My XF forum feels... slow

[JABRONI]

http://www.machinimapalooza.com is my website.

I tested my site on Google PageSpeed & I got a 81 out of 100, which isn't that good. Regardless of the PageSpeed, my site just feels slow. I run my site on http://www.nimbushosting.co.uk/ with a plan that has room for growth. I have 3 skins installed & 60 addons. I know that 60 addons is probably a lot, but not enough to slow it down that badly.

Google PageSpeed says to "Improve Server Response Time" & "Leverage Browser Caching," but I really don't understand what they want me to do.

Can anyone give me suggestions on what to do by just a quick overview of the site? Any help is great.

 

[TPerry]

http://www.machinimapalooza.com is my website.

I tested my site on Google PageSpeed & I got a 81 out of 100, which isn't that good. Regardless of the PageSpeed, my site just feels slow. I run my site on http://www.nimbushosting.co.uk/ with a plan that has room for growth. I have 3 skins installed & 60 addons. I know that 60 addons is probably a lot, but not enough to slow it down that badly.

Google PageSpeed says to "Improve Server Response Time" & "Leverage Browser Caching," but I really don't understand what they want me to do.

Can anyone give me suggestions on what to do by just a quick overview of the site? Any help is great.

Doesn't seem THAT much slower than mine... maybe just a few pauses - but that's probably because it's hosted in the UK? and I'm in deep East Texas.
Mine scores 85/100 - and most of the important dings are related to Googles ads and Amazon.
Leveraging browser caching is explained at https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/best-practices/caching
On my site (I use nginx) it was controlled by this

location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
expires 1y;
}

in my domains site configuration. I'm sure that there is the equivalent for .htaccess or the Apache2 vHost settings.
If you punch down into the "Improve Server Response" you will probably find that a lot of it is ad related.

 

[Sheratan]

Its pretty fast from the other side of the world. 5 seconds of load and... done

 

[CTXMedia]

How does it perform (in comparison) when you use the default XF style?

I only ask because there appear to be a few stutters when it's first loading pages after you click to load them - then, when it's loaded it all appears quite quickly, but I'm curious to know whether that's some java or other code specific to your style that is causing it to hang for a short while when it does or requests something?

 

[JABRONI]

How does it perform (in comparison) when you use the default XF style?

I only ask because there appear to be a few stutters when it's first loading pages after you click to load them - then, when it's loaded it all appears quite quickly, but I'm curious to know whether that's some java or other code specific to your style that is causing it to hang for a short while when it does or requests something?

Default XF goes faster for sure.

Could it possibly be because I'm using CSS for the gradients & not images?

 

[CTXMedia]

Default XF goes faster for sure.

Could it possibly be because I'm using CSS for the gradients & not images?

I'm not sure, but I doubt it. I'd look at add-ons next - are any specific to your style? Do they bring info onto the page that would cause extra queries, such as user-specific ranking or league data - that sort of thing? Do you have any advertisement rotation add-ons? Anything that your branded style does or loads that is not featured on the default style?