Replies

1. 
   ysu65 | May 22, 2021 06:37am | #1

   Sorry, but I do not understand this request. Can someone elaborate? Thanks

2. 
   john_c2 | May 22, 2021 06:46am | #2

   Huh?

3. 
   hoovermd | May 22, 2021 11:10pm | #3

   Heap is a tool that FWW uses to track your usage of their site.
   Heap is essentially a JavaScript library that is installed on every page to be tracked. This library collects all actions and some contextual information like text on links and buttons.

   The FWW site also most likely communicates with the HEAP metarouter.

   If you experience slow performance, and you look at what is happening I oftentimes find Heap to be the bottleneck.

4. 
   _mj_ | May 23, 2021 06:55am | #4

   How is this information useful?

5. 
   lthemick | May 23, 2021 08:18am | #5

   Analytics like this help websites understand what their most popular content is (and isn't) so they can make informed decisions about what content they should provide and what they should maybe drop.

   As an example, lots of traffic every time they post a new video may influence them to figure on making more videos. Conversely, if they get very little traffic to other parts of the site - for instance, if no one was accessing the digital archives - they might decide the cost of hosting the archive content could be better spent elsewhere.

   Sites also often use telemetry to inform advertising costs: knowing how many unique visitors they have each week, or what those visitors are interested in on the site, let's them know how to price their ad space.

   These are really simplistic examples: I don't know FWW's specific use cases for the data, but if a site has this sort of telemetry the uses for it only grow.

6. 
   _mj_ | May 23, 2021 09:15am | #6

   No, I meant how is it useful enough to be sharing it here in a woodworking forum. How does it benefit US, the readers here. This seems like just another complaint post.

7. 
   hoovermd | May 23, 2021 11:30pm | #7

   So, a complaint about the web performance isn't valid to you the user of this site? I guess everyone else is supremely satisfied with the performance here and I am the only one who finds it lacking?

   Maybe if your performance is fine you could either comment so, or not. But to complain about my pointing this out just doesn't add any value.

8. 
   rob_ss | May 24, 2021 03:48am | #8

   I find the site slow to load, but can't necessarily blame the analytics - I have not got the requisite skill to test what is causing problems. Still it's not so bad as to warrant complaint.
   JS libraries can be large and eat quite a lot of bandwidth for minimal benefit so I only use them if there is a real need for what they do on a page. I'm boring though so mostly do the work backend.
   Could the analytics library be the source of the random redirect problem, which is still persisting...

9. 
   hoovermd | May 24, 2021 10:56pm | #9

   Dunno about the redirect issue, but abut 50% of the time the PDF articles fail to load the first time I guess I wouldn't be so concerned if it was free to me but I do pay for my subscription so I expect a little higher level of performance.

   It is a difficult task to track performance from the outside... there is clearly a whole boatload of tracking code here....

1. 
   john_c2 | May 25, 2021 02:53am | #10

   I've never had an issue with a pdf failing to load, or even load slowly. And nothing on this website is any slower than any other website.

1. 
   mikeinohio | May 25, 2021 06:50am | #11

   John C2,
   Same for me. The performance of the FWW site is the same as other sites I visit.
   I wonder if the O.P. has ad blocking software that’s slowing things down?

   Mike

1. 
   hoovermd | May 25, 2021 11:19pm | #12

   Nothing other than using a decent version of Firefox.
   glad to hear that the problem is not pervasive... Could be regional differences as I am on the West Coast.

   I just had a Forum post fail to load the first time, requiring a second visit to the URL...

   Maybe my expectations are too high as I am a IT Professional by trade.