Trouble loading Rivbike.com

[Joe Bernard]

The home page isn't loading well on both computers (and a smartphone) I've used today. I can still click on the categories, but there's no home page pic or featured products. Is anyone else experiencing this?

[Peter Pesce]

They seem to be missing the big picture ;) but otherwise site loads fine on my iPhone 4S.

Pete on CT

[tdusky]

The new site is complex and loads slowly, it always has, I am on a
fast mac with high speed internet.
It sometimes hangs and I need to refresh to get it to load.
That's the price of a cool looking site?
Shouldn't be

Tom Duksy
Huntington Woods MI

[tdusky]

I spoke (or wrote too soon)—I just checked and it loaded fast.
Maybe they got a faster server or cleaned up the code.
Sorry

Tom Dusky

[Tim McNamara]

There are many factors involved that may have nothing whatsoever to do with Riv's site or server- including how many jumps between servers there are from you to Riv's Web server and the latency of each of them, the quality of the copper or fiber between the servers, network congestion, and issues with one's own computer and browser loading and displaying the content (e.g., what's cached and what is not).

[Dave Rivbike]

Yes, the slideshow. It makes the homepage heavier than it has to be.
Yet it's one of the most loved features of our site, has been for
years.
The images are downsized to a reasonable level, but you still have to
load them any time a new image is added or your cache is cleared.
For site speed, I'd love to have just one image there, the most recent
campout photo, but the slideshow is by far one of most popular
features on the site, so I'm kinda stuck there.

I think if I removed that, I'd get more heat than if I leave it.

One compromise is to simply have the most recent photo there on the
homepage with the featured products, and when you click on that image,
you redirect to the whole slideshow, or even better linked out to an
archive of ALL the previous homepage photos we've used in the past.
That way the site would load faster for everyone, and those that want
to watch pictures and simply click out to another page and can wait
for that to load.
Downside is you would get the same image each visit (till we change it
for a new one) instead of the random choice from the bunch.

Interested what y'all have to say about this?
I lean towards faster faster faster, but it might be a hard sell since
most folks seem to like it.

-Dave@riv

[Manuel Acosta]

One of my favorite things about the Rivendell website are the
pictures. Every picture on the site always reminds me that I should be
riding my bike. I say hell with fast loading. Some things are best
when slowed down.

[Philip Williamson]

I agree with Manny. There's a tradeoff between speed and presentation,
and the slideshow is the presentation of the whole Rivendell deal.
Ideally the slideshow loads last, so the goods show up, then the
slides? I don't know if it does; the site loads fine on DSL and FIOS
for me. I would be sad to see a single image there, BUT I only check
out multiple images occasionally, usually if I see a new one when I
load the page.

Hmmm... you could conceivably put up a different picture every day or
week that linked to a gallery of all the pictures, and each of those
pictures could have a short list of the visible Riv items with links
back to their purchasing pages. Or is that too crassly commercial? :^)
A G+ gallery would be free, and (over)promoted by Google for search
results.

"Don't be (conspicuously) Evil,"
Philip

Philip Williamson
www.biketinker.com
I'm looking for a job!
www.philipwilliamson.com



On Jan 26, 10:34 pm, Manuel Acosta <manueljohnaco...@hotmail.com>
wrote:

[Steve Palincsar]

On Thu, 2012-01-26 at 13:51 -0800, Dave Rivbike wrote:
> Yes, the slideshow. It makes the homepage heavier than it has to be.
> Yet it's one of the most loved features of our site, has been for
> years.
> The images are downsized to a reasonable level, but you still have to
> load them any time a new image is added or your cache is cleared.
> For site speed, I'd love to have just one image there, the most recent
> campout photo, but the slideshow is by far one of most popular
> features on the site, so I'm kinda stuck there.
>
> I think if I removed that, I'd get more heat than if I leave it.
>
> One compromise is to simply have the most recent photo there on the
> homepage with the featured products, and when you click on that image,
> you redirect to the whole slideshow, or even better linked out to an
> archive of ALL the previous homepage photos we've used in the past.
> That way the site would load faster for everyone, and those that want
> to watch pictures and simply click out to another page and can wait
> for that to load.
> Downside is you would get the same image each visit (till we change it
> for a new one) instead of the random choice from the bunch.

Make that a sticky alternative that users could choose.

[Zack]

Dave -

Using a content delivery network to house the images could improve the speed of the loading.  I use one on my site and it speeds things up a great deal.  I use Max CDN (no affiliation or promotional bonus of any kind for me) and have liked it, no problems.

A good tool to use to get tips for how to optimize load time is YSlow - it's a tool that Yahoo made, you can use it as a firefox plugin.  Worth installing/checking out just to get some ideas of how to make things go faster.  You install, go to your page, and then run Yslow, and it gives you a score /100 and areas you could improve.

I like the rotating slideshow on the homepage, i think it gives people a cool look into what owning a Rivendell could be like for them.  

[Joe Bernard]

I vote for simpler/faster, especially in the smartphone age. I'm sure Rivendell is losing customers whose phones make the process not worth sticking around for.

[Robert F. Harrison]

I vote for slow and pictures...there's already rivbike.com/mobile when I want to use my smartphone - though I'd vote for improving that particular entry point...right now adding something to one's cart through it seems to go to regular site. It's a work in progress, but aren't we all? :-)

Basically just have two themes (or more) and a bit of browser detection can satisfy both crowds.

Bob

On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 5:29 AM, Joe Bernard <joer...@gmail.com> wrote:

I vote for simpler/faster, especially in the smartphone age. I'm sure Rivendell is losing customers whose phones make the process not worth sticking around for.

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[Kelly]

I'm on a good high speed connection. I have not experienced any problems with the speed of the Rivendell site so far. I would vote for how it is with the photos.
I also connect via my iPhone on occasion and haven't really noticed the site being any slower than the rest of the sites I visit.

Kelly

[Rex Kerr]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:34 PM, Manuel Acosta <manueljo...@hotmail.com> wrote:

One of my favorite things about the Rivendell website are the
pictures. Every picture on the site always reminds me that I should be
riding my bike. I say hell with fast loading. Some things are best
when slowed down.

Are you kidding?  There's a reason that we spent so much on our 400 gram Rivencarbon bikes, and it wasn't to go slow!!

[Dave Rivbike]

In any case I'll +1 the g+ idea and post the archived ones here. we'll
see what else we can find on the old machines here.

https://plus.google.com/photos/114994103039895826093/albums/5702458246841938801

On Jan 27, 11:08 am, Rex Kerr <rexk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:34 PM, Manuel Acosta <
>

[Peter Pesce]

Dave
While we have your attention, any chance that the site could have a "heritage" section where we could access info about previous models? The Cyclofiend site is great, but I for one would love to be able to pull up the old pages for bike models that are no longer current.

Just a thought.

Pete
SingleSixtySidepullSam...and QB

[Joe Bernard]

Then we can pester you about how "the new bikes are great, but golly, I wish you still had the Romulus/Redwood/Ram/Bleriot/Wilbury." ;-)