Radio UserLand Notes

Referers and the staticSiteStatsImage

I've been trying to track down webpage loading issues with Radio websites. This post is part of that effort.

UserLand uses a small image called the staticSiteStatsImage to track hits and referers for Radio weblog users. It's a neat idea, but it hasn't scaled. The macro (radio.macros.staticSiteStatsImage) actually inserts a snippet of JavaScript into your webpage. That JavaScript makes a call to a server who gives you the image and records the referer information. I think that's where the majority of the slowdown is coming from.

Since Radio weblogs hosted at radio.weblogs.com are served by the Apache webserver, a better solution would be to parse the logs and display the info in daily increments. Sounds like another project to start.

Testing

Documenting the Radio Commenting System

I'm analyzing the functions of the current Radio commenting system, a collection of JavaScript, UserTalk and Manila, to see if it can be made better. The work is hard because to the end user, it seems simple. There is some serious magic going on in the background.

There are two scripts which is slowing the loading of Radio websites, retrieved from a Manila site when a weblog reader gets the HTML version of a weblog page. They both do basically the same thing: retrieve a list of posts with the number of comments (or trackbacks) then a loop matches the two and assigns the output to a variable which is then called by the browser to display the count of comments and trackbacks.

The looping and variable assignment is local to your machine, so that's not the slow down. Things really grind to a halt when UserLand's servers are bogged down with these comment requests. Remember, any webpage on your site that has a Radio comment or trackback link causes a request back to UserLand for the same post id/comment count list. *That's* why thing are slow.

What this means: If you didn't want the number of comments to show on your webpage, the whole thing would work much faster.

What you can do: Go into the prefs in Radio for "Comments" and "Trackback" and remove the macro <% commentCount %> and <% trackbackCount %>. This won't turn off comments, but it will prevent the JavaScript loop and make everything faster.

What this really does: it stops a person's web browser from requesting the file, which lessens the load on UserLand which makes your webpage display faster.

"But what if I do want the number of comments to show?"

I'm working on it. Hold your breath, because I'm close to a solution.