Why wont the pages load [Intermittent outages from extremely high traffic]

[DessDess]

Idk if it's cause if the recent maintenance check but for some reason pages won't load now. It worked fine previous. Im using chrome but i tried opera too and it doesn't work there either

 

[BraveDude8]

I have been having this issue too, for quite a long time. I just never bothered making a post about it until now. Just because I (and others) aren't posting about it, doesn't mean it isn't happening. Rather than post about it, I usually just check a different site for the chapter.

I don't know what you guys are doing in the backbone, I'm stating what I have been experiencing in my android device for this long. At first I thought it was my problem given I couldn't reproduce this problem on PC and it was intermitent, but I couldn't find any reason and tried many different things on my part to fix this, so maybe it's related.

Describe in detail the exact issue you are experiencing, on what device/browser/OS/versions of everything, and ignoring anything from the last month or so because the issues in this thread will get in the way.

If there was a widespread issue with Android devices, it would have been reported by now; Firefox has a far smaller userbase and the open thread for Firefox QUIC issues has 44 replies, something for Android as a whole wouldn't go unnoticed.

 

[jeezits]

Describe in detail the exact issue you are experiencing, on what device/browser/OS/versions of everything, and ignoring anything from the last month or so because the issues in this thread will get in the way.

If there was a widespread issue with Android devices, it would have been reported by now; Firefox has a far smaller userbase and the open thread for Firefox QUIC issues has 44 replies, something for Android as a whole wouldn't go unnoticed.

Will any bug reports people make get dismissed out of hand because it doesn't affect you, or will you actually use the device in question to try and fix a bug that many, many people are very clearly having hence the existence of this thread?

Each individual complaint is actually many, many more people having the problem but not wanting to bother going to the effort to report it, especially when it's clear the staff will gaslight them with BEPKAC and the existence of aggregators that work perfectly fine with adblockers. I come here because it's the first place for lots of groups, and has good search features that let me find new titles I haven't heard of before. But for many people, they're just going to go to a site that works versus one that clearly doesn't with a staff that pretends all the issues are user error.

Oh and I just switched to Chrome for a minute as a lark to see if it actually is Firefox, and got treated to the same orange ring of failure like everyone else.


edit: do I need to use smaller words, HelperHand?

 

[BraveDude8]

Will any bug reports people make get dismissed out of hand because it doesn't affect you, or will you actually use the device in question to try and fix a bug that many, many people are very clearly having hence the existence of this thread?

Oh and I just switched to Chrome for a minute as a lark to see if it actually is Firefox, and got treated to the same orange ring of failure like everyone else.

Please actually read the message you're responding to.

Describe in detail the exact issue you are experiencing, on what device/browser/OS/versions of everything, and ignoring anything from the last month or so because the issues in this thread will get in the way.

I am trying to diagnose an issue that hasn't been reported before by asking for more details, and you're accusing me of "dismissing it out of hand"?

 

[jeezits]

Please actually read the message you're responding to.

I am trying to diagnose an issue that hasn't been reported before by asking for more details, and you're accusing me of "dismissing it out of hand"?

Everyone across all platforms are telling you pages aren't loading. Asking people to tell you detailed reports on whatever device, OS, or browser they're using is meaningless. Images aren't being served. That's the problem, it's not a user error and never will be. Best of luck figuring it out, you might want to restrict access until you figure out how to get a server to uh serve an image file since that seems to be a complicated process for y'all.

 

[BraveDude8]

Everyone across all platforms are telling you pages aren't loading. Asking people to tell you detailed reports on whatever device, OS, or browser they're using is meaningless. Images aren't being served. That's the problem, it's not a user error and never will be. Best of luck figuring it out, you might want to restrict access until you figure out how to get a server to uh serve an image file since that seems to be a complicated process for y'all.

Read the fucking posts, dude. Both of those users are talking about experiencing issues that have been occurring for a long time, and are outside the scope of the issues discussed in this thread. I'm trying to find out more about this distinct issue which demonstrably has nothing to do with the issues in this thread so I can actually look into it, so it doesn't get confused with the more recent unrelated issues that this thread is about.

It's been like 6+ months on android devices

I have been having this issue too, for quite a long time. I just never bothered making a post about it until now. Just because I (and others) aren't posting about it, doesn't mean it isn't happening. Rather than post about it, I usually just check a different site for the chapter.

Feel free to explain to me how an issue that a user has experienced for 6+ months can be related to an issue that started three weeks ago. I'll wait.

 

[Nyaako]

Everyone across all platforms are telling you pages aren't loading. Asking people to tell you detailed reports on whatever device, OS, or browser they're using is meaningless. Images aren't being served. That's the problem, it's not a user error and never will be. Best of luck figuring it out, you might want to restrict access until you figure out how to get a server to uh serve an image file since that seems to be a complicated process for y'all.

It's already difficult for the mods and supporters to solve these sorts of issues while not being paid a single dime, penny, etc. for a website where people read manga for free. Being an asshole isn't helping at all and it certainly won't make the fix/repair process go any faster.

 

[kreahleiser]

Similar issues to others in this thread. Pages load but images don't. Takes anywhere between 10 seconds and 60 seconds per image, seems to load the images in sequential order.

Experiencing the issue on mobile and PC.

Mobile browsers tested: Chrome, Opera GX, Brave
PC browsers tested: Chrome, Opera GX, Edge

Tried different VPN locations through Surfshark, including everywhere from Andorra to South Korea. Same issue at varying levels.

Cache nuking didn't help. Tried routing my connection through my mobile data carrier instead of my ISP, loads slightly faster but it's still a 30 second wait. As weird as it sounds, changing tabs on mobile seems to speed it up but might be placebo. Tried logging out of my account on the main site just in case, not much effect.

Hope this is helpful, but unsure if just one instance will help.

Edit: Can't say if it's been the exact same cause but I have noted some loading issues over the past.. 3 weeks maybe? It would come and go throughout the day. Again, no idea if it's the same cause.

 

[HelperHand]

@jeezits not really is just that you are the point that due to frustration you are mixing the things and no longer care to listen to what people are talking, they know that there is an intermittent chapter loading issue since weeks ago, in the status page they have never changed the status to resolved, the detail is that there are other users reporting issues in this thread from experiences of months ago, which is another issue besides the current one and it will be difficult to troubleshoot, the one in Firefox is separated to the current one

 

[BraveDude8]

Similar issues to others in this thread. Pages load but images don't. Takes anywhere between 10 seconds and 60 seconds per image, seems to load the images in sequential order.

Using this as a lodestone to make an updated answer for the thread:

Normal website functionality with minor to severe image delays is the current expected behaviour under high site load. Previously expected behaviour until a week ago was the entire site crashing and becoming inaccessible for several hours, for comparison. Developers are continuing to work on further fixes.

 

[Justletmesearch_pricks]

Read the fucking posts, dude. Both of those users are talking about experiencing issues that have been occurring for a long time, and are outside the scope of the issues discussed in this thread. I'm trying to find out more about this distinct issue which demonstrably has nothing to do with the issues in this thread so I can actually look into it, so it doesn't get confused with the more recent unrelated issues that this thread is about.



Feel free to explain to me how an issue that a user has experienced for 6+ months can be related to an issue that started three weeks ago. I'll wait.

Man some of these people are just obtuse AF.
I feel for ya bro.

 

[Roler]

Though honestly I feel like they should bring back measures like on v3 where you could only search with an account or something else to prevent scrapers/bots since it's really hard to believe the bulk of the traffic is all legit users.

Considering that the affected component is the image CDN and not the API, I doubt that'll help much, and bots don't need access to site search in order to find chapter links, they can just use an internet search engine.

v3 search was just bad (and easily DDOS-able), unlike the v5 one.

The only real solution I see here is trying to slowly improve hardware (because of budget constraints) and bullying the servers to work overtime while trying to squeeze as much juice as possible without crashing the whole site...

Some security improvements might help (assuming that most of them weren't caught with the stuff already in-place and aren't real users with 1st/3rd party clients), but they could come at the cost of more false bans.

One solution might be putting the functionality of reading chapters under a login wall, but I assume A LOT of people wouldn't like that and it might decrease the site accessibility and traffic by too much.

 

[HaikenEdge]

Read the fucking posts, dude. Both of those users are talking about experiencing issues that have been occurring for a long time, and are outside the scope of the issues discussed in this thread. I'm trying to find out more about this distinct issue which demonstrably has nothing to do with the issues in this thread so I can actually look into it, so it doesn't get confused with the more recent unrelated issues that this thread is about.



Feel free to explain to me how an issue that a user has experienced for 6+ months can be related to an issue that started three weeks ago. I'll wait.

I know you're a mod so you can't just ignore the guy, but he's so toxic that I've had to just block the guy because he was straight up ruining my enjoyment of this otherwise excellent community.

 

[RockyRose]

Considering that the affected component is the image CDN and not the API, I doubt that'll help much, and bots don't need access to site search in order to find chapter links, they can just use an internet search engine.

v3 search was just bad (and easily DDOS-able), unlike the v5 one.

The only real solution I see here is trying to slowly improve hardware (because of budget constraints) and bullying the servers to work overtime while trying to squeeze as much juice as possible without crashing the whole site...

Some security improvements might help (assuming that most of them weren't caught with the stuff already in-place and aren't real users with 1st/3rd party clients), but they could come at the cost of more false bans.

One solution might be putting the functionality of reading chapters under a login wall, but I assume A LOT of people wouldn't like that and it might decrease the site accessibility and traffic by too much.

5-10 chapters an hour per IP not logged in

 

[Zhyren]

On my iPad I can read few series fine that I was reading on a tab. Images load and all. However, trying to use any of the site otherwise, including direct links to chapters, I get a quick attempt to load ( like a blink) and then just white page.
have tried to clear cache and cookies.
iPad OS 18.3.2 , chrome

 

[Atifus]

On my iPad I can read few series fine that I was reading on a tab. Images load and all. However, trying to use any of the site otherwise, including direct links to chapters, I get a quick attempt to load ( like a blink) and then just white page.
have tried to clear cache and cookies.
iPad OS 18.3.2 , chrome

Weird , Try updating to iPadOS 18.4 and see if that fixes it

 

[Roler]

5-10 chapters an hour per IP not logged in

Oh boy, that would come with a fuck ton of IP bans - people binge-reading, people reading 1 page chapters, people downloading chapters, people opening multiple chapters in a new tab hoping one would load, multiple people sharing the same IP because they're blocked (country/ISP blocks) or have routing issues in general and need to use a VPN...

which would create a whole new problem, though, might not be the worst possible thing to try during peak hours

also, not sure how much auth on chapter endpoints would impact caching (which would have a contradictory effect)

 

[Naoroji]

This would result in 100% downtime instead of 95% normal operation and 5% slower image loading, taking the site down entirely would have no impact on the ability of the developers to implement fixes.
We've gone from several hours of downtime a day to about an hour of slower image loading in a day, and we're working on further mitigations.

I understand completely, and it wasn't exactly a very serious suggestion... Mangadex is otherwise one of my favourite websites, I just have a pet peeve with things that don't work well -- I much prefer them to either work, or not, lol.

Much appreciation in general to the entire Mangadex team! For feeding my manga addiction. 🤣

 

[anonaddict]

Everyone across all platforms are telling you pages aren't loading. Asking people to tell you detailed reports on whatever device, OS, or browser they're using is meaningless. Images aren't being served. That's the problem, it's not a user error and never will be. Best of luck figuring it out, you might want to restrict access until you figure out how to get a server to uh serve an image file since that seems to be a complicated process for y'all.

when you go yell at the doctor that you're not feeling well, he would be able to help you faster if you told him about the stick you have up your ass

 

[IotaCS]

[ ... ] people downloading chapters [ ... ]

This would especially be an issue right now. Personally, the time I have for reading manga happens to perfectly align with the time that the image loading issues tend to present themselves, so until it's resolved I've taken to downloading the chapters in advance so I can read them later. I imagine I'm not the only person doing this.

Also a note on your other response - improving hardware is absolutely not the only way to improve load times on a site like this and should really be a last resort. We recently drastically improved load times on one of our services at work (not the same sort of service as MD at all, but it was loading data through a CDN which was getting absolutely rammed with requests, so similar issue) without spinning up a single extra server. That said, I haven't looked into what the infrastructure of this site looks like at all, so I don't know what strategies they may have already implemented.

 

[Roler]

Also a note on your other response - improving hardware is absolutely not the only way to improve load times on a site like this and should really be a last resort. We recently drastically improved load times on one of our services at work (not the same sort of service as MD at all, but it was loading data through a CDN which was getting absolutely rammed with requests, so similar issue) without spinning up a single extra server. That said, I haven't looked into what the infrastructure of this site looks like at all, so I don't know what strategies they may have already implemented.

Yeah, that's basically what I meant to say: try to use the existing hardware as much as possible (via software) and only upgrade it once you hit a hard limit.

But MangaDex already heavily relies on software optimisation and caching...

If you want, you can read https://mangadex.dev/mangadex-v5-infrastructure-overview, although, it's already a bit old (iirc DDOS Guard isn't really used anymore) so I'm not sure how relevant it is.