WordPress MU

Hi all,

I've searched the forums and can't find anything similar to this problem... we've just installed WPMU 1.2.2 on a VMware instance (512 megs of RAM, and it's the only thing running) and I'm seeing some odd behavior when connecting on the local intranet:

Pages load quickly in Firefox and overall response time is excellent. However, when I open IE 6 or 7 up on the same computer, and point it at the same page (wp-admin for instance), it seems to hang while waiting for a response. If I stop/reload, it page pops up quickly.

We're using vanilla WPMU, with no plugins or extra themes.

Of course it doesn't behave this way on my home VMware box, with the exact same configuration.

Any thoughts? (And yes, I'd love it if all the staff and faculty here would just switch over to Firefox and be done with it ... *sigh*)

Did you see the thread on the front page with a number of suggestions and questions on this topic? (You may have since you list your environment but you left a lot unanswered)

http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=5381

How about a link as well?

Which version of IE are you using?

drmike: I did see the post, hence the description of the environment and the note about using a vanilla instance of WPMU with no plugins or themes.

I can't give you a link unfortunately because it's currently on our internal network.

As for versions of IE, I think I mentioned IE 6 and 7 in the previous post. If you want exact versions, then:

IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254 (lol)

I haven't contaminated my work machine with IE 7 so I can't give you that one.

I realize I don't have much in the way of details to provide, but that's mostly because it's running on a vanilla instance of RedHat Enterprise 4, with the default MySQL, Apache and PHP settings. Versions of each are:

PHP 4.3.9
Apache 2.0.52
MySQL 5.0.19

and like I said, it loads nice and fast in Firefox ... so that makes me think that it's not a WPMU installation issue at all, but something particular to IE (no surprise). A solution would be great, but I'm actually just curious whether anyone has seen similar behavior before?

I think we've identified the source of the problem. Upon reviewing firewall logs, it looks as though our WPMU box is making outbound HTTP connections to:

coltrane.wordpress.org
208.66.64.132 (appears to be Technorati)

whenever someone begins writing a new post. Our firewalls default to blocking outbound port 80... so WPMU sits and spins until these connections timeout. FireFox displays the page while this is happening, whereas IE seems to wait until the timeout has occurred before it displays anything.

So the question is... why are these two sites being contacted by WPMU when post-new.php is loaded? I could see contacting them afterwards to send an update ping, etc... but even before the page has been edited?

Ah. OK. So what looks to be happening is that WPMU is contacting both coltrane.wordpress.org (Gears of War fan there I take it?) and Technorati (208.66.64.132) in order to display news on the Dashboard (makes sense).

In our case, our firewall is blocking outbound http requests from that server (we are a university, and planning to deploy it externally soon, but are just testing right now).

So, WPMU sits and spins until the connection attempt times out. In the meantime, Netscape/Firefox renders the rest of the page, giving us the impression that everything is happening quickly, while IE waits until WPMU times out before displaying the entire page, making it seem as though the system runs slow for IE.

The solution was simple enough - just enable outbound connections to those two servers for the time being until we're ready to open the site up completely.

Does this make sense to those developer-types out there? Quick question: why contact Technorati? Is it for the Other Wordpress News portion of the dashboard?

Why contact Technorati?

Incoming links.