BrainKing Performance Tuning

If you face a situation of the site being slow for you sometimes, please read this article carefully. I will try to describe the possible sources of the problem and suggest a solution for the particular issues.

There are three main categories of the site performance problems - server side, network side and client side. And there is only one which can be influenced by us - yes, the server side, i.e. the BrainKing computers themselves. The other ones are out of our reach and must be resolved individually, with the user's assistance.

Let me summarize that:

• Server side - it was a big problem several years ago, when BrainKing had been running on a very slow database server and was almost permanently overloaded. Furtunatelly, it is not an issue anymore (for more than a year), BrainKing code was optimized many times and the site maintains its optimal performance itself. Moreover, when a speed problem occurs, the site either resolves it with a help of its own watch-and-recover utilities or sends an alert to the administrators who make the proper actions manually.
• Network side - since BrainKing is an international site and the servers are located in Prague, Czech Republic, users from other countries (or even other continents) can occasionally face a situation of pages being loaded slowly or incompletely, which is caused by a network problem "somewhere on the way". The recommended solution is to disconnect from the internet and reconnect after a while to check if the speed is better. If not, contact your ISP and ask if their line abroad is not overloaded.
• Client side - this is the most commom source of the mentioned problems. A computer can be infected by a virus or a spyware, which steals the line bandwidth and makes the connection slower, or does other nasty things and negatively affects the web browser's behaviour. Or the browser is allocating too much memory of the computer resources and the system spends more time to resolve this situation than to react on the user's actions. Etc., and so on. The recommended solution is to apply a reliable antivirus and/or spyware removal software, fix the possible browser problem or try to connect from another computer to see if the problem is really caused by the former one.

I will add more points to this list when I am aware of more related information.