XF 2 [Paid] Speed up Xenforo Site / Server

[OakleyForum]

Looking for someone skilled in analyzing and optimizing XF/Servers for speed. Currently am running a DirectAdmin server with LiteSpeed, MariaDB Caching, KeyCDN, etc. but still have generally slow page load times and slow Pagespeed Insights which are lowering rankings. I understand ads and similar services aren't helping this, and unfortunately they are a necessary evil. However, I still believe there is work to be done. Send me a PM and let's talk.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Possibly not able to help, but can you list the specs of your current server and traffic load?

 

[OakleyForum]

Xeon 3-224 4 Cores @3.4GHz
16GB DDR4
480GB SSD
1TB HDD Backup
1Gbps Port Speed
Litespeed

Traffic is ~4-5k visits/day - 30k pageviews

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Yes, that should be quite good.

 

[Kintaro]

Xeon 3-224 4 Cores @3.4GHz
16GB DDR4
480GB SSD
1TB HDD Backup
1Gbps Port Speed
Litespeed

Traffic is ~4-5k visits/day - 30k pageviews

For this kind of traffic it should fly!

 

[OakleyForum]

Generally I find the site fairly fast but we're labeled as slow by Google - yes we run ads and maybe that's all it really is, but just tough to believe.

 

[briansol]

your waterfall is super huge due to ads. I see nothing wrong with your site load at all. it's super fast.

ad servers that re-sell space back until it fills seems to be your issue. viglink tends to be the worst offender that i know of, followed by openx.

there's really nothing you can do about it, except perhaps reduce the ads... or show only 1 of those per page at random instead of all types.

 

[OakleyForum]

your waterfall is super huge due to ads. I see nothing wrong with your site load at all. it's super fast.

ad servers that re-sell space back until it fills seems to be your issue. viglink tends to be the worst offender that i know of, followed by openx.

there's really nothing you can do about it, except perhaps reduce the ads... or show only 1 of those per page at random instead of all types.

Good to know, had a feeling that could be it - and noticed viglink being the worst. Have been looking at alternatives but not sure if there performance is any better.

 

[Max Taxable]

your waterfall is super huge due to ads.

633 requests, 2.5mb. Really bloated and definitely slow especially to first interactive. https://webpagetest.org/result/200526_AJ_4ab6ccf848b8bea8e243ee578716b01a/

 

[Max Taxable]

2nd load showing caching, not a ton better.

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...

webpagetest.org

 

[OakleyForum]

2nd load showing caching, not a ton better.

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...

webpagetest.org

Yeah - it does seem like most of those are the ads running. Still need to figure out if there's a way to optimize the font awesome loading at start - was trying to see why there's 3.

 

[Alpha1]

Consider to contact @eva2000

 

[Max Taxable]

figure out if there's a way to optimize the font awesome loading at start - was trying to see why there's 3.

Those little suckers get cached, so on subsequent visits they're not even part of your waterfall. It's not worth addressing IMO especially when you have so much real bloat. Here's the waterfall for subsequent pageloads:

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...

webpagetest.org

 

[OakleyForum]

Those little suckers get cached, so on subsequent visits they're not even part of your waterfall. It's not worth addressing IMO especially when you have so much real bloat. Here's the waterfall for subsequent pageloads:

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...

webpagetest.org

Yeah likely some poorly coded add-ons in there too. Hence this post, would like to cut through some of that.

 

[Max Taxable]

Yeah likely some poorly coded add-ons in there too. Hence this post, would like to cut through some of that.

I don't see server performance as a big issue for you, but still... The one guy I know who can really fix you up is @MySiteGuy he is simply the best, most reasonable and by far the most trustworthy and straight-up provider I've found on here. He won't screw you and he won't leave you in the lerch. And he knows what he is doing, having been the creator of the ford-trucks forum that is still going great guns. He's been there, done this with big sites with tons of adverts. He can put you where you want to be.

 

[Anatoliy]

Still need to figure out if there's a way to optimize the font awesome loading

Unmaintained - Reduce FontAwesome icon font file size

NOTICE This add-on will no longer be maintained as a better solution for reducing your FontAwesome file sizes has been published by @Kirby here. I would strongly suggest using his add-on instead...

xenforo.com

 

[Anatoliy]

Lazy Load [img]

Provides lazy loaded image support via the Lazysizes A zero query method for per user-group lazy loading of the [img] and [plain] Enable Outside threads/Conversations permits the lazy loading bbcode injection to run outside of those contexts...

xenforo.com