Dewds, I don’t know what is going on with the site, but it’s slower than Snailio Iglesias. You can almost hear the site go: “ehn! ehn! ehn!”
We’re working on a solushe and hope to be back and speedy in no time. In the meantime, I suggest getting a fresh cup of coffee while the page loads. 
-Meg
Meggers, I always get “waiting for blogads”.
It started when the rat video went on the front page, could it be that?
Hmm, I haven’t noticed any slowness at all.
But if people are getting “waiting for Blogads” messages, that might be why, since I use AdBlock.
Defintely because of the blogads… also, api.ning.com never stops transferring data.
But teh cute is worth the wait!
Yep, I also get the “waiting for blogads” message either. If you haven’t changed anything and your server hasn’t either, then the problem must be from an external service. Ad servers and avatar services are likely candidates.
Also, caching features help. If you have any kind of cache and you have it off, try turning it on.
Regards.
Thanks for the update Meg. It seems to already be working fastere! Silly website slow bugs!
Nothing against that doggie, but I noticed the site get substantially slower after you all posted the doggie in the giraffe spotted carrying case. m
Seems to be fixt…no problems on my end.
Its probably not the problem right now, but in General Cute Overload could load a lot faster if you where to encode all pictures as jpg (and not png). And even you .jpg could be encoded a lot leaner (use ImageReady for instance). …
As others have noted, blogads is having some major problems. A couple of blogs I visit have removed their ads for the duration.
Not as slow as I would expect for all the graphics involved. Good thing it is all worth the wait!
Yes, it has slowed down. But, I have my coffee and the wait is worth it.
Valentin — is good point, and you are clearly a power user… but I’ve found that .PNG slowness only seems to affect the photos themselves; they don’t speedbump the whole rest of the page.
Nah… something in the ad widgets is probably the culprit [coughBLOGADScough] but I can’t know that fer shure [snort].
Also, Meg & I both take pains to optimize our pic sizes at least *somewhat* before posting. Rest assured.
Thank goodness it’s not just me!! I haven’t had the patience to wait and I am in DREADFUL need of my cuteness fix!!
For about a week now when I open the site I’ve been getting the message “A script in this movie is causing Adobe Flash Player 9 to run slowly. If it continues to run your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script?” I don’t know if this is a clue. I haven’t been able to figure out what “this movie” refers to.
Yeah, mine keeps sticking on “Connecting to proxy.blogads.com”
So it must be an ad glitch somewhere.
That’s ok–we just got home from a week long vacation, and we’re still begging the kittens for forgiveness.
‘Mom! Dad! You’re home! Yay!….hey wait a mintue…you *left* us! In a kennel! You bastards!’
and so on and so on.
It’s the proxy.blogads thing that keeps holding it up… though the site is a lot better these days.
Then, the cutecast nimg keeps requesting a https for some reason, AND it has a short encryption key so Opera keeps yelling at me.
Slow as molasses, but worth the wait.
it’s ok for me now… last week it was crashing my Mozilla window. I had to wait for cute until I gotted home.
api.ning.com is transfering something ad nauseum here.
and a connection to something was refused as I first logged on.
gee Meg must like me best, because we never have any speed problems at all…
All I get is:
Connecting to proxy.blogads.com…
Well, it IS cute overload–teh cute is clogging up the intertubes!
Other sites with blogad are also loading slowly for me.
I am getting the “transferring data from api.ning.com” too. Slow, yes, but always worth the wait.
Cute overload is teh. best. thing. evah. ’nuff said.
It always seems to hang while “Waiting for proxy.blogads.com”
THANK GOODNESS! I’ve been much less inclined to visit lately so I’m very glad you’re working on speeding things up!
thank goo’ness, because I just keep getting a “waiting for proxy blonads” message.
Was that gross?! I’m sorry. I am, really…
**proxy.blogads.com** is the badness, yes
[shivers]
[shrivels]
Mine isn’t tellign me anything, justtaking a very very very long time to load.
for what is worth (app. $0.02), CO seems to run faster when on Explorer than on FireFox. Explorer does not get the “waiting for blogads” message.
[cries because she likes FireFox better; boohiss]
Hi Mariser –
Sorry to throw this monkey into your wrench, but I can confirm the *opposite* of your situation on my PC here at work. IE v7 = crappy slow, FF v2 = normal speed.
I think my “work” version of FireFox has more script- and ad-blocking plugins installed.
Personally, i think it’s all the people like me, depressed about the Va. Tech shootings, and looking for a reminder that good exists in the world, driving up your traffic.
If your machine lets you use a ‘hosts’ file to list names/IPs, simply stick this in your hosts file. /etc/hosts on linux/bsd machines, not sure about BSD. Windows maybe in the system32 hosts file?
127.0.0.1 proxy.blogads.com
This will cause all connections to proxy.blogads.com to go to your local machine. If you run a webserver, it’ll probably return 404 really quickly. If you don’t run a webserver, it’ll return “connection refused” really quickly. And either way, it’ll be far faster than waiting for proxy.blogads.com to respond.
i actually thought you were down. but yeah.. it always hung on blogads. hung to the point of never loading. good thing they’re invite only. you’re invited to be shut the heck down!
well, T. isn’t that *interesting*
both my IE (v.6, not 7) and FF are vanilla.
will pro’bly install the ad-block exty in FF and see how it goes.
I think it’s fixted! CO is suddenly very fast.
OH MY GOD IT WOULDN’T LOAD FROM APRIL 11TH UNTIL NOW!
I almost died from cute withdrawal, but I’m ok now.
YAY–back to normal for me!!
Meg — ees MUCH faster now at home too.
It’s working!
That or computers also get the placebo effect going…
I’ve had to go through the last week of tax season without teh qte! Oh, the trauma…
But it seems to be working now, yay!
P.S. Teho, thanks for the kittens in the catcave pix and vid – that kept me going.
Wow! Hot damn.
CO is gonna git a speedin’ ticket!
I had forgotten how fast it’s s’posed to load! I’m sueing for whiplash now. Oh, and compensation for the past 5 days. Emotional damages, man.
(breaks down sobbing) Awww, you just don’t know how hard it’s been. OK, OK, (tears up legal papers) sniff, I lubs ya, just promise to never do that slow-load thing again, mkay? Sniffle.
Oh man, I love Snailio Iglesias, glad to see his reprise here. You guys should seriously consider making Snailio t-shirts, I would totally buy one.
Hurrah itz fix0red!!! Cuteness prevails once again
the slowdown made me realize this: I am officially addicted to cuteoverload. Before I was all, ‘i can stop when i want to,’ now I know…i can’t stop. but, not unlike Dr. House on a recent rerun, I feel I’m an addict but I don’t have a problem!
Could it have possibly been all the extra traffic generated by the awards you were nominated for? I am running IE v7 and had a slow loading time, but did not get the error message with the blogads that others were receiving. I think it may have been a great deal of traffic generated by the links on the awards sites. I know that after I voted, I used the links on their sites to return to yours- and that could be generating a lot of traffic and causing strain on your server.
Thank goodness CO is back! I couldn’t access it AT ALL — no blogads stuff, no “movie is running slowly” stuff, NOTHING! I just got a white page, no matter how long I waited, and then if I tried to go to another site I briefly got a flash of the hammy background, but still no photos or text.
I was starting to go into withdrawal!!!!
*WHEW!*
I think snails are cute in theory (or in cartoons or books or songs), but I have these guys in my yard and in my flower beds and they are NOT cute. *shudder* They totally gross me out.
The picture of the bunny in the cotton balls made things WAYYYYYY better for me, though.
Faster for me today, too. W00t!
Strange – how come I had no problems all this while?
A snail picture!! Slime-erific!
Just seeing the words “Snailio Iglesias” makes me giggle. And the much-improved loading speed makes me feel even better — whee! No more Qte withdrawal for me.