XF 2.1 My forum has become very slow all of a sudden

[PumpinIron]

I'm not sure what's causing it, but as of lately my forum has become very slow.

When you visit pages such as this one with multiple images, it takes forever to load:

Rolled it over today and nearly died doing it. Need your help

Hello Gentlemen! Today is a very sad day! I made a mistake climbing down a very treacherous trail and my Jeep paid for it. The funny thing is I was out taking pictures, just pictures and had no intention of hardcore offroading today at all. I made one wrong turn and took a really really hard...

wranglertjforum.com

When click the "Like" button to react to a post, after doing that, it can sometimes take 10 seconds or more for the reaction to register.

A number of members have sent me private messages about how the site is very slow for them, and how this wasn't always the case. I agree 100%, because I've noticed it too.

Every add-on I am using is up-to-date with the latest version. The majority of the add-ons are ones by @AndyB who I know always does a good job with his add-ons. A few of them are by @ThemeHouse (i.e. UI.X), then there's Tapatalk, one by @AddonFlare, and a few others.

The bottom line however is that I was never having these issues until the past several weeks. I haven't added any new add-ons since then, only updated any of them that needed updating.

When speaking with my web host (Liquid Web) about this, they gave me the following response:

I wanted to update you that I have made a couple of modifications to the Apache configuration for optimization as well as enabled PHP-FPM to wranglertjforum.com. This has resulted in shaving off .5s of load time. I will continue to work on your site to further and will update you when I have more information available.

I have assessed the site a bit more and noticed that it is not within the Time To First Byte which is the amount of time that the server spends processing the request but rather more of the time spent scripting and rendering the page. I have attached a performance tool graph provided by google chrome for your records. We can recommend to start disabling plugins and themes to get to the bottom of which may be causing the load time. I have some plugins can assist with caching and/or something is needed that optimizes the running of javascript but that is dependent on so many things. I can make the following recommendations and in all it would require testing:

BJ Lazy Load - Lazy image loading makes your site load faster and saves bandwidth.

W3 Total Cache - The highest rated and most complete WordPress performance plugin. Dramatically improve the speed and user experience of your site. Add browser, page, object and database caching as well as minify and content delivery network (CDN) to WordPress.

Async JavaScript - Async JavaScript gives you full control of which scripts to add a 'async' or 'defer' attribute to or to exclude to help increase the performance of your WordPress website

TinyPNG for image heavy site:
Compress JPEG & PNG images -- Speed up your website. Optimizes your JPEG and PNG images automatically

This of course doesn't help much. I'm on a cloud based VPS server with a decent amount of memory, and the server itself doesn't appear to be the issue. When disabling the add-ons, I don't notice the site being any faster at all.

Just hoping someone might be able to help me figure out the best way to troubleshoot this.

 

[HotRodCarts]

I've noticed something similar on my forums. It seems to happen on any thread when a post is liked. After one or two slow likes everything goes back to normal.

 

[djbaxter]

Local ISP connection or DNS issues perhaps?

I just tried the link you posted and it loaded super-fast (like instantly) on my desktop in Firefox and on my iPhone.

 

[Masetrix]

The site is overloaded and (Apache) poorly optimized.
The following link indicates what should be changed.

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

Maybe you should also rent a VPS with more RAM (~16G) and processor time

 

[PumpinIron]

I've removed XenForo from the equation, see here:

Untitled Document

That test page is outside of XenForo. It has 4 images from one of the slow XenForo threads on my forum. Notice how slow that page loads even not being a part of XenForo? This proves that it must be something server related and not related to XenForo, am I right?

Local ISP connection or DNS issues perhaps?

I just tried the link you posted and it loaded super-fast (like instantly) on my desktop in Firefox and on my iPhone.

Interesting! Everyone else I've talked to is saying it's loading really slow (and these are people not on my ISP either.

The site is overloaded and (Apache) poorly optimized.
The following link indicates what should be changed.

PageSpeed Insights

developers.google.com

Maybe you should also rent a VPS with more RAM (~16G) and processor time

The interesting thing is these performance issues didn't exist until a few weeks ago and randomly they've started. I recently upgraded to a larger VPS server, maybe it's time for an even larger one on top of that.

 

[Masetrix]

The interesting thing is these performance issues didn't exist until a few weeks ago and randomly they've started. I recently upgraded to a larger VPS server, maybe it's time for an even larger one on top of that.

VPS means that multiple users share processor (...) time. If one system overloads it too much or if the hoster packs too many users on a system, bottlenecks occur. That's why I never use VPS. There you can optimize as much as you can, that will not be better ...

 

[PumpinIron]

VPS means that multiple users share processor (...) time. If one system overloads it too much or if the hoster packs too many users on a system, bottlenecks occur. That's why I never use VPS. There you can optimize as much as you can, that will not be better ...

Sigh, I may have to switch to dedicated, I agree. Of course with that comes a huge cost.

 

[Slavik]

This proves that it must be something server related and not related to XenForo, am I right?

If it has started happening suddenly, then it would 99% of the time be a host or local network issue indeed.

 

[PumpinIron]

If it has started happening suddenly, then it would 99% of the time be a host or local network issue indeed.

And I think we can rule out local network issue, since people from all over the U.S. (my forum members) are reporting it, so I guess it's got to be a host issue.

I'm waiting to hear back from them on the support ticket.

Is a dedicated server really a must for a forum? I was under the impression I could easily get away with a VPS. However, maybe I was wrong?

 

[Max Taxable]

So, hey Man. I have been doing testing for your site, many pages of it. The one you linked in the OP is the only slow loading one I have tested. It's also the only one that is 4.7MB in size. Some massive jpg images there that take some time to render. Remember: resizing them using css doesn't change the image dimensions or file size, it only makes them appear smaller. Here's what's actually loading on that page: WPT | Images

I use strictly and only WebPageTest for performance evaluation, because it is real browsers with real internet connections, not some algorithm. It shows in detail what is really, actually happening when browsers load your pages. You can choose locations, connection types, operating systems, browsers, all at your fingertips. It is a project by Patrick Meenan, one of google's tech gurus. They're not trying to sell you anything and it's inherently objective. It's really the only way to see what is actually going on.

First Byte Time is excellent on all your pages I tested, including the heavy one. My suggestion is to use this test yourself extensively, studying different pages and seeing how massive images really slow your performance.

Here's your test results page.

Good luck to you. Nice site by the way. Looks like you're having great success with it.

 

[PumpinIron]

So, hey Man. I have been doing testing for your site, many pages of it. The one you linked in the OP is the only slow loading one I have tested. It's also the only one that is 4.7MB in size. Some massive jpg images there that take some time to render. Remember: resizing them using css doesn't change the image dimensions or file size, it only makes them appear smaller. Here's what's actually loading on that page: WPT | Images

I use strictly and only WebPageTest for performance evaluation, because it is real browsers with real internet connections, not some algorithm. It shows in detail what is really, actually happening when browsers load your pages. You can choose locations, connection types, operating systems, browsers, all at your fingertips. It is a project by Patrick Meenan, one of google's tech gurus. They're not trying to sell you anything and it's inherently objective. It's really the only way to see what is actually going on.

First Byte Time is excellent on all your pages I tested, including the heavy one. My suggestion is to use this test yourself extensively, studying different pages and seeing how massive images really slow your performance.

Here's your test results page.

Good luck to you. Nice site by the way. Looks like you're having great success with it.

The only pages that load slow are the ones with lots of images. For instance, if you check out many of the threads in the TJ Build Threads & Member's Rides section, you'll see many of them load slow due to images.

However, even at 4.7MB, that isn't very much for the modern day cable internet user to download. There's no way it should be taking as long as it's taking. Hell, 4.7MB should download in a matter of a second on a cable internet connection, no?

I'll check that site out, it's one I am not familiar with. I've been using the Pingdom Tools to test page speeds.

But the more concerning thing is that this is a new issue. Weeks ago if you went to a page with 4.7MB of images, it would have loaded instantly (or almost instantly). This slow thing is recent, and as you can see, it's affecting even that test page outside of XenForo. The other thing is that once you click on a page like this, then click out and go to another page, those other pages will all load very, very slow, even if they have no images on them at all. It's the most bizarre thing.

Thanks for the compliment! I've been having tremendous success with the forum. Of course it's also turned into a part time job (literally) for me, so needless to say I spend a lot of time on it!

 

[Max Taxable]

However, even at 4.7MB, that isn't very much for the modern day cable internet user to download. There's no way it should be taking as long as it's taking. Hell, 4.7MB should download in a matter of a second on a cable internet connection, no?

It's equivalent to a 5 minute mp3 music file. And it's not just the download time, it's the browser rendering of large jpg files too.

In the waterfall I linked, you will see on the graph how long it is taking to download, then render the images.

I do not think you have a hosting problem. But I am no expert. I know someone who is, and who built massive monster automotive forums, and who runs his own hosting services, and is a xF expert, and that is @MySiteGuy and I think you should contact him via private conversation, point him to your thread, and let him help you with his experience and advice. You don't want to do anything rash, like changing hosts with this busy site. Unless it's blatantly obviously necessary and compelling.

 

[PumpinIron]

It's equivalent to a 5 minute mp3 music file. And it's not just the download time, it's the browser rendering of large jpg files too.

In the waterfall I linked, you will see on the graph how long it is taking to download, then render the images.

I do not think you have a hosting problem. But I am no expert. I know someone who is, and who built massive monster automotive forums, and who runs his own hosting services, and is a xF expert, and that is @MySiteGuy and I think you should contact him via private conversation, point him to your thread, and let him help you with his experience and advice.

Great advice, I’ll contact him and see what he thinks. In this modern day and age, I can’t stop people from uploading images. The issue is how do I allow for people to upload images, keep the quality, but not have the load times be so intense?

 

[Max Taxable]

In this modern day and age, I can’t stop people from uploading images. The issue is how do I allow for people to upload images, keep the quality, but not have the load times be so intense?

Yup. They need to be optimized on upload, and reduced in file size on upload. I think there's an addon for that. Ken will know.

 

[Max Taxable]

The other thing is, on the server side of things it's not just one browser calling up all those heavy pages - it could be hundreds, even thousands simultaneously. Multiply that by the 4.7MB in your head for a second, and you start to see how the really massive monster images can kill performance.