I've had problems with the site running slow and I figured out one of the problems. The ventrilo status box was taking a long time to load the status of the vent server. This was making the whole site take forever to load every time you refreshed, or clicked on a link. With IE7 the top bar would load fine, but the rest of the page would wait for the vent status. With Firefox 3.0.3 the page would load fine up to the vent status box. What I mean by this is that the vent status box is on the right side of the site, under the calendar. Everything on the left side of the site would load, and the calendar on the right would load but that's it until the vent status updated.
I checked my vent server on the hosting company website and the status loaded slow there too. I put in a ticket with them to see why it takes so long to update. Here is the script I was using: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://clientcp.darkstarllc.com/ventrilo-status/index.php?security=true&outputType=JS&stamp=YToyOntzOjI6ImlwIjtzOjEyOiI3MC4zMi40Mi4xNjYiO3M6NDoicG9ydCI7czo0OiI4ODgzIjt9"></script>
I'm posting all of this in case anyone else had this problem, but I also have a question. Why would this slow down the whole website? I mean, shouldn't the page load regardless of whether the vent server status box is updated? I wouldn't mind if the box was blank for the time it took to update, as long as the rest of the page loaded. It just seems strange that the whole site stops to wait for this one status box.
This is actually the third response for the vent status slowing down a site, and each time it was hosted on darkstarllc.com. I'm not sure what they've done to their site, but ultimately, this is one of the drawbacks of using a third party ventrilo script.
I'd recommend simply removing their vent script and using our built-in Vent script by going to Admin > Menus > Ventrilo/TeamSpeak Server Status.
Our script won't slow own your site, as the data gets cached and the status is updated behind the scenes, rather than retrieving it live from the javascript that you're using.
The problem with javascript is that the browser processes the javascript as it's found in the page, which means if you've got a script that's slow in the middle of the page, the rendering will pause at that part in the page while it waits for the script to be downloaded and run.
OK, I activated the built-in vent script as you suggested. I hadn't been using the built in one because it put it in a fixed size box with a scroll bar on the side and I like how the java script expanded the box to fit the content.
In any case I ended up with the status showing up twice in the box, which I thought was odd. So I went into menu admin and noticed that the ventrilo status box I created with the java script was still there, just disabled. I deleted it and the second instance of the status went away.
Just thought it was strange that a script in a box that I created, and disabled was causing this.
