extremely slow (often timing out) vanilla forum

libido

hey guys,

got a pretty serious vanilla malfunction here. i'm using it as the main forum for a band we work for (deadsy). we now have 1700 users using the forum & i've got a bunch of extensions plugged in. over the months the forum has been getting slower & slower & it's now reached the point where 75% of the time the main page doesn't even load any more. i just get a server error or a timeout.

now i have contacted godaddy who i host with & they have done a series of checks on the server / database for me & insist it's nothing to do with them. i have also setup pages on the site that don't have anything to do with the forum & they run super fast / just great.

so i'm now calling on you guys to help me out here. the forum exists here:

http://www.deadsylstaff.com/forum/

please feel free to sign-up & play around with it. i'm at a loss as to how to fix it at this point.

also here are the extensions i'm using with their version numbers. i have tried removing 'discussion overview' and 'comment links' as recommended in other threads but it didn't make a shread of difference. i've also optimized the tables using that extension as well, to no avail:

account pictures 1.1
ajax quote 1.0
attachments 1.4.1
bbinsertbar 0.1.5
better bb code 1.0
category jumper 1.0
chat status 1.0 beta 5
comment permalinks 1.0
custom styles 2.0
discussion overview 1.2
discussion pages 1.1
discussion view count 1.2
extended formatter 1.2
flickriser 0.1
forced category 1.0
forum statistics 0.4.5
google analytics 1.2
legends 1.0
livesearch 1.1
massmailer 1.0
member google map 1.1
memberlist 1.2
multiroles 1.0
new applicants 1.0
new post notifier 0.8
news mailer 0.2
notify 1.2.1
optimize tables 0.4
page manager 2.4.5
panel reorder 1.2f
previewbubble 0.1
preview post 2.5.2
quick whisper 1.0
random quotes (header) 1.0
report post 1.1
STOP CAPS ABUSE 1.0
sidepanel rotator 1.0
signatures 1.2
spell checker 1.1
stuff displayer 1.1
to-do list 1.2
userinfo tooltip 1.0
userwall 1.0 beta 10
vanillacons 1.1
whisper notification 0.1
who's online 1.1
window links 1.0

ANY help anyone can suggest or offer to speed things up would be great. the forum is unsuable at this point and it's infuriating a lot of fans, let alone me.

cheers!

Minisweeper

Crikey that's a lot of extensions. At a glance I'd suggest you try removing these: Who's online random quotes new post notifier new applicants memberlist forum statistics discussion view count discussion overview. Off the top of my head I think most of those use the database pretty intensively. Chances are you wont need to get rid of all of them but if you turn them off one by one you might have a bit of a lightbulb moment and it suddenly speeds up again

libido

thanks man, that really has helped actually. i removed them all & noticed a radical speed jump. since then i've put some back & removed a bunch of others as well. the site can still randomly wheelspin for no reason, but the majority of hits now are near liquid fast, which is exactly what i wanted.

cheers

fmimoso

There are reports that emptying the LUM_IpHistory table can also help.

Minisweeper

No probs libido - you'll find that a lot of extensions will cache database results (I think statistics should do this), however some (who's online, discussion view count) calculate them every page load so if you run a busy forum this is bound to have an impact. Discussion overview I think affects the page build to make it slightly less efficient. Overall you should find that most extensions are fine but there will be one or two which aren't ideal for busy sites.

libido

i see, good to know. thanks, both of you.

i wish i could say the forum was now fully back in order, but alas it's not. whilst sometimes it's fast as hell, other times it still takes a good few seconds to even load the main page, or switch pages. i know this is because i'm using 'discussion overview' and 'who's online', but frankly those are two functions regular forums offer and it's a shame that i should have to strip my forum right back down to the way it normally works just to get it to run at a reasonable speed.

i hope some of the extension developers out there are taking note of this. perhaps even the developers of vanilla itself. i have 1700 users and get some really slow response times even when i'm barely using any extensions at all. could it be vanilla itself is finding high numbers of users hard to handle? i'm sure this here forum has way more than i, but it's worth asking i guess.

see what you guys think.

yesahasureok

he libido, how about turning down the refresh rate of the who is online extension?

i'm not sure but there must be a line of code to modify the refresh rate.

chris

libido, get a new host. reverse ip query throws up "Found over 1523 domains hosted on the same web server as www.deadsylstaff.com"...

libido

thanks both of you. i will clearly try the first & then the second suggestion if that fails. i had no idea that many sites were hosted on my server. clearly that explains a lot. i have my own server but don't tend to host client stuff on there unless in prototype form ... this might have to be an exception to that rule!

cheers.

fmimoso

I'm not sure this will help since your problem lies on the server side, but it does wonders to my vanilla's time response as a user: http://lussumo.com/addons/index.php?PostBackAction=AddOn&AddOnID=315 And it can reduce your bandwidth usage. Don't know if the Notify conflict is solved...

Grahack

There a Simple Cache add-on too.

Simonb

chat status 1.0 beta 5 was coursing me problems because the server it uses to work out weather people were on online was timing out. Thats what fixed my site