http://forum.onecenter.com is a free message board service that you might want to look at. not quite the same structure as zonkboard, but it's worked well for other forums (or is that fora?).
Aziz, I like the zonkboard. I wonder if there's a way to have them correct the problem. They must have some answers or suggestions. I'm sure you're already on it and know a lot more than I. Thanks for the hard work!
Didn't someone suggest putting the ZonkBoard in an iframe so that the rest of the page won't be delayed along with it? Or is that already done?
nope, the zonkboard is already in an iframe 
forum.onecenter.com is the old-style messageboard thing, not a cool inline piece like teh ZB. any other ideas?
I think the culprit is blogspot. Everyone on blogspot has been having this trouble lately.
true, onecenter isn't inline, it's threaded. i personally prefer that, but it wouldn't work well inside an iframe, so it would have to be external to the blog itself.
it also has ads, but those can be removed for a fee.
Whatever the problem is, please do something about it as soon as possible. It's brutally slow for all connection speeds and it must be unbearable for people on a dial-up. This is a great site for people to learn about Dean. Let's not risk losing them because they, a) think the site is down, or b) can't stand to wait.
every single page i visit on blogspot.com has been slow as sh*t for a few weeks. I don't believe the zonkboard is the culprit. I like having the zonkboard because readers can submit links for us to use on the blog. I wouldn't remove it, and again, I think blogspot is the culprit.
i think it might be time to move this page to a new server. aziz, i can provide the space and bandwidth for a small fee (hell, i'd pay the fee just to get us off blogspot).
I know teh arguments for moving to MT, but then we take on a whole new set of costs (like bandwidth, serve hosting, etc). I know youre willinng to fund it, but wouldnt your money be better spent as a direct donation to the campaign? (or on Dean Stuff) - i anticipate many of the blogger problems to be resolved once they roll out v2.0. Ive done some beta testing of their new system and Im really impresssed. Staying on blogger is a vote of confidence in them for me, and as they bring voice to oppressed people in Iran as well as providing teh essential tools that revolutionize politics (as Dean's campaign has brilliantly shown) in America. Its an ideological position I guess.
i think we will keep teh ZB (or find something similar). One of teh culprits on teh DeanBlog load times is alos the long list of links, the various images and graphics, etc. Do people want to see reductio0n of teh site clutter?
I might be able to hook you up with free hosting for part of your board. I emailed you a few weeks ago Aziz.
If the ZonkBoard is the issue, I for one never read it, and therefore wouldn't miss it. Perhaps there can be a link to a dedicated page for those who do read it.
Well, Atrios's site is also on Blogspot and it loads faster than this one -- for some reason. Maybe blogspot pays more attention to their "stars".
But removing some of the animated gifs (could replace with just a single image, maybe) would help a bit. Maybe d reducing the number of posts on the page would help too.
I hope you can switch to Blogger 2.0. One of my friends works for Blogger (and now Google) and they are a good company.
The Zonkboard frequently misbehaves in my experience. I like daily open threads like on Kos better.
I agree with Chase -- open threads are FAR more interesting and easier to use than Zonkboard.
I agree with chase and Nonpartisan.
I'm for open threads, too. The Zonkboard is annoying.
I like the Zonkboard. Note that recent slowness has more to do with blogger than anything else, they're redoing servers and its screwing over all sites on blogger, including mine.
If it's the zonk board, ZONK it!!
At least I now know I'm not the only one.
I like both. Keep the Zonkboard and have more open threads. Sometimes the Zboard will point to a comment I might otherwise miss so its useful. The site is a little slow but not too bad. If there's a better board (or blog for that matter) system out there, go for it. I think the site could use some help interface-wise. Why don't you make the Blogger template available to the public, we can tweak it, send it back and you can pick the one you like.
I don't use the Zonkboard. But, what I do try to use is RSS. If you make any changes, please don't lose the RSS feed.
As a matter of fact, the current configuration of the RSS feed still breaks fairly often. It appears that if there are special characters like question marks or ampersands in the title, the RSS feed generates a parse error.
BTW, when the RSS feed is working, I watch this blog through LiveJournal. Check out http://www.livejournal.com/users...users/dean2004/
to see the basic feed, or http://www.livejournal.com/users...s/aldon/
friends to see how many different feeds get mixed together.
Fastloading pages are way more enjoyable! Lose the Zonkboard.