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Things you've done to get page load times lower

Discussion in 'vBulletin' started by tavenger5, Jul 23, 2013.

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  1. #1
    I operate several vbulletin forums and unfortunately page load time has always been an issue. Here are some things I've done to help:
    • Installed vboptimise running with xcache
    • Moved all static files (except for attachments) to a cdn using multiple cnamed subdomains
    • Optimized css code a bit to remove clutter
    • Loaded images into sprites using this: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=266696 (unfortunately doesn't do showthread)
    • Optimized servers - one database, one web server running litespeed
    • Installed digital point's sphinx search (helps with search query speed anyway)
    So is there anything I'm missing? What have you done to optimize?
     
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    tavenger5, Jul 23, 2013 IP
  2. #2
    One huge thing we did when we were on vBulletin was move the templates into the file system so that they could be pre-compiled by the opcode cacher. That more or less halved our page load times.
     
    digitalpoint, Jul 23, 2013 IP
  3. tavenger5

    tavenger5 Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Shawn, I remember you mentioning this before, but I don't remember where. It was probably vbulletin.com, but the new view for subscribed threads is busted.

    Anyway, how did you go about doing that? I thought templates were already served up through the opcode cacher with vb optimise? I realize they are still being pulled from the database in this case, but I don't see how moving them to the file system would save resources since they'd still be served through the cache regardless. (I remember asking this before too, but don't remember the answer)
     
    tavenger5, Jul 23, 2013 IP
  4. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #4
    The resource hog isn't the DB query to get the templates (so caching doesn't do a ton), rather the templates being a variable that is spun through the eval() PHP function. Since internally the system has to compile the PHP code in order to run (which is what the opcode cachers do... store the pre-compiled versions of PHP files). Otherwise you are compiling a TON of PHP code every page view internally before it can even run.

    It wasn't easy to read/write templates to the file system, it involved a lot of file edits and such... one of these days when I have some time, I'll see if I can go in and package it up as something installable.
     
    digitalpoint, Jul 23, 2013 IP
    Devtard likes this.
  5. tavenger5

    tavenger5 Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Thanks for explaining! I'm sure if you do throw something together you could charge for it.
     
    tavenger5, Jul 24, 2013 IP
  6. tavenger5

    tavenger5 Well-Known Member

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    #6
    btw Shawn - I know you're not interested so much in working on vB anymore, but Dragonbyte did a test after I brought it up to them. It looks like load times were not that different when comparing to the way templates are cached already in vb optimise: http://www.dragonbyte-tech.com/f42/move-templates-file-system-read-them-out-cache-12077/
     
    tavenger5, Jul 28, 2013 IP
  7. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #7
    Well, I'll just have to *very* strongly disagree on that one. :)

    I'm going to wrap up my system at some point, so I'll do some benchmarks again then.
     
    digitalpoint, Jul 28, 2013 IP