Reducing Forums Load

My forum causes load on the host server, how can I solve this problem?

One of the most common problems that the customers and hosting companies experience is that some forums consume server resources whether they are limited or unlimited.

You may find a new forum that causes load on the server, and there are larger forums on the same server that do not cause the same load. It depends on many factors that we will try to mention the most important ones of them; some of the factors that consume the server resources are:

• Products

Many of the forum owners install alot of products without paying attention to its quality or its suitability for their own version as long as it works. This is a common mistake that many forum owners do; being active doesn’t mean that the product is suitable for the forum, as there are some products that were programmed according to old versions and may work on new versions but not with the same efficiency, or the product may be programmed improperly and may cause problems or conflict with other products.

So we recommend the following:

1. Try using the necessary products only for your forum as much as possible.
2. Do not add a product that isn’t suitable for your forum version.
3. Follow up the updates of your products.
4. Try not to install unknown-source products.

• Styles:

Styles represent another factor of the website acceleration after  products; some styles are designed with tables without considering the pictures size. Besides, there are styles that don’t fit your version; so this makes the forum view slow along with distorting it and causing errors.

So we recommend the following:

1. When you use a free style, try to choose a suitable one for your forum version.
2. When you use a free style, try to choose a style distributed by CSS.
3. Try not to use styles that have a lot of pictures.
4. Try not to use styles that have a lot of flash effects.

• Storing CSS styles on files system:

1. Login to the forum management control panel.
2. Options >> forum options >> style and language options.
3. Do you want to store CSS styles as files? (Yes).

Note: 777 permissions must be given to the clientscript folder inside vbulletin_css.

• Storing attachments on files system:

1. Login to the forum management control panel.
2. Attached files >> attachments storing path.
3. Choose transferring the items from the database to the website main folder.
4. Create a file in the forum folder, and give it the 777 permission to store the files in it.
5. Type the folder name that was created in the previous step as shown in the picture attached is the folder name.
6. Determine the number of attachments to be transferred at once.

• Settings:

This point is one of the most difficult points to be addressed in solving load problems, as a particular setting in a particular forum may cause load, but in another forum may be perfect, for example: (in case of activating the option of minimizing the pictures of attachments on a forum that doesn’t use pictures as attachments, it won’t cause any load; but in case of using it on another forum that uses the same option with picture attachments, it may cause load).

So we recommend the following:

1. Do not activate all forum options if you don’t need them.
2. Do not activate an option without knowing its function, and you can use the (Help) icon in the control panel.

Datastore activation:

Datastore activation is one of the properties added to the version (3.6.4), where it store data that needn’t rebuild every time.

For example:

Sections cache - section options and permissions are placed in a sequential matrix.

Options cache - forum options and information are placed in a sequential matrix.

Profile fields - profile fields and options are placed in a sequential matrix.

Datastore information is stored by default in datastore table inside the database. However, through the config.php file, you can change the method of storing information, as appropriate, allowing you to improve performance.

// ****** DATASTORE CACHE CONFIGURATION *****
// Here you can configure different methods for caching datastore items.
// vB_Datastore_Filecache - to use includes/datastore/datastore_cache.php
// vB_Datastore_APC - to use APC
// vB_Datastore_XCache - to use XCache
// vB_Datastore_Memcached - to use a Memcache server, more configuration below
// $config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Filecache';

First, You have to determine the storage method, there is more than one option you can use:

1. vB_Datastore_Filecache: is storing data in files system through the datastore_cache.php file existing in the path includes/datastore. You have to give the file a 777 permission to store the files in it.
2. vB_Datastore_APC: is storing data in the server backup memory, where the host server should have APC cache.
3. vB_Datastore_XCache: is storing data in the server backup memory, where the host server should have XCache.
4. vB_Datastore_Memcached: is storing data in the server backup memory, where the host server should have Memcached.
5. To activate one of the options, you have to delete // at the end of the last line to be as follows:

{* php buffer start *}   
{* php buffer end *}

In case of activating vB_Datastore_Memcached, the following options should be edited from the same file:

$config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Memcached';
$i = 0;
$i++;
$config['Misc']['memcacheserver'][$i] = '127.0.0.1';
$config['Misc']['memcacheport'][$i] = 11211;
$config['Misc']['memcachepersistent'][$i] = true;
$config['Misc']['memcacheweight'][$i] = 1;
$config['Misc']['memcachetimeout'][$i] = 1;
$config['Misc']['memcacheretry_interval'][$i] = 15;

$config['Misc']['memcacheretry_interval'][$i] = 15; 

Type the server IP instead of 127.0.0.1 and confirm deleting /* and */ at the beginning and end of the previous code.

Change config['Datastore']['prefix'] = to the website username to be as follows:

$config['Datastore']['prefix'] = 'username';

Note: All shared hosting servers in Dimofinf work on XCache system.