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Can you explain what problems you're having please other than the ads ?

I have no problems. I have been a paying customer for awhile.

I think the recent renovations you have been under-going have had a toll on the performance of the system.  For example, when you moved the HAL computer chess players to the English systems (about a week or two ago), the system response times were quite slow (not necessarily HAL's move times, but in general, the LAG times were greater, I thought).

Now with the introduction of ads, the load times of java applets has increased quite  bit.. making them a bit more unstable than before.  About 1 time in 3, on the Tactics Trainer, e.g., my move does not get registered, and I have to restart it with Ctrl-F5.  For LiveChess, with load times being long, I get a higher percentage of Aborted Games because my opponent (sometimes human, sometimes HAL) cannot wait for my Java applet to finish initializing the board.

I'm not sure if that is what the original poster is complaining about, but these are my humble observations.  In general, I think you have a great site - a plethora of learning material assembled here.  And, I thank you for putting this all together.  The fees seem quite high...  too high for me to sign up yet.  If it were a yearly fee instead of a monthly fee, I would.  (USCF charges are way too high as well..!)

J. King.

make sure you have a good internet connection (no wifi). also, try using a modern updated browser (best is chrome, second best is firefox, third best is safari. avoid IE). 

finally, try clearing your cache and not having too many other programs running. 

also, you can remove the ads on your own - you know how :)

Erik, you think Chrome is better than Firefox? Son, I am disappoint.

Look at the numbers, it handles JavaScript better than FF, and always has.

Does it do anything else beside handling javascript better?

Chrome scares me (I don't trust Google, at all).

I use I.E. (8, Windows XP, 'light' DSL), and experience only infrequent sound drop-outs in live chess (resolved through closeout and reopening the webpage, once but on one occasion twice was needed). 

Do sound dropouts occur with other browsers?

sftac

I don't know if it's a server issue or what, but when I play against the computer each game reliably follows the same pattern. Response time from the computer goes from ok, to mediocre, to unbearably slow as the game progresses. This is NOT because the position has become progressively more complex. There's some bug somewhere, perhaps on my end, I don't know. I use both chrome and ff. (fwiw chrome loads pages noticeably faster than ff although I had to troubleshoot very slow chrome performance recently and disabled 'optimize internet' in the chrome options as google reccommended (it worked)).

Well, if it's getting progressively slower this sounds like the site computer has a serious design flaw.  Anyone else experiencing this?  (first time I've heard of it, so I'm suspecting it's not the site computer)

Perhaps instead it's some sort of cookie/cache problem on your own PC.

sftac

ps.  Can you adjourn and return to such a game later?  I'd be thinking, see what happens if you switch browsers halfway through the game.  If the game's much faster on the 2nd browser, it's your browser (or how the computer reacts with your browser).

the site computer is a standalone java applet. it does have issues (because it's java and memory intensive :( )

and yes, i think chrome is sleeker and much much faster. but i still use firefox when i need to debug something :)

I use IE and dont have any major problem? Old Dells lap top & desk top. My desk top is really slow, but its ok with live play.

Being in California probably helps you. But, most people shouldn't use IE, it's gotten better recently, but, still, it's just bad.