all of the performance options are turned on and off manually. the admin has to go in and decide if it should be on or off.

this is not the best way to do it.

ideally, the forum software should monitor the performance of the server or board, and automatically turn features on and off based on performance. if the load is EXTREMELY heavy, instead of putting up a busy message, it should switch to the lofi version automatically.

second, if the load is high, it should switch to a lower res image format for any images that are too large (like in the gallery). perhaps use progressive jpg too.

I also use a standard background that is quick to load in case the user waits a long time for the main image to load. the background is super low res, and when the hires image loads into the img tag, it covers the background image. it works very nicely.

I've had sudden bursts of 50,000 new visitors in 1 hour and normally it takes the servers down without some form of protection.

my web site has these features built in (but not the forum). they are easy to implement.

Wouldn't be hard at all to do and would be a very nice feature for IPS to at to IP.Board.

all of the performance options are turned on and off manually. the admin has to go in and decide if it should be on or off.

this is not the best way to do it.

ideally, the forum software should monitor the performance of the server or board, and automatically turn features on and off based on performance. if the load is EXTREMELY heavy, instead of putting up a busy message, it should switch to the lofi version automatically.

That wouldn't be too hard, as long as IPB is correctly reading server load.

second, if the load is high, it should switch to a lower res image format for any images that are too large (like in the gallery). perhaps use progressive jpg too.

That will only preserve bandwidth for the most part, and would probably take more CPU time switching over all the formats of files if you didn't already have them cached.

I also use a standard background that is quick to load in case the user waits a long time for the main image to load. the background is super low res, and when the hires image loads into the img tag, it covers the background image. it works very nicely.

That can be done with CSS styling on your skin.


Interesting, but in general if you're getting buried, you need a better server or connection, shutting off features is a temporary fix. Basically you should use this feature a handful of times before you start thinking about getting a better setup.

Basically you should use this feature a handful of times before you start thinking about getting a better setup.

and even in those handful of times, couldn't you just set up some notifications when a high server load is happening?

1) Not all servers can read server loads - our shared servers for example have exec disabled, so this feature wouldn't work at all

2) It's not IPB's job to monitor server load and configure itself based on your current resource usage :huh:

3) It would be counter intuitive for people who didn't know what they were doing to see the page changing from normal skin to lofi skin to feature x on to feature x off based on how busy the server is

4) Changing image resolutions based on on skin would take enormously more cpu processing than serving the images. IPB doesn't dynamically generate it's images on display, thus this wouldn't save anything except bandwidth

I don't see any benefit to adding this. I know where you are getting at, and the effort/outcome is noble, but I don't think there's a lot that can be done within the software on a global scale that would help. It sounds more like a customized solution you need.

and even in those handful of times, couldn't you just set up some notifications when a high server load is happening?

I said it was interesting, not practical :P