MJSfoto1956 said:
There is some evidence that "some" popular JavaScript libraries contain code that "is doing an inordinate amount of work in the background". You will see this when you leave a webpage open in your browser and out of the blue your CPU spikes for several minutes -- I've even seen 120% CPU utilization which is downright scary for a single webpage to suck that much energy from a computer. A quick look reveals that it is always a specific webpage rather than the browser itself -- however the behavior can be seen from any one of tens of dozens of many popular websites. AliExpress pages are notorious for this behavior for example, but they are hardly alone. So what might this code be doing "being the scenes"? Who knows? Bitcoin mining perhaps? Whatever.
I bring this up simply because one must take care with adding something "modern and sexy" to your website -- it could be that you are inadvertently causing grief to unsuspecting users of your offering. I for one like ES just the way it is.
Michael
I think you'll find that it is not the libraries per-se causing your browser to consume inordinate amounts of CPU, memory and bandwidth.
It is what people are doing with said libraries - if a library was doing any of what you said, there'd be a huge stink and the library would be abandoned rapidly.
What's really happening (in most instances) is that websites are tracking you in every which way they can.
For instance:
The Verge shows a tracking-consent message when visiting the site from the EU. Most people will click “I Accept” to make it go away, but if you don’t and hide the message via CSS, you won’t be tracked and the site is way faster:
32 vs 5 secs load time
61 vs 2 JS files
2 vs 1 MB
Source: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/27/tracking-scripts-the-verge
There are websites that consume upwards of 10MB of data in tracking on a single page - with multiple different ad serving platforms and user analytics.
The amount of advert JS abuse is getting a bit absurd too.
Having said all of that, none of this should apply to Endless Sphere - as far as I'm aware (I haven't bothered to look deeply) there's no advert platform or user tracking analytics (aside GA which is fairly lightweight).
Utilising a new forum or CMS should make no difference to this - if you're not going out of your way to monetise your users.
Anything open source that attempted to do so on the sly would be swiftly (and rightly) crucified for doing so.
If we can get the guys who are getting your CPU to 120% to build batteries, I think we'll be onto a winner though.
In other news: please keep FB tracking/login/anything the heck away from here though
Also you could always add optional skins if you were to change the look and feel of the site, that way old users that prefer the old look could then switch to that look and feel - get the best of both worlds.