XF 2.1 [RESOLVED] Forum Loading at a SNAIL'S PACE

Sapling Central

Sapling Central

Member
Hello there,

I have my XenForo forums running and I released it today. We had people starting to sign up until it got drastically slower. I have been researching how to speed it up using cookie-free domains (not sure how to do that) and other methods. I am using DreamHost Shared Unlimited. Could that be the problem? Should I move to an exclusive VPS/Dedi? Everything was working fine until we had people sign up and more traffic overall. I just increased the PHP memory on my site from 90M to 128M yet it is still taking forever to load and function properly.

https://tools.pingdom.com/ - If you put my site into Pingdom, (https://incorpmc.com) it gets a B overall with performance, yet has a 40 second load time! That is terrible for website users.

Any suggestions and fixes/tips and tricks are GREATLY and URGENTLY appreciated!

Thank you!

Enthusastically,

Sapling Central
 
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AndyB said:
I suggest moving to VPS.
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Hi Andy,

Thanks for your reply. That is something I can do. Was your decision based off of what you saw performance-wise? I just want to make sure it is the right move before investing money into an exclusive VPS.

Also, how would I transfer all my files/existing site to the new VPS? I would of course have to change the database information in config.php to the new credentials, but is that all?
 
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Don't know how you expect EIGHT MEGABYTES to load fast. This page is BLOATED beyond belief.

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...
webpagetest.org webpagetest.org

91 percent of your pageload is massive images.

Scale down all of these massive images and re-upload them to overwrite. There's no excuse for having 5 megabyte images loading.

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...
webpagetest.org webpagetest.org
 
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Sapling Central said:
Hi Andy,

Thanks for your reply. That is something I can do. Was your decision based off of what you saw performance-wise? I just want to make sure it is the right move before investing money into an exclusive VPS.

Also, how would I transfer all my files/existing site to the new VPS? I would of course have to change the database information in config.php to the new credentials, but is that all?
Click to expand...

Moving to a VPS would only solve the issue if the problem is a resources bottleneck.

What happens if you disable all addons and revert back to the stock XenForo style?
 
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I'm guessing the 40s issue is on your server side (time to first byte). Cookieless domains and other recommendations from those testing tools aren't going to help. I got anywhere from 2-4 seconds right now when loading it.

1. Turn off all xf add-ons and see if it loads faster.
2. It may be because you are on shared hosting. It's hard to say exactly. But if you are serious about running a forum, then I think a VPS does seem like minimum viable hosting.
 
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Sapling Central said:
Hi Andy,

Thanks for your reply. That is something I can do. Was your decision based off of what you saw performance-wise? I just want to make sure it is the right move before investing money into an exclusive VPS.

Also, how would I transfer all my files/existing site to the new VPS? I would of course have to change the database information in config.php to the new credentials, but is that all?
Click to expand...

It should be as easy as contacting your web host and asking them to upgrade you to a VPS. In my experience this typically takes less than an hour and you won't have to do anything.
 
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Thank you for all the replies and everyone's input.
Manster54 said:
Don't know how you expect EIGHT MEGABYTES to load fast. This page is BLOATED beyond belief.

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...
webpagetest.org webpagetest.org

91 percent of your pageload is massive images.

Scale down all of these massive images and re-upload them to overwrite. There's no excuse for having 5 megabyte images loading.

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...
webpagetest.org webpagetest.org
Click to expand...

I will make sure to scale down my images and re-upload them.

Slavik said:
Moving to a VPS would only solve the issue if the problem is a resources bottleneck.

What happens if you disable all addons and revert back to the stock XenForo style?
Click to expand...
I am disabling my add-ons now to test the performance.
 
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AndyB said:
I suggest moving to VPS.
Click to expand...

AndyB said:
It should be as easy as contacting your web host and asking them to upgrade you to a VPS. In my experience this typically takes less than an hour and you won't have to do anything.
Click to expand...

Brand new sites, or any site that is small in size and traffic do not require a VPS, shared hosting is perfectly fine if the host is decent.
 
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I have an issue now, where I disabled my slideshow addon, and the whole forums is a white page? Not sure why, but server errors have logged about a file in PAGE_CONTAINER because I had the slideshow custom edited. My admin panel is at a snail pace and I am trying to disable the addons to see, although it is so slow I am getting worried that I broke something.
 
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Sapling Central said:
That’s because the issue wasn’t resolved until right now, it takes time for them to fix a physical issue at a datacenter site during COVID haha
Click to expand...
It's still 8.2mb... Optimizing those images will bring down that load time it's still a slow site. But much better now, 15 seconds beats what you had before.

No matter how small the images appear to the browser, they're still whatever file size they are.

Two really huge ones are adding 10 seconds to your load time by themselves.

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...
webpagetest.org webpagetest.org
 
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Manster54 said:
It's still 8.2mb... Optimizing those images will bring down that load time it's still a slow site. But much better now, 15 seconds beats what you had before.

No matter how small the images appear to the browser, they're still whatever file size they are.

Two really huge ones are adding 10 seconds to your load time by themselves.

WebPageTest

View this on WebPageTest.org...
webpagetest.org webpagetest.org
Click to expand...
Fixed! I have a 93 % rating on my page now :) Thank you, you were right, it did help a lot!!
 
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