Timeouts, slow speeds

[maxwolfie]

Hi all, I posted a thread in another section but was asked to post here.

Basically, I've just installed XF but I'm having big problems with the speed, overall the site is noticeably slower (and I hate to compare, but a lot slower than say phpBB). However, my main concern is timeouts when I make a change to the configuration or a template. It will timeout say half way through it's Purging Cache Data (or whatever) process and at one point it left me with a broken template.

Is there a way to correct this? People are saying it's time for a new host, but I use StableHost (who are supposed to be one of the best), and I never had any speed or timeout issues at all.

I have read, that turning on caching may assist? Is this true? Are there any drawbacks? I will have a dynamic portal installed with regular news feeds, will caching slow down the updates of my feeds onto the portal page? (XenPorta)

 

[Chris D]

Greg,

I think some people alluded to this earlier, but basically you shouldn't have to do anything special to get XenForo running well. Performance is one of the key things about XenForo, it is built for stability and performance, out of the box.

Caching does of course help, but I've got a pretty big board and we're only just looking at caching now. It's been running fine for two months with a stock installation with pretty much zero done in terms of optimising it.

The fact that performance is so poor is incredibly unusual. You can stick XenForo on a pretty crappy server and it should still run relatively well.

What's being logged in your Server Error Logs? (/admin.php?logs/server-error)

 

[DRE]

Sounds like your server sucks. I've had the same problem before. Complain to your host and they might fix it.

 

[Jake Bunce]

An opcode cache like APC will speed up execution. Though maybe there is a bottleneck elsewhere such as the database. I have seen some servers with horrible write performance.

Some admin operations like saving a template or group can take time, especially if you have lots of styles / languages / groups / nodes / etc. If your server is having performance issues to begin with then that can easily result in timeouts. XenForo does a considerable amount of processing at save time (rebuilding caches and whatnot) in order to get maximum performance at runtime.

Also note that XenForo uses InnoDB tables instead of MyISAM. This difference combined with a server that isn't optimized for InnoDB can result in unexpected slowness when compared to other forum applications.

More generally, contact your host or try a different host. Unless you manage your own server in which case you will need to try to narrow down what exactly is being slow.

 

[maxwolfie]

It is strange that it sounds like it's my host, I am currently using StableHost which is supposed to be the #1. I.e. they don't oversell, don't offer "unlimited" etc.

I've read about enabling simple caching, will this do anything?

 

[Jake Bunce]

I've read about enabling simple caching, will this do anything?

Yes, enabling a cache will help performance:

http://xenforo.com/help/cache/

By simply adding APC to your PHP configuration you will automatically see a performance benefit without any additional configuration in XenForo. Then you can go farther by setting up a cache in XenForo's config file to store commonly used forum data, further helping performance.

 

[SchmitzIT]

It is strange that it sounds like it's my host, I am currently using StableHost which is supposed to be the #1. I.e. they don't oversell, don't offer "unlimited" etc.

You could always have a look at NimbusHosting. We use them, and are very satisfied with both the performance as well as support offered. They also offer XenForo-optimized hosting.

 

[maxwolfie]

Can anyone help me with setting up some basic cache settings? There seems to be a lot of options with it, and I'm not sure.

 

[Chris D]

Can anyone help me with setting up some basic cache settings? There seems to be a lot of options with it, and I'm not sure.

This is from our config file which we implemented yesterday:

$config['cache']['enabled'] = true;
$config['cache']['frontend'] = 'Core';
$config['cache']['frontendOptions']['cache_id_prefix'] = 'xf_';
$config['cache']['backendOptions'] = array('cache_dir' => '/tmp/vtnet_cache');
$config['cache']['cacheSessions'] = true;
$config['cache']['backend'] = 'File';

You will need to adjust your cache_dir accordingly, of course.

 

[maxwolfie]

So that's a good starting point for my board?

Do I need to do anything else - I.e. make a directory, CHMOD it etc?

 

[Chris D]

You will need to make sure the directory specified in the cache_dir line actually exists - this will be from the Linux file system root though, not the FTP root... I think... Our sever expert implemented it. I don't think CHMOD is necessary.

 

[maxwolfie]

Cheers, I can access that folder through FTP. I will give it a shot if I need to

Thanks again!

 

[Chris D]

Good luck