Slow Website Performance

Slow performance can happen to everyone from time to time, but it can drive you crazy when it does. Don't worry; it drives us crazy too. We have multiple systems in place to try and maximize the speed of our website and minimize the slowness; however, sometimes the Internet just doesn't cooperate. This article has some basic options you can look into to troubleshoot this issue.

If you are seeing slower-than-normal performance from the StockCharts.com website, there are a couple of things you can do to determine if the problem is on our end, on your end or somewhere in between.

The first thing to do is to determine whether or not you are experiencing similar slow performance on other websites or if it's just at StockCharts. If it is happening around the web, you'll need to look into potentially fixing the issue at your end, as discussed below.

Note: Just because other websites are quick and we are slow doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is on our end. Please try the other troubleshooting steps below to narrow things down further.

If the problem does seem to be limited to StockCharts.com, you can check our Twitter feed to see if other people are reporting problems or if we have sent out any messages about slowness problems. If we are already tweeting about a problem with our site, there's no need to continue troubleshooting on your part; we'll get the issue sorted out in as timely a manner as possible.

This may just be a temporary problem located within the Internet itself. If you haven't made any recent changes to your computer's configuration and the slowness just started today, we suggest waiting for a day to see if things clear up on their own.

If the problem persists for several days or if you have reason to believe there may be a problem with your computer's configuration, then here are some other things you can try:

• Try restarting your computer, especially if you haven't restarted it in a while. This can clear out hung or stuck programs and plug-ins that could be slowing things down.
  
• Check to make sure that internet security programs like Kaspersky and Norton are not causing the problem. They may be needlessly checking our charts and that can cause slowness. If you use Kaspersky, follow the instructions in our article on troubleshooting Kaspersky issues.
  
• Run an Internet speed test at SpeedTest.net. For accurate results, be sure to click on the map and select a Seattle-based server before beginning your test.
  
• Consider changing the DNS server settings on your computer so that it points to the free OpenDNS service instead of your ISP's servers. While this does require a little bit of technical knowledge, many people have reported significant improvement in overall internet speed after making this change. For more information, please see our article on Using OpenDNS.
  
• Trying using a different web browser like Firefox or Google Chrome. If the slowness is due to plugins or a configuration issue with your old browser, switching to a different browser may fix things.
  

If those suggestions don't solve the problem, you'll need to contact your ISP for assistance. If you discover the culprit, please let us know so that we can improve our help documentation.