Why is my forum so slow?

[Cazzzidy]

Hey guys,

I have a pretty medium sized but full featured forum. I am switching from phpBB and am about to take it live.

The problem is, the site is SLOW. I don't remember it being like this before, but I did the big import today. The import went a lot slower than normal and hung a lot.

Check it out: 190 Revolution

And check out the old phpbb forum running on the SAME server: 190Revolution.net -- Redirecting...
It is a lot faster!

I am running the following
VB 3.6 with vbStyles.com Aria theme
PhotoPost Pro
vbAdvanced CMPS
vbAdvanced Links Directory
FlashChat with Flash Chat Integration and "Who is chatting"
vbSEO 3.0 RC4 with standard configuration.

It seems like the page loads are quick, but it hangs hard before it can get going. The server load with just me tooling around and doing DB work are 1.0X ish. It is running on a shared server at A Small Orange. It is running on Linux with PHP 4.4.4

Does any one have any ideas on how I can trouble shoot or improve this problem? Do you think vbSEO is contributing to this problem? How can I tell?

Cassidy

[majordude]

I've got something on ASO and it seems slow to me too. I can't prove it but it's a feeling I've got.

Your's is SUPER SLOW though.

What level do you have over there? Medium?

Maybe it's all the images you have to create your site. vB doesn't provide a size to the browser (IE, Foxfire, etc.) so it has to figure it out on its own. I'm just guessing.

And where/how did you get RC4?!

[briansol]

According to his footer, he's on RC3. I think it was a typo. RC4 is FAR from stable at this point, and even if he could get it, I wouldn't recommend it be run on a live forum at this point in time. As you can see, he appears as a 'guest' even though hes logged in. There's a dozen other issues going around as well.

The site, is super slow.
ping times were fine, however, so i' don't think its a network issue.

Do you have any static pages? if not make one... this may help you determine if its your database slowing things down.
Also, did you run the clean-up steps at the end of the Impex procedure?

[briansol]

it also appears you have some vBa issues...

Powered by: vBadvanced Links Directory v$version

non-parsing vars.


your forum is pretty big.
have you considered moving to a VPS? it may be time.
1 ad on there should pay for it

[majordude]

Also, did you run the clean-up steps at the end of the Impex procedure?

What is Impex?

[Brandon Sheley]

What is Impex?

it's a tool to import forums, threads, post, and members from other script.. ie phpbb2 ipb mybb etc...

btw, i posted a thread with some optimizing tips at vb.org to this same user and post..

[majordude]

Okay, good, I didn't import anything so I must not have used it or forgotten to clean things up!

[Cazzzidy]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the thoughtful responses.

And no, I do not have RC4. I am running RC3, that was a typo.

And thank you Loco, I checked out the thread and followed all of the tips. I didn't confirm wether my host has gzip, but I presumed they do because they seem to have EVERYTHING installed. I turned compression off and thought I noticed an improvement. Now I am starting to wonder, it seems slow again. Does having compression turned off when gzip is NOT installed caused problems?

And yes, I did the cleanups at the end of the imports. I had to do two consecutive imports and then a user import (to get avatars.) I did everything right, as far as I know, including updating counters and database maintenance.

I've done multiple imports before and never had this problem.

The site is almost as slow running the default skin. It is a wierd kind of slow... It hangs for awhile, then loads quickly. I am suspecting its a database or vbseo issue.

I will make a static page with a lot of content and see what happens.

Cassidy

[Cazzzidy]

An interesting note: I was getting timeouts trying to a large file transfer via FTP. Makes me think it is A Small Orange. But why is the phpBB forum (190Revolution.net -- Redirecting...) quick?

Doesn't make sense.

[majordude]

Turn off vBSEO (don't uninstall it) and see what happens.

I've been having problems FTPing to ASO too. I finally have resorted to using cpanel's file manager. (TIP: zip up everything, upload it through file manager, unzip it, delete zip file)

[majordude]

One more thing, do you have Zend or Ioncube?

[Ace Shattock]

I had several forums at ASO... despite many queires to their Tech guys, apparently a Server Load of over 3 was 'usual'.

Since moving to a new Server (away from ASO), I see loads of 0.00 most of the time.

[majordude]

Ace, how hard is it to move a vBulletin site? Can I simply go to cpanel, download a full backup, go to another host and have them restore it?

(I'm thinking that this sounds too simple...)

[Brandon Sheley]

Can I simply go to cpanel, download a full backup, go to another host and have them restore it?

yesm but you can restore it yourself if the new host has cpanel

[majordude]

Will it recreate the databases too?