December 18, 2014

Episcopal Café Performance Improves

Episcopal Café logo
“Sluggish” was hardly adequate to characterize the abysmal performance of Episcopal Café when the new site was rolled out nearly three weeks ago. More than one friend expressed the view that continued reading of the blog was more trouble than it was worth. When I complained to editor Jon White about the interminable waits for stories to appear, he indicated that neither he nor members of the Episcopal Café team were encountering the same problem. I was concerned that the blog would never be as useful as it had been in its former incarnation.

Lately, however, performance has greatly improved. I again wrote to Jon and asked what had  changed, but I received no reply.

Anyway, because I complained so much about the poor performance of Episcopal Café, I thought it necessary to acknowledge the improvement, even if the Episcopal Café team never admitted that there was a problem to be solved.

Anyone who has given up on the blog, should give it another try. The user experience, though flashier than strictly necessary, is reasonably satisfying. And The Lead continues to provide news of the Episcopal/Anglican world that is not otherwise available in one place. My previous posts about Episcopal Café (here and here) can be helpful in learning how to navigate the new site.

Happy reading! It’s good to have a serviceable Episcopal Café back.
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2 comments:

  1. David StreeverDecember 18, 2014 at 3:51 PM

    Hi Lionel,

    I thought I commented earlier but can't see it now; I must have not saved my comment!

    I'm a writer & contributor to the Café; when you had first contacted Jon, he asked our writing team if we noticed any sluggishness. We did not, and told him so over our email group; one member of the team occasionally had problems, but we didn't know if they were related to his internet setup. The rest of the team (myself included) didn't have issues with speed or performance on the site.

    Jon continued to receive complaints about the site speed. In my day job I'm a web developer; the Café is not one of my clients, but I decided to do some testing because we continued to get complaints. I had some free time one weekend, and discovered that the javascript animation could cause issues for different users, depending on a number of variables.

    This was a pre-built aspect of the theme we purchased, not something we added or created; once I saw that the issue was reproducible, and could be confirmed, I told Jon who asked me to immediately fix it in order to improve the user experience.

    I'm sorry if it felt like you were ignored or misled; the simple truth is that we did not initially know there was a problem with the site. I can't speak for Jon, but I appreciate your perseverance and I am sure he does as well; because of you & a few other people, we were able to track down & fix some of the performance issues!

    The site is a work in process, with no dedicated web team, but in my free time I'm continuing to try and fine-tune it. Thanks for being such a dedicated reader & letting us know about your issues--it's really appreciated!

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    Replies
    1. Lionel DeimelDecember 19, 2014 at 11:45 AM

      David,

      Thanks for the explanation. I am pleased with the recent improvement. It is odd that the problems plagued readers, but not the Episcopal Café team. Well, no matter. It’s good to have the problem fixed.

      By the way, you did submit a comment earlier, but it was flagged by Blogger as Spam. I have no idea why.

      Delete

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