First Render Time

[Marcus]

The difference in the slow template rendering between xenforo and vbulletin 4 is that vbulletin 4 slows down when you start the render process by php function, while xenforo obviously slows down when template rendering process is started within templates. Here vbulletin 4 is more lucky.

 

[Marcus]

Comparable figures to the stock xenforo forum index page with only one visitor (0.13 seconds):

vbulletin 4, hundreds of users online, same data, highly modded. logged-in-user: 0.11 seconds
vbulletin 4, hundreds of users online, same data, highly modded. guest-view: 0.06 seconds

 

[CTXMedia]

You're maybe onto something there Marcus.

I'm sure if there is a benefit to be had from changing things a little it will be looked at by the XF team.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Marcus]

Honestly, I don't know. I removed everything from template node_list and with the complete empty white on the left, it is still around 0.09 seconds.

I am very interested in hearing from others about this.

 

[Paul B]

My stock install figures are quite a bit different to yours.

Timing: 0.0543 seconds | Memory: 5.878 MB | DB Queries: 9

That's with a handful of forums, sub forums and other nodes.

 

[bambua]

Comparable figures to the stock xenforo forum index page with only one visitor (0.13 seconds):

vbulletin 4, hundreds of users online, same data, highly modded. logged-in-user: 0.11 seconds
vbulletin 4, hundreds of users online, same data, highly modded. guest-view: 0.06 seconds

Were these on the same server? I've noticed large difference in load times from server to server. And also are you doing any caching on either of them?

My install of XenForo increased in performance significantly once I enabled file caching.

 

[ragtek]

Honestly, I don't know. I removed everything from template node_list and with the complete empty white on the left, it is still around 0.09 seconds.

I am very interested in hearing from others about this.

Even it's not displayed, the data are fetched and "processed" (don't know if it's the right word )

 

[Marcus]

Thanks for your figures. I removed 99% of my forum content and with only a handful forums, around 1.000 posts and not displaying any forums on the index page (blank as it was before) I now get:

Timing: 0.0375 seconds Memory: 4.328 MB DB Queries: 9

So the content alone in my forum more than doubles the time xenforo needs to deliver the empty start page. With the normal xenforo install and stock design I get

Timing: 0.0384 seconds Memory: 4.360 MB DB Queries: 9

 

[Marcus]

Were these on the same server? I've noticed large difference in load times from server to server. And also are you doing any caching on either of them?

My install of XenForo increased in performance significantly once I enabled file caching.

File caching is enabled on my xenforo server. All tests are from the same server.

Even it's not displayed, the data are fetched and "processed" (don't know if it's the right word )

Yes, It takes - in addition to the 0.04 seconds xenforo needs for basic things - around 0.05 seconds for PHP to process my data (create variable values ...) and around 0.03 seconds to display this data within the templates. You can see these data from all my tests I wrote here.

• Basic xenforo install without data: 0.04 seconds
• xenforo install with data but node templates not rendering: 0.09 seconds
• xenforo install with data and everything rendered: 0.13 seconds

 

[Marcus]

I'd like to hear speed comparisons between xf and their former software. From my current tests xf is much slower than vb 4

 

[duydangle]

I'd like to hear speed comparisons between xf and their former software. From my current tests xf is much slower than vb 4

vb 4 sucks, I have to say It is worse than vb3, and of course xenforo is better than both.

 

[Kier]

I'd like to hear speed comparisons between xf and their former software. From my current tests xf is much slower than vb 4

I think your testing methodology or server environment has some serious problems if you've come to that conclusion.

 

[Marcus]

I think your testing methodology or server environment has some serious problems if you've come to that conclusion.

You are free to login to my server and test it out: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/rendering-subforums-slows-down-page-load.20377/

 

[DRE]

I'm a member of a XenForo forum that is moving dirt slow right now.

Maybe some people just have sucky servers.

 

[Ryan McAdams]

I think your testing methodology or server environment has some serious problems if you've come to that conclusion.

I've actually dealt with this same complaint from a few people I've switched to XenForo... there has to be something environmental that leads to this issue because when I (as a test) moved them to my server (which hosts runuo.com (3.5M posts) and about 200 other high traffic sites their stuff flies... even in a shared environment, so I havent had the opportunity to dig too deeply into this but I would like to take some time to examine these other servers that run more slowly and see if I can figure out a root cause... because I believe it's environmental for sure and not software related.

 

[Marcus]

How fast is your forum start page and how much forums do you have?

 

[Paul B]

See for yourself: http://www.runuo.com/community/

 

[Marcus]

... because I believe it's environmental for sure and not software related.

On the same server I notice very large differences when using different software. These speed differences are software related.

• I have compared our forums with webpagetest.org as I do not have access to your debug mode for sure.
• Your forum start page is indeed as fast as mine compared for first render time.
• I have much more forums displayed on forum start page than your community, you have more forum posts, I have now a little bit more online users.
• My community runs on a very cheap server (below 50 euro).
• Time to first byte on my forum is 193 ms where your server needs 231 ms. From my understanding, this shows how fast the software outputs the data the browser is rendering. Its better to compare direct data from xenforo debug modus. I have displayed all my data (start render time, waterfall screenshots, data from vbulletin 4 and xenforo 1.0.4 debug modus) in my topic: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/rendering-subforums-slows-down-page-load.20377/

I am very happy to see my xenforo forum as fast as my current vb 4 forum. I just do not get similar results in any comparision (debug modes, waterfall diagrams) methods.

 

[qpa]

Speaking of 40 ms time difference: Did you ping the Servers? This could be the network latency.
You can't meassure - or worse compare - things if your meassurements are less accurate than your results.

 

[Floris]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/693961/xenforo_first_time_load.mov
17mb .mov (vlc plays it just fine)