Performance improvements and general update

Hey everyone. I have made some minor performance improvements to the website today that should help pages load a little faster no m atter where you are in the world. Hopefully everything is still working correctly, but if you notice any newly broken images, please let me know.

As I've mentioned before, the code Theremin World runs on is getting pretty old, and I haven't had the time/energy to keep it updated with the latest technology for quite some time. The current implementation was developed mostly during my long bus commutes back and forth to work back in 2015. That's a millennium ago in technology years! Well, having recently been caught up in the wave of tech industry layoffs, I find myself with a bit more free time these days. 

With all my new free time, I'm going to try making some more targeted improvements to the site to help improve speed and reduce some of our operating costs. Given how old the tech is, I don't know how much longer the current implementation will be able to run, so I will be looking into options for porting it to a more modern and less custom content management system. If you have suggestions, please let me know. I can't promise I'll be able to implement them, but don't let that stop you!

Thanks again to all our loyal members who visit and post regularly! 

Thank you for that great work over the years and for spending lot of your free time for this community!

Jason,

a super huge thanks for keeping this site alive: I believe it is the only site which has comprehensive archival and ongoing information on our beloved instrument.

Thank you so much Jason!  Your TW is such a tremendous gift to the community!

      I don’t do Facebook or Twitter but I check Theremin World multiple times a day.  Great site.  Thank you for all your work.  It is appreciated.
Thanks 

Hello Jason.
I discovered this forum only a few weeks ago.
It is a fantastic database about theremin as well as an excellent opportunity to exchange with other thereminists.

However, I don't know what improvements you made but, since today, the pages load a little slower than before.
Not a problem, actually, but each page takes 3-4 seconds to load when it was almost immediate before.

Thank you Jason for all your work and allowing Theremin World to be a wild new frontier. Remember many years ago we had a contest for giving T-shirts away. Yes I also notice the recent slight slowdown, like a delay in connecting with the server... slow response?

RS Theremin

Christopher

However, I don't know what improvements you made but, since today, the pages load a little slower than before.Not a problem, actually, but each page takes 3-4 seconds to load when it was almost immediate before.

Sorry about that! Where are you located? The changes I made were to host most images on the site with a content distribution network that has 300+ replicas around the world. It’s supposed to figure out where you are and serve the from whatever server is closest to you. It sounds like I have some more investigating to do.

I'm located in France, near Paris.
Today, everything is OK.
The slow downloads I noticed yesterday have probably nothing to do with the changes you made.
Sorry about that.

Oh good, I'm glad it's better now. I think the issue might be that the first time the distribution network needs to load the files for each region, it might be a little slower, but after that it should continue to be faster. 

A side benefit is that this reduces the bandwidth used by the main server, lowering our monthly operating costs by a little bit.