For those running a VPS

[CedricV]

For those who are running a VPS and have much more liberty than shared hosting,

What are some absolute needed / recommended add ons performance wise?

An add on like https://xenforo.com/community/resources/redis-cache-by-xon.5562/ and https://xenforo.com/community/resources/font-awesome-manager.8407/ - What do you recommend to have additionally ?

Thanks in advance.

 

[TPerry]

If your site is image intensive...

Image Optimizer for XF 2.0

Add-on have provide a powerful settings in ACP options. You MUST settings option before running optimize images. All files will be overwrite; you cannot revert the file. DESCRIPTION Optimizing all images which stored in XenForo to lower size...

xenforo.com

This requires certain resources to be installed on the server to work

XF's ES 1st party add-on and then

ElasticSearch Essentials

This add-on REQUIRES XenForo Enhanced Search and ElasticSearch to be installed. Without it, this will not do anything. After the installing for the first time, you must use the "Optimize Index" option and then re-index all content. Requires...

xenforo.com

(you need at least a 4GB RAM VPS for ES, better an 8GB RAM)

The other stuff would be at server level.... you need a decent firewall and such.

 

[CedricV]

If your site is image intensive...

Image Optimizer for XF 2.0

Add-on have provide a powerful settings in ACP options. You MUST settings option before running optimize images. All files will be overwrite; you cannot revert the file. DESCRIPTION Optimizing all images which stored in XenForo to lower size...

xenforo.com

This requires certain resources to be installed on the server to work

XF's ES 1st party add-on and then

ElasticSearch Essentials

This add-on REQUIRES XenForo Enhanced Search and ElasticSearch to be installed. Without it, this will not do anything. After the installing for the first time, you must use the "Optimize Index" option and then re-index all content. Requires...

xenforo.com

(you need at least a 4GB RAM VPS for ES, better an 8GB RAM)

The other stuff would be at server level.... you need a decent firewall and such.

Which firewall do you personally recommend?

 

[Jay™]

I have been running CF for the last few years with no issues.

 

[TPerry]

Which firewall do you personally recommend?

At the server level.. I've been using CSF for years and like it, with CloudFlare on the front end using their WAF features.

 

[ekool]

Running opcache is huge.. I'd also get memcached going and put that in your config. That'll save a lot of database queries.

 

[TPerry]

Running opcache is huge.. I'd also get memcached going and put that in your config. That'll save a lot of database queries.

Redis usually works better than MemCached and there are some neat add-ons that allow more use of it by XF itself.

 

[rdn]

Not necessarily just XF addons, but server-side in general that can be applied to a VPS.
My preferred:

• OS: Ubuntu LTS (22.04 atm), which runs fine on X64 and ARM64 bare metal
• Server Firewall: UFW (super easy to deploy: allow or limit)
• Web Server: Nginx-light
• PHP: PHP-FPM with Opcache
• Data Caching: Redis (paired with all Xons addons related to redis)
• Page Caching: Fastcgi Cache (all guest pages are cache, and some pages for logged-in users are cached also)
• Edge Caching: using DigitalPoint App for Cloudflare addon
• With extra packages like: elasticsearch, jpegoptim, pngquant, and gifsicle

 

[ekool]

Redis usually works better than MemCached and there are some neat add-ons that allow more use of it by XF itself.

Yes, I run both. I think the setup of memcache is a lot easier than redis though. You really only have to configure one thing and that's the memory size for memcache. Redis has a lot more options and capabilities. So for a beginner I think memcache is better option.

 

[TPerry]

Yes, I run both. I think the setup of memcache is a lot easier than redis though.

I do also.. I use memcached (has a few extra features beyond memcache) on the the server also, primarily for WordPress.
As for setup... I never really found it that difficult...

 

[RaptureForums]

For those who are running a VPS and have much more liberty than shared hosting,

What are some absolute needed / recommended add ons performance wise?

An add on like https://xenforo.com/community/resources/redis-cache-by-xon.5562/ and https://xenforo.com/community/resources/font-awesome-manager.8407/ - What do you recommend to have additionally ?

Thanks in advance.

I've tried NGINX and it is good. But for me nothing beats LiteSpeed web server. If you have the money for it you will be happy with it. My Wordpress site loads in about 0.3 seconds.

The Xenforo forum is loading at about 0.9-1.0 seconds on the homepage according to GTMetrix.

I've found Litespeed to be well worth the money. I use it in addition to CloudFlare's Pro account.

JMHO.

 

[fly]

I've tried NGINX and it is good. But for me nothing beats LiteSpeed web server. If you have the money for it you will be happy with it. My Wordpress site loads in about 0.3 seconds.

The Xenforo forum is loading at about 0.9-1.0 seconds on the homepage according to GTMetrix.

I've found Litespeed to be well worth the money. I use it in addition to CloudFlare's Pro account.

JMHO.

Have you tested it against @eva2000's Centminmod?

 

[duderuud]

Have you tested it against @eva2000's Centminmod?

Try it, you will never go back

 

[fly]

Try it, you will never go back

That's why I'm asking. Centminmod is amazing.

 

[MySiteGuy]

Try it, you will never go back

I found the opposite to be true.

Open Litespeed (and the paid version) will generally beat it, especially on smaller VPS systems because it doesn't use nearly as much RAM. Add the WordPress or Xenforo Litespeed cache addons and it's even faster.

Spin up a thousand connections, Litespeed's RAM use will barely budge. I can't say that about Nginx.

Plus, unlike Nginx, it supports .htaccess files and has a very easy to use web based control panel. Additionally, it has a history of supporting more advanced features sooner, like HTTP/3,

Centminmod is great, but for ultimate web performance, it really needs to switch to Litespeed.

 

[fly]

Interesting!

 

[RaptureForums]

Have you tested it against @eva2000's Centminmod?

No, as I do not have the technical experience to do CLI which I think is what Centminmod is unless I am mistaken.

I rely on my web host to do my server admin. I do the tinkering within the Wordpress Litespeed plugin though. There are a lot of things you can do in Litespeed in terms of tweaking the service.

However, I have used Engintron's NGINX in the past. Now, I have used Litespeed for a couple of years and I can say my GTMetrix scores on NGINX were never what they are with Litespeed.

The absolute best I ever got with my site with NGINX and a cache plugin was 1.0-1.2 seconds on the homepage. Litespeed can drop me down to 0.3 seconds according to GTMetrix on the homepage.

Litespeed is just faster than NGINX for my site. But I guess everyone's mileage may vary depending on what their site runs in terms of applications, software, server specs, etc. My site still runs Wordpress and Xenforo, I am using the same plugins as well, so I think I am able to get a pretty good comparison in general between them. I'm happy with Litespeed.