Comparative speed of my forum

[Ingenious]

I'd like to ask you all whether my forum is considered fast or slow in the great scheme of things (from the page load times below).

I have just over 200,000 posts and host on shared hosting still (but it's a cloud/cluster type service). I don't use any caching and can't do any server tweaks because it's shared.

In particular I'd like to know what kind of speed increase, if any, hosting on VPS or dedicated might bring (from your real life results looking at page generation times).

Pages on my forum typically take 0.2s to 0.3s to generate.

The fastest page is the What's New with no new posts - 0.14s
Forum home page - usually 0.2s to 0.3s
Entering the forum thread view for the biggest forum (500+ pages) - 0.3s to 0.5s

 

[DBA]

Then should I go to BlueHost, Ihave heard all gpood things about them?
or you suggest
I don't have loads of money !

I'd ask in here
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/server-configuration-and-hosting.48/

 

[Learner]

I asked theretoo, mentioning the details available, some members responded saying it will be alright

I'd ask in here
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/server-configuration-and-hosting.48/

 

[Ingenious]

Getting back on topic and my OP Can anyone else advise please on their page generation speeds so I can get a feel of how mine is in the great scheme of things?

 

[Learner]

Please tell me about your host mate.. ??

I want to switch too, have changed 2 hostings since I started !! and want a third to test !! the requirements are the same as you !!

Getting back on topic and my OP Can anyone else advise please on their page generation speeds so I can get a feel of how mine is in the great scheme of things?

 

[Ingenious]

Well I'm on a shared host but it's load balanced and they claim it's as good as some low end VPS set ups (actually they say in some cases better, since it would survive a massive load of traffic if you're tweeted or digged by someone famous). My page times of 0.1 to 0.4 seconds would seem to support this, but really we need other people to share their own page times and the sort of service they use (shared, VPS, dedicated) to get a better idea of what is quick and what isn't. Unfortunately it's not as simple as just renting a VPS etc. and using it, since it won't have any real world traffic, which is why I need times from real world, active forums. If a VPS would take the times down say by 20% it's not worth the time and hassle changing, but if a VPS would get page times down by say 10 x then it's worth doing. I certainly notice some forums run like lightning, eg. Clip The Apex which moved over to dedicated a little while ago.

 

[Learner]

I made file check through the Xen ACP and it gave me a .js file at fault, I replaced that file and since then everything seems fine, ours is also a shared hosting but with only staff working right now, as we are building it up..
the load times now are, .04 to .2 of a second the response is ok and no errors reported by the cPanel till now. (previously we hit entry point errors and hit the hard limit of RAM usage )
I will look at Clip the Apex and see the responses, thanks.

 

[MattW]

Forum Index: 0.0793 seconds
What's New: 0.0509 seconds
Portal: 0.0271 seconds
Largest Thread (14,741 replies) 0.0360 seconds

 

[DBA]

Forum Index: 0.0793 seconds
What's New: 0.0509 seconds
Portal: 0.0271 seconds
Largest Thread (14,741 replies) 0.0360 seconds

What kind of setup are you on?

 

[Learner]

Forum Index: 0.0793 seconds
What's New: 0.0509 seconds
Portal: 0.0271 seconds
Largest Thread (14,741 replies) 0.0360 seconds

Even I want to know, where are you hosted and what kind of plan is this, although my shared hosting is giving me VPS kind of speeds and I am happy but your scores are superb mate !!

 

[MattW]

I'm hosted with Xtrahost in London on their 3GB plan:
http://www.xtrahost.co.uk/xenvps/

VPS is running CentOS 5.8 32bit, Percona 5.5, FCGI, and Xcache. Quite happy to post my my.cnf, xcache and fcgi settings if anyone wants to take a look

 

[DBA]

I'm hosted with Xtrahost in London on their 3GB plan:
http://www.xtrahost.co.uk/xenvps/

VPS is running CentOS 5.8 32bit, Percona 5.5, FCGI, and Xcache. Quite happy to post my my.cnf, xcache and fcgi settings if anyone wants to take a look

I wouldn't mind seeing them.

BTW how many processor cores do you get with that package?

 

[MattW]

I wouldn't mind seeing them.

BTW how many processor cores do you get with that package?

Access to all 8


my.cnf

[client]
port=3306
socket="/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock"
 
[mysqld]
innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=16M
innodb_buffer_pool_size=1G
innodb_file_per_table=1
innodb_log_buffer_size=4M
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=2
log-bin=mysql-bin
myisam_sort_buffer_size=64M
expire_logs_days=7
query_cache_size=64M
thread_cache_size=12
max_allowed_packet=15M
skip-federated
table_definition_cache=2048
local-infile=0
table_cache=2048
max_connections=40
read_buffer_size=2M
slow_query_log=1
slow_query_log_file="/var/log/slow_queries.log"
thread_concurrency=16
sort_buffer_size=2M
port=3306
join_buffer_size=3M
key_buffer_size=500M
query_cache_limit=4M
socket="/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock"
skip-external-locking
query-cache-type=1
long_query_time=5
default-storage-engine=InnoDB
ft_min_word_len=3
 
[myisamchk]
read_buffer=2M
key_buffer=256M
sort_buffer_size=256M
write_buffer=2M
 
[mysqldump]
max_allowed_packet=16M
quick
 
[mysql]
no-auto-rehash
 
[isamchk]
read_buffer=2M
key_buffer=256M
sort_buffer_size=256M
write_buffer=2M
 
[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout

Xcache

extension="xcache.so"
xcache.admin.enable_auth="on"
xcache.admin.pass="XXXXXXXXXXXX"
xcache.admin.user="mOo"
xcache.cacher="On"
xcache.coredump_directory="/tmp/phpcore/"
xcache.count="8"
xcache.coveragedump_directory="/tmp/pcov/"
xcache.coverager="Off"
xcache.gc_interval="0"
xcache.mmap_path="/dev/zero"
xcache.optimizer="Off"
xcache.readonly_protection="Off"
xcache.size="128M"
xcache.slots="8K"
xcache.test="Off"
xcache.ttl="0"
xcache.var_count="8"
xcache.var_gc_interval="300"
xcache.var_maxttl="0"
xcache.var_size="16M"
xcache.var_slots="8K"
xcache.var_ttl="0"

apache

Timeout 300
TraceEnable Off
ServerSignature Off
ServerTokens ProductOnly
FileETag None
StartServers 5
<IfModule prefork.c>
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 10
</IfModule>
ServerLimit 256
MaxClients 150
MaxRequestsPerChild 10000
KeepAlive On
KeepAliveTimeout 5
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100

fcgi

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
FcgidMaxRequestsPerProcess 1000
FcgidMaxProcesses 200
FcgidProcessLifeTime 7200
FcgidIOTimeout 400
FcgidIdleTimeout 600
FcgidIdleScanInterval 90
FcgidBusyTimeout 300
FcgidBusyScanInterval 80
FcgidErrorScanInterval 9
FcgidZombieScanInterval 9
FcgidMinProcessesPerClass 0
FcgidMaxProcessesPerClass 20
FcgidMaxRequestLen 20468982
FcgidMinProcessesPerClass 0
</IfModule>

 

[Ingenious]

Many thanks MattW - that's QUICK! - in particular thanks for being so open about your host and settings, this is useful info.

 

[MattW]

Many thanks MattW - that's QUICK! - in particular thanks for being so open about your host and settings, this is useful info.

Not a problem. I've had this VPS 3 years as of September, and it's taken a fair amount of playing to get it working how I wanted it, especially since moving from phpBB3 to XenForo.

I was previously running suPHP and switched to FCGI when I migrated so I could enable Xcache.

 

[Ingenious]

I'm hosted with Xtrahost in London on their 3GB plan:
http://www.xtrahost.co.uk/xenvps/

VPS is running CentOS 5.8 32bit, Percona 5.5, FCGI, and Xcache. Quite happy to post my my.cnf, xcache and fcgi settings if anyone wants to take a look

Just had a look at that host, £48pm inc VAT looks pretty good value. In any case your own forum speed is the best advertisement!

A 2GB Linode based in London (I'm UK based so would prefer a UK location) would cost around £52pm.

Was everything including Xcache easy to set up? (Edit - crossed with your post - you said it took some tweaking).

What are xtrahost like?

 

[Learner]

Hurrah !! I am also using all eight cores !!

 

[MattW]

Just had a look at that host, £48pm inc VAT (looks pretty good value. In any case your own forum speed is the best advertisement!

A 2GB Linode based in London (I'm UK based so would prefer a UK location) would cost around £52pm.

Was everything including Xcache easy to set up? (Edit - crossed with your post - you said it took some tweaking).

What are xtrahost like?

Xtrahost are brilliant. I've only had 1 unscheduled outage in almost 3 years, which was resolved in less than 4 hours, due to a spanning tree event on their switch infrastructure.

It was a single setting in the Xcache config which was preventing it from initially working ( xcache.mmap_path="/dev/zero" because I tried to change it to a physical location in /tmp) , and once I'd got that sorted, it's straight forward. I have cpanel on the VPS, and you can install Xcache using easyapache so it's built in ready to go, you just have to tweak the settings to suite the amount of memory and the size of cache / slot size.

 

[Ingenious]

Thanks MattW!

 

[MattW]

I've now moved all the images / JS to a cookie less domain, and I've noticed an improvement in the overall user experience on the site.

main site is www.z22se.co.uk and moved the static content to cdn.z22se.com. These are on a physically different VPS, and not just a cname pointing back to the original site.

#JS on CDN 
$config['javaScriptUrl'] = 'http://cdn.z22se.com/js';

Now, if I could get it to do the attachments in the same way???

 

[Ingenious]

I've now moved all the images / JS to a cookie less domain, and I've noticed an improvement in the overall user experience on the site.

I don't understand how having images and the JS files on another domain can speed things up - can't get my head around that - is there a guide anywhere that explains this in layman's terms, how/why it works?