No problem with my access to BH.

The issue appears to be with the www6.smartadserver.com server, taking upwards of 8 seconds to respond:

To check the above in Firefox, press F12 ('developer tools'), then select 'Network', then reload the page. I believe Internet Explorer has similar tools built-in nowadays as well.

Image failed to post... trying again...

click here

Slow to load for several days now. I use Windows 7 and Chrome and my service provider is BT Infinity. I live in Fulham. Your site is the only one of my 'regulars' which seems to have a problem loading. I have just cleared cache and cookies and re-booted without it making any difference. Both Sqarespace and Net are equally as slow. But for the fact that many of your readers report no problems I would have deduced that your server was malfunctioning.

Slow loading for me too on Windows XP with Chrome and Opera browsers. Even with images, plugins and javascript turned off in Opera it is slow to load.

I have tried this from my PC and get lost packets as will be seen at the end of the list.

C:\>ping -n 25 -l 500 www.bishop-hill.net

Pinging five.squarespace.com [198.185.159.136] with 500 bytes of data:
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=109ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=109ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=109ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=109ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=109ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Request timed out.
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=109ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=110ms TTL=240
Reply from 198.185.159.136: bytes=500 time=109ms TTL=240

Ping statistics for 198.185.159.136:
Packets: Sent = 25, Received = 22, Lost = 3 (12% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 109ms, Maximum = 110ms, Average = 109ms


Also tried tracert and consistently get a Request timed out.

C:\>tracert www.bishop-hill.net

Tracing route to five.squarespace.com [198.185.159.136]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms BThomehub.home [192.168.1.1]
2 5 ms 5 ms 4 ms 217.32.142.109
3 5 ms 5 ms 5 ms 217.32.142.174
4 12 ms 11 ms 10 ms 212.140.206.18
5 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 213.120.162.67
6 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 31.55.165.107
7 11 ms 25 ms 11 ms acc1-10GigE-9-2-0.mr.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.250.100]
8 23 ms 17 ms 19 ms core1-te0-5-0-1.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.250.20]
9 17 ms 18 ms 17 ms peer1-xe3-2-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.254.205]
10 20 ms 19 ms 20 ms blackhole.prolexic.com [195.66.224.31]
11 23 ms 22 ms 22 ms unknown.prolexic.com [72.52.60.35]
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 110 ms 111 ms 111 ms unknown.prolexic.com [209.200.168.148]
14 109 ms 109 ms 109 ms 198.185.159.136

Trace complete.


Maybe someone more knowledgeable than I could interpret these?
I would think the slowdown pointed towards one of the servers that squarespace.com are using, and the fact that not everyone is experiencing the slowdown may be that they are arriving there via a different routing?

The images for "Hide the Decline" and "Institutional Bias" in the right panel only load the top third before eventually expanding then shrinkin again.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/bishop1_zps0ff009b9.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/bishop2_zpsfd1b574c.jpg

Not sure what happened with Bishop1 link. Try again...

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/kevster1346/bishop1_zpsf0e81f29.png

Working OK for me now.

The following two entries from my Chrome developer screen show that these two items take ~15 seconds to load.

yahoo-dom-event.js?CE=75
/universal/yui/yahoo-dom-event

squarespace-gallery-slideshow.css?CE=75
/universal/styles

The rest of the system appears ok except for 'whole' discussions which seem to take time to load, typically 10 seconds indicating an overloaded server or some database issue.

Don't know but I now can't access a lot of the US sites.

Been having very very slow page loads on Discussion for about two weeks now. Still the same this morning.

Investigating the integrity of the page / AJAX itself using the Net and Console tabs of Firebug, I find that the page is throwing two distinct (but possibly related) errors:

1.

An unbalanced tree was written using document.write() causing data from the network to be reparsed. For more information https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Optimizing_Your_Pages_for_Speculative_Parsing

2.

0RpIE8...kSVhmNA (line 2)
Error: Permission denied to access property 'toString'

Sorry to say Bishop Hill site is almost unusable for me still. Ten minute wait just now after clicking on the bookmark and a minute at least to call up any link from the right hand column. I'm in Spain so maybe distance makes the wait grow longer.

Somewhat faster since weekend but still crawls compared to other sites.
Browser Chrome or Firefox make no difference.
Only masthead and local ad load at normal speed. Sidebar about 5 seconds later. Page content about 5 more seconds. Comments load in batches, up to 30 seconds for a normal 40 comment string.

Leaving comments and particularly editing.....you can go for a coffee before the preview loads and a preview converts to post.
You need the coffee because the spinning loading vortex is making me v e r r r y s l e e p y......