We know about this already, and are working about it. There are (at least) several reasons why it’s slow:

1) We’ve not optimised the queries (at all). We’re using Rails’ ActiveRecord to persist large composite object and are making about 100 MySQL queries to load the homepage. We’re going to make it so that there are no DB calls at all when the page loads (all served from Cache).

2) We’re importing about 20 JavaScript files into the homepage, none of which are compressed

3) Our Server setup kinda sucks, we’re switching soon.

Bear with us, we’ll get it sorted out.

—Neil

Did you know the site is a little slow?

Just kidding. Great work on getting alpha launched. So proud…..

Here’s what we’ve done so far on the performance front (since initial alpha release):

1. We’ve put in a little effort in optimizing queries—still more to be done from that angle.
2. We’ve started implementing some caching, which is helping out tremendously on performance.
3. We’ve recently compressed all our javascripts and stylesheets into one file.
4. We’re now on a hosting service which gives us more flexibility in performance optimization.

Of course, this is a continuous work in progress, making this service as fast as possible is a top priority.

—Calvin