Forum Discussion
Long wait for initial load of this site
There are numerous topics about slowness of this site going back for years (before recent update, which was already so long ago). But what i am experiencing for the past few months is something different. Every time i come to this site first time and say click a link in RSS feed for one of the blog articles i have to wait up to a minute for it to start loading anything (it shows an empty page and loading animation in the browser). After that it would be loading pages quick (well, normal speed for this site, which is still sluggish). But if i do not browse here for 30 min or longer then again first load will be annoyingly long. It is like there is some load balancer/throttling for each new visitor and you have to stand in line.
6 Replies
I don't think it is my browser or internet connection as this happens on multiple devices (mobile and desktop) and networks. Super annoying having to wait for so long to just read the article or comment, coupled with constant sign ins and no comment content in email notifications it makes me go here less and less. I know that some updates are planned for the end of the year it seems. Hopefully they address these performance issues.
- Allen
Community Manager
wroot ,
As always, thank you for your contributions, page load time is a subjective topic because its dependant on so many variables, some of them Surya_Narayana has explored in his reply here. We actively monitor page load times for site visitors and most pages render within a few seconds at most- our RSS feeds haven't taken longer than 0.8s to render since February for example.
Page load time can also be affected by when you access the community, for example we have regular maintenance slots / updates which can impact site performance but these would usually last maybe an hour at max.
So all that said. is there a problem, well by the fact your posting about it. yes there is. Its a problem we are aware of and we are working with the engineering team to address and it affects how long it takes for something called the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). Both of these are directly tied to how a page loads, see these definitions
First Contentful Paint (FCP) is a web performance metric that measures the time from page load to when the first piece of content (text, image, or canvas) is rendered on the screen, giving users a visual cue that the page is loading.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a core web performance metric that measures the time from when the page starts loading to when the largest visible content element (such as a hero image, video, or large text block) is fully rendered in the viewport.It reflects how quickly the main content becomes visible to the user and is a key indicator of perceived loading speed.
Many factors impact both of these and we have recently made some improvements in them, but we have more work being done over the next few releases.
It's important, however, to highlight that these issues are not the same as the issues we had in the classic UI and have a different root cause.
Anyways I wanted to be transparent with you and hopefully let you know that we have heard the feedback and its under active development.Allen Smith
Technical Lead
Microsoft Tech Community
Thanks for the explanation about the paint performance. I don't know what is happening behind the scenes, but it feels like it is not in the paint phase yet. At least on mobile there is a progress bar of a site loading in Chrome (blue line filling up from left to right). This line doesn't appear for 15-20+ seconds and it is just a blank browser window. Btw, i do not use internal RSS view, when i press the link it always loads the article in external browser. When i go to to Feedly directly occasionally it seems that text is loading instantly for the articles there. It is a weird delay. As if browser is waiting for something before even loading and rendering the page. When it does start to load the page, rendering is pretty fast. For the text and inline images. Hero images (the big images at the top) do take a few more seconds to load. Although it is not like it is rendering and image line by line, it shows an animation of loading and then image appears instantly.
okay. lets wait for updates.hopefully it will resolve.
hi wroot are you referring tech community ms site ? if yes ? The behavior you describe (slow “first load” followed by normal browsing speed, then repeating after being idle for a while) often points to one of the following:
Possible causes
Server-side caching / load balancer warm-up: The site may take extra time to fetch content for a “cold” visitor session before caching improves responsiveness.
Browser cache/session: After being idle, your session may expire, forcing a new handshake with the servers.
DNS or network routing: Delays can also occur if DNS lookups or routing are inconsistent depending on your location.
What you can try
Clear browser cache/cookies and check again.
Try a different browser or incognito session to see if the behavior repeats.
Test on another network (home vs mobile hotspot) to rule out local network/DNS slowness.
If possible, capture a trace (F12 Developer Tools → Network tab) during the slow load to see where the delay occurs.
Next steps
If this continues, I recommend reporting it via the Feedback link at the bottom of the Tech Community page, and include details such as:
Approximate time when the delay happens
Browser version and OS
Screenshots or network trace if available
This will help the platform team investigate further, especially if it relates to load balancing or session caching.
