Hi Lisa, we do already use a Redis caching server but our main page is pretty big so it can take a while to load. However, a whole minute sounds excessive. It should take about 20 seconds at the most. I just timed it here and it took 13 seconds. That is the largest page too so every other page in the site should load faster (considerably faster).

To achieve quicker load times we would probably have to upgrade to a dedicated sever, which we simply cannot afford. We only have a paltry income from a few banner ads and I find myself constantly footing the bill for developers working on the site from my own pocket. Donations are welcome but very rare. It’s a very poor business model.

Best, Katie

While I like the site overall, the page load times are a massive issue for me with many taking a minute or longer to load, even though page tests at GTMetrix claim a 21s load time.

It looks like your site uses Social Engine 4 from the page code...

Have you tried using a page caching plugin? I found this one:

https://www.socialengine.com/marketplace/app/page-cache-plugin

I couldn't really narrow down the page delay but it's probably all the uncached PHP, JS and CSS that is dynamically loaded into the page every time.

If it's not something you've already tried, it might be worth a punt? Seems like decent feedback from users of the plugin :)

As Promised, £10, Let's Get Some More Girl's Considering.

Sorry for the delay in replying. That's very kind Rosy. We do have a donations page you can use at https://www.transtastic.com/se4/pages/donation. It's going to cost an awful lot more than £10 to put this site right but every little helps and brings us a little bit closer to perfection.

Thanks and hugs,

Katie :)

Hi Katie, I Have Been Reading, The Dialog Between Your Self And Caitlin, - As a Newbie, ! I can Say The Site Is Not That Easy To Navigate, But Get's Better As One Ask's Other's, I Have A Brand new H.P Window's 10 Laptop, And Yes, The Page's Are Very slow To Load, So Money Can Fix It ! - Can The Site Post A Fund upgrade Weekend ? I Will Give £10.
Rosy RoseLeigh

Hi Caitlin,
I totally understand where you're coming from with your views, I used to be a moderator here at Transtastic and the site was a real mess.

Home page would take over 60 seconds to load and many times up to 3 minutes or just time out, forum and other parts would just time out none stop, and I'm on a 76mb fibre connection.

Now things pretty much work as they should though there are still bugs to be worked on, and home page for me takes about 23 seconds approx to load now, and it is consistently that too.

But yeah, there are still things to improve, was many idea's I had at the time of being a moderator but was shocked to find out it would cost 100's for one thing and 1000's for another.

But I can honestly say from way it used to be when Katie took over the site to how it is now, it is a 1000 times better than it used to be, and I'm sure in time as money comes in it will get even better.

If I was super rich and could say how much would it cost for the following, then pay for it to be done, I've always liked the layout and look of TVChix, is it any better to transtastic or gender society or others? to me yes as it's what I'm used to, to many users who have grown up with the likes of facebook and are used to the full on graphics and picture feeds, then I'm sure they would be saying yewww that looks too plain we prefer transtastic and others .

So it's very subjective, and what you have been brought up with and got used to using.

Blessed Be

Thank you Katie, I am getting there... just the usual quirks of different sites.

Caitlin
x

Hi again Caitlin,

> I think I found the Friends menu item you referred to...

No, that's not it. You need to be on your Profile page. To get to your profile page in the first place, just take a look at the main menu, near the top of every page. Just above it to the left of Sign Out there's a smaller version of your profile photo. Click on that and you'll be taken to your Profile page.

Once there you will see a little menu at the bottom of the main picture and one of the options is Friends. Click that and you'll see a list of all your friends.

And yes, the reply box you referred to is a bit small but it does say 'Quick Reply'. If you are not in a hurry you can also use the big reply box by clicking on the pink Reply button which is located near the top of this page. On the downside, the bigger box is on a page of its own which does not show the post you're replying to.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit.

Best regards,

Katie :)

Thank you Katie, LOADS of feedback - much appreciated.

I will go over it and reply... I am sure you are aware of much of this, but a "newbie" view might be useful:

* I understand - the performance of the main page is a tricky thing, and then more so due to finances.
Community funding is tricky - I contribute to some sites - but usually after I have used them for a while and want them to carry on... A chicken and egg problem - one of those sites has since pissed me off with nagging ads for money, AFTER I gave them some - worse their nag stops you using the page for a few seconds each time - so I probably wont give them any more in future. They did not reply to my feedback there...

* I like the look of the chat page - I dont chat too often on these sites, but it's good to see that. I also found I can use the icon bottom right to show I am offline - that stops all those little msg tabs that I never spotted in time.

* I think I found the Friends menu item you referred to. Initially I thought it would be a drop down menu off the menu at the top -
HOME PROFILES CHAT ALBUMS PERSONALS DATING FORUM BLOGS VIDEOS ADVERTISE MORE

But there is a lower menu bar too -
All Updates Friends Photos Posts Videos Classifieds Scheduled Posts Groups More
* I'd prefer a simpler look, but £££
* I was looking for a simple list of who I had friended, but that seems to be a selected feed of their updates, so not as useful for that.

Lastly for now - the reply box is a tad small (3 lines, but scrollable I know) - just funny on long replies like this.

Caitlin
x

Hi Caitlin and thanks for your observations. While it's always nice to receive compliments when we get things right, I believe that good, honest, well-intentioned criticism is far more important because it helps us to improve. Posts like these are always welcome.

We are well aware that our 'Home' page is often very slow to load but the reason is not because of all the various elements on the page. It is in fact because of the 'Safe Feed' system which is supposed to help prevent adult photos from appearing in our Activity Feed or Wall. Unfortunately it consumes an awful lot of resources and slows the loading of the page right down.

We would like to get this problem sorted out but we simply cannot afford to pay developers for the time it would take to get it right. Remember, Transtastic is a free community so we have no proper income. We occasionally receive a little donation from one of the members but that is usually in the order of £10 or maybe £15 and whilst welcome, it does really not go very far. We also have a very small share of advertising revenue but that is quite tiny.

>I'd prefer a dedicated chat page...

There is one. Just click on the Chat option in the main menu near the top of every page. That said, the chat room is usually pretty quiet. We need some Chat Tsars to get people in there. Any takers?

Your Friends List is available on your Profile page. Just click on the Profile Menu item that says Friends.

Hope that helps. Do let me know if you find any other problems (there are loads). Although we are aware of most of them and can't afford to get them fixed, our members often flag up new things for us to grapple with.

Many thanks for your feedback.

Katie :)

I have had a profile here for a little while, but this is not the site I turn to by choice, and as I have the odd friend here that prefers this site, I thought it might help the site admin to hear why I dont like it that much. I doubt I am the 1st to moan, but I am saying this with a positive attitude - I would like to see this a more usable site...

* Some of the pages are very slow to load - this may be just the home page? - which is overly complicated and has way too much stuff in too many columns - all of which probably slows it down. Not to mention all those annoying chat windows along the bottom.

* Chat - I do like to chat sometimes, but I always miss those little chat things along the bottom. I'd prefer a dedicated chat page (I often have multiple tabs open - EG facebook on one and facebook messages in another - I see a red dot on the tab when there is a new message in there, so easy to keep an eye on).
My PC is also on most of the time, so it looks like I am open to chat all the time, but I just dont see people say hello.

* Friends list? - there must be a place to just see a list of those people I have added as friends, but I can't find it.

If I used the site more, I'd feed back on more of it. Maybe later - see how this goes 1st...

Many thanks for the site, I would like to use it more...
Caitlin
.

Thanks Pauline ;-) xx

Glad to see that you are running with this Jenna, this site depends on peeps like you

hugs

Pauline xxx

Transtastic Writing : Job done & ALL welcome to join!

https://www.transtastic.com/se4/group/255

If there's any problems, please let me know...

Jenna xx

Thats great to hear. :)
Thanks for the update Pauline xxx

Hi Everyone,

I have exchanged messages with Katie Glover about this subject, as I used to do the weekly updates which included up to 4 stories or articles every week of topics which are/were of interest to members here.

If you want to look at the back catalogue, which includes stories by Caroline and some articles by me then please check out the following link
https://transtastic.com/se4/articles

Katie intends to re-introduce weekly updates and maybe a link to the articles when the current software changes are finished. In the meantime the people who have contributed to this thread can start up a group and publicise it, firstly to get interest in articles and secondly to add new ones.

Over to you Caroline and Jenna; if you need any help and support let me know.

hugs

Pauline xxx

Thanks Taylor.

I think that the moderation came in the form of approving the stories for posting before they were then allowed through the net so to speak, although I may be wrong with this reason

I was a moderator here for a while, and when I originally joined it had already gone so the as to why I no idea about.

That being said, storing posts with text is extremely minimal and I'd be surprised if it even registered on the bandwidth scale, maybe once you get in to the numbers like 100'000 posts etc.

The main problem would be if everyone posted pictures or video's then it be similar to the main home page where it starts to slow down a lot while the pictures, even thumnails load up for the end user.

Now there are groups on Transtastic, you could set one of them up then you could set your own rules for people joining and then advertise the group on home page to get people interested and build it up.
https://www.transtastic.com/se4/groups/create

For pictures could use sites like imgur.com
There are tricks that the end user can use to get a picture to show without any adverts and stuff to it, what us old fogies called direct image linking, lol

That would allow pictures to be posted to the stories without using any bandwidth on transtastic.

Video's can be stored on a google drive, dropbox, megasync, mediafire etc and linked to the story, also can make it so the links can only be opened if you know the link, or by password too on most on them, so if it was something you didn't want public it is doable.

So it is very much doable by us the end user without any real interaction by the site admins/mods unless we did something mega bad that broke the ToS lol, but we wouldn't do anything like that would we?

Anyway, just some food for thought.

Blessed be girlies xxxxxx

Thanks Caroline! That's pretty much 'on the money' - I'm sure the storage of written works would near double the webspace being used and/or saved on servers... Still, it would be great "in an ideal world"...

Hi Jenna,

A few years back there was a section on here dedicated to stories etc.
I did contribute a few stories, mainly of a serial that I'd written, with each new part published every week to keep readers titillated.

I'm not sure what happened to this section, but it stopped suddenly.
I ended up posting out the remaining parts via email to several members who wanted to know the ending to the story.
This lead on to me writing further serials, which again were posted out to a group of interested parties.

As I am sure that you are aware, it costs a considerable amount to keep a site like this going, so it may have been a financial decision.

I'd like to see a return in the future if at all possible for a section where stories can be posted, but do realise that given the potential cost of upkeep in both money and in moderating, it may not be possible.

Hi Admins - I don't know if this has been tried before or would take up too much bandwidth/memory storage or whatever... so apologies if it has.

How about a forum dedicated to creative writing; which has to have a transgender/CD/TV/ theme? [ Or what would be the point, readers can find general non-transgender specific stories anywhere... ]

Covering for example:

Fiction Stories :

Long stories [ say, over 5000 words ]
Short stories [ under 5000 words ]
Flash fiction [ under 1000 words ] //

Serial Stories [ more than one episode / sequels ] //

Poetry //

Non-Fiction Stories [ "It Happened To Me" type of heading ] //

Of course the usually ground rules for on-line publishing would have to be stated eg: No fiction characters who are minors allowed / no rape or simulated rape scenes / no blood & gore violence for the sake of it etc... just the standard stuff that ensures a site won't get closed down...

Additionally, without exception - contributors retain copyright of their works, as long as they're original. [ Or another standard statement to that effect ]

Don't know if that's workable or even wanted, but no harm done if not.

Though I think it could be an extra benefit for members who write & could inspire members who've never tried to have a go, as well as building a general fan base of purely 'readers.'

Just a suggestion ...

Best Regards,
Jenna xx

That's because we have always used the Town/City field, which works fine. A new 'City' field was introduced when we recently upgraded the Profile Search page. As it has not been used in the past, it will return no results and as it confuses the issue to have two City Fields, I have now removed that one permanently.

And remember that this search form is used for searching member's profiles and that's why it does not return results for albums or photos.

You can search for albums by location by using the Albums Search form on the main albums page or to search for everything by location, just use the search box in the header of every page.

We are intending to massively improve the main search tool but as usual, we can't quite afford to right now. It's coming soon though.

Doh - used "Coventry" in the "Town/City" field and got 21 hits.
Weird, I dont now see "City" next to Browse by?
Caitlin
x

Sorry Katie, still no joy - I uploaded a screen shot to one of my albums to show what I entered. Just London, then click search. I must be doing something wrong. I get the little spinny thing for a bit, then no results...
Caitlin :(

I have simplified the search criteria a bit so it should be easier to use now. However, I have discovered that the 'Where' field is not working and returns no results. I will ask the developers to look at that.

I tried entering various town and city names into the Town/City field and it worked fine. Instead of 6000+ results I received only the members who actually live in those places, which is what we want.

And thanks for thinking about making a contribution. Unfortunately it's always a bit of a chicken and egg thing because some people say they won't contribute until everything is perfect but it never will be because we cannot afford to pay for the work involved until people step up and donate something towards the work that needs to be carried out.

And remember too, that search is just one part of this enormous site. Over the last year we have spent a large amount on improving the Photo Galleries, Forums, Blogs, Events area and the Profiles page and we've added many new features like Dating tools and Personal Ads, plus we've improved the site speed and made numerous improvements under the bonnet which you may never see. Most of the cost has come out of my own pocket but I cannot afford to subsidise this free site for much longer. We really need members to start helping out or we may lose everything.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any more search problems and I'll add them to the list of things that need fixing.

Thanks,

Katie :)