Recently read about these two, not sure which one i should switch to from Apache....im looking into optimization of my server and forums.....appreciate feedback
Nginx is free and is very very strong! that is my expiriance. I never used LiteSpeed but i see on the site that they sell it and price are too expensive. Anyway, Apache can be also optimized without use nginx or litespeed
Generally, nginx is used as proxy web server and free one whereas litespeed is commercial web server basically used in very optimized environment.
What forum software you using vb? , how many concurrent visitors you have? which server configurations you using ?
Maybe consider also to optimize PHP. Configure your forum to use memcached, will be better if you have same GB of RAM
i have nginx + php-fpm + xcache installed on one of my VPSs, it's better than apache, so far i haven't found any issue yet, i'd like to try litespeed but maybe someday, coz litespeed is too expensive for me if you can get more with free, so why should pay?
Each of these systems have their merits. Nginx is a lightweight system (though growing in functionality) that is ideally suited for handling very specific tasks. I've used it to deliver large files, static content and as a reverse proxy, but Varnish and Squid tend to do better in this area. Litespeed is a full feature web platform that when properly tuned can help a site immensely. However, in dealing with sites large (~100 million pv/mo) to small I often find that tuning code and database backend can usually give you more bang for your efforts. Also take a look at lighttpd. Another very capable lightweight HTTP server. I use it for static files and have cranked it up to push out ~200Mbit/sec on modest hardware.