How to consider the speed of a forum (and how optmize)

[magnaromagna]

Hello, as you probably know seems Google considering the speed of a website as rank factor. Through GWT it seems that my forum is not running fast, so I', trying to understand how to optmize it. I think it's a "best practice" for every forum admin, so hope someone could help to understand how to make it.

For example I used this tool (siteloadtest.com)

and one of the matter is this:

http://www..../clientscript/vbulletin_important.css?v=386
Element size: 1.7K
Transfer time: 102ms
Compressed to 36%.
Minified version size could be 66%.
Minified & compressed version size could be 27%.

I presume is an issue of each vbulletin board. What means exactly. And how to optimize it?

At the moment the final result is:

Requests per second: 4.31
Small test of concurrent request performance for the page. Allows to estimate (very roughly) current state of the server where the page is hosted. It performs 16 HEAD requests with concurrency of 4. Values less than 5 mean that server is slow right now.

Through another tool (webpagetest.org) I don't understand some issues, for example

Combine static CSS and JS files
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/yui/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo-dom-event.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/yui/connection/connection-min.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/vbulletin_global.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/vbulletin_menu.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/vbulletin_important.css?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../negozio/menutendina/css/dropdown/dropdown.css
FAILED - http://www....../negozio/menutendina/css/dropdown/themes/flickr.com/default.ultimate.css
FAILED - http://www....../negozio/menutendina/css/dropdown/themes/flickr.com/default.css

means that I have to "merge" all theese files? It really make the site faster?


and what means

Use a CDN for all static assets:

FAILED - http://www....../clear.gif
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/vbulletin_global.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/vbulletin_important.css?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/vbulletin_md5.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/vbulletin_menu.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/vbulletin_read_marker.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/yui/connection/connection-min.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../clientscript/yui/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo-dom-event.js?v=386
FAILED - http://www....../cron.php?rand=1294896710

Thank you

[Brian Cummiskey]

minified = removes all white space.
compressed = gz or other zip on the fly

It should be compressed already, and there is a gzip option in the vbadmin cp if your server doesn't have it on.

There is no way to minify without re-coding the vb CSS manager to produce css this way.


I'm not familiar with the head requests, but my site performed
Requests per second: 35.55

So, 4 seems pretty low.




Combine does mean merge. vb4 does a better job of this than vb3 does by far with the cssrollup.php script. It's still not great with javascript though.

each url/link/src request has to do dns lookups, so by putting it all in one place, there is only 1 dns request made (and all the rest that follow, like cookies, cache control, 304 headers, etc)

This really only effects the FIRST page load though, as the browser caches javascript/css.


A full CDN solution is coming with vbseo 3.6 Gold. Stay tuned.

[magnaromagna]

Thanks Brian for all details. I kindly ask some further details:

It should be compressed already, and there is a gzip option in the vbadmin cp if your server doesn't have it on.

How can I check if the server already have enabled it? Through phpinfo?

I'm not familiar with the head requests, but my site performed
Requests per second: 35.55
So, 4 seems pretty low.

May I see your site (in pm if you like), just to understand how is it fast?

Combine does mean merge. vb4 does a better job of this than vb3 does by far with the cssrollup.php script. It's still not great with javascript though.

Do you think is better to upgrade to vb4? The addiotional cost make the difference?
cssrollup.php is included in vb3 or is a mod?

This really only effects the FIRST page load though, as the browser caches javascript/css.

so I have to test with a 2nd or 3rd time to check the "real" speed?

A full CDN solution is coming with vbseo 3.6 Gold. Stay tuned.

Good!

Thank you again

[Brian Cummiskey]

Thanks Brian for all details. I kindly ask some further details:
How can I check if the server already have enabled it? Through phpinfo?

Yes, look for mod_deflate or mod_gzip

May I see your site (in pm if you like), just to understand how is it fast?

PM'ed.

Do you think is better to upgrade to vb4? The addiotional cost make the difference?

It's up to you. I haven't upgraded YET, but likely will in the future. I just have too much custom stuff including a ton of SEO stuff, ads, tempaltes, and so forth to worry about, and I don't really need a CMS, so it's not an urgent item for me.

cssrollup.php is included in vb3 or is a mod?

no, this is just how vb4 produces css, all in one big 'wrapper' file.

so I have to test with a 2nd or 3rd time to check the "real" speed?

You can't... bots/tools don't have a session to save so they download everything everytime. The results you see are basically the worst case scenario.

[Alicia23]

Is there any link between speed of a site and optimization?

[magnaromagna]

Thank you again Brian

Yes, look for mod_deflate or mod_gzip

In phpinfo I see mod_deflate
So in admincp should I have to enable or disable the gzip compression?

You can't... bots/tools don't have a session to save so they download everything everytime. The results you see are basically the worst case scenario.

So, is not "really" required to optimize css/javascript because the problem is only at 1st visit?

[Brian Cummiskey]

Is there any link between speed of a site and optimization?

Yes, speed/load time is a factor in seo.

Thank you again Brian

In phpinfo I see mod_deflate
So in admincp should I have to enable or disable the gzip compression?

No. The one offered in admincp is a php zip (slow) and it should be disabled if your server (way faster) is already doing it for you.

So, is not "really" required to optimize css/javascript because the problem is only at 1st visit?

Nothing is really required, but every little bit does help. It's less of an impact than other items though.

images
css
js (but not ones with a parameter like vb serves to make sure all users have most recent js in use without a hard refresh, ie, file.js?v=385)
and other static files are cached by browsers.

If you use Firebug, you can see on first page load, you get 200's for the items, but on the 2nd request you should see a lot of 304's, which implies that the browser served it from cache. "not modified".

[stanger]

thanks for the link, I ran my site through there and it showed me some great info and I'm in the 1's - thanks again!

[magnaromagna]

After other test (I upgraded the server) one of the issue is the following:

http://www.baltazar.it/images/icons/news.jpg
Element size: 2.4K

Transfer time: 37ms

Optimized version size could be 74%.

No "strong" caching headers (Expires, Cache-Control).

What does it means? Better use .png ?
Thanks

p.s
On the same server there are two main sites:
the vbulletin forum --> Requests per second: 6.67
wordpress blog --> Requests per second: 49.5
So the problem is not the server I presume

[Brian Cummiskey]

You don't necessarily have to change formats, just optimize the image better. ie, jpg 40 is just as clear on this image as jpg 80.



wordpress is FAR lighter in terms of DB usage (and likely db size as well) and will probably always outperform vb, or any forum software for that matter.