firefox 2 so I doubt it's my browser (and don't say I should use IE or something like that cause I wont) and my internet connection is working fine (downloads at around 1Mb/s). Are you all sure that you don't feel Gamespot loads at least a small bit slower than other sites? I find it that it sometimes works quite well (around 1-2 seconds to load a page) while other times it takes around 5-8 seconds to load a page (wich is horrendously slow in my opinion), is this your view of "fine" webspeed?

Actually, that does happen occasionally for me. I think it's just to due with the influx of traffic during the day.

The biggest thing that bugs me is the ridiculously slow file transfer rate when downloading from GS.

40KB/s and bellow?!? jeez... (streaming is actually OK, ATM.)

Actually downloads from GS are working just fine for me (around 300kb/s when using the DLmanager and something between 50-300kb/s without).

In any concern I think there should be some more work put done on the fitness of the webcode since I know it can be optimized further. Most of you say you don't have problems, which is surprising, however I'm quite certain there are many of you that think like me and as long as there are speed problems my opinion is that they should be worked on FIRST and not keep adding features to bog the code down further.

Maybe this is a localization problem? US users might have an easier time with the loading times than EU users? PS3RULE: where do you browse from?

Maybe I'm talking gibberish here but it would explain why some of us have speed problems while others don't (aside from ISP-differences). 

As said over here, a while back ago it was slow as [Insert bad name here], then it went fine again, but now, it's the same old. The only thing I get good speeds as is the Downloads which goes with 1300-2000 kb/s (with the download manager)

I hope it will get faster again any time soon now, and by the way, does it matter that I live in western Europe? (I really think it shouldn't since the site actually were faster before.)

I'd have to agree. They should also concentrate on fixing most of the bugs on the site. New features are always nice, but there are way too many features that have been implemented but not improved :(_Sam_

I agree, the site is too slow. Even if I use firefox, its still slow. Even Alexa ranks it as "Very Slow", with 93% of other sites being faster.Bourbons3

Now we're talking, with sites like Alexa giving GS such a horrible ranking it should open the eyes of the developers. Well, can we hear some response? Are you working on anything or do you wish to loose paying customers due to this?

I actually became a Total Access member yesterday because I simply love the site anyway but if GS wish to offer good service to it's customers something should be done. I payed for one year and I can assure you that if nothing has been done by the end of my membership I won't renew it.

Cheers ;). 

It all depends on how close you are to the server. Consider using GameSpot UK. Anyway, I'm from Eastern Europe, and the site loads fast for me (and I have an even worse connection).Abi79

Well well, there you said something.. Silly enough I'm in Europe and never tried the uk hosted GS site (www. was just so natural). Trying it now and to my great surprise it's actually considerably faster! I'm not going to end my case here since I haven't tested it thoroughly yet, but I can say that more people should try this and see if their speed goes up!

A hint to GS though is to have the server automatically redirect European users to the UK version so that people like me doesn't fall in the trap again. Shouldn't be hard to do right?

Shouldn't be hard to do right?

Nelien

Technically there is a link at the bottom of every page you visit so it really shouldn't be that hard to see and click on. UK.GameSpot.com