Hello I want to optimise my server for my invision forum... I'm fairly new to this and would some helpful easy to use advice...

Heres some of my forum statistics

Posts - 1,207,095
Members 24,000
Users Online last 30 mins - 387 members, 660 guests

The server is AMD x2 5000+ processor with 4GB of DDR2 ram.

Heres details from my.cnf, not sure if they help, but I'm a newbie to this, do these setting look ok for my forum size, the databse is around 1.3gb when backed up?

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1
max_connections = 500
safe-show-database
skip-locking
key_buffer = 384M
max_allowed_packet = 3M
table_cache = 512
sort_buffer_size = 3M
read_buffer_size = 3M
read_rnd_buffer_size = 3M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 64M
thread_cache_size = 8
query_cache_size= 64M
thread_concurrency = 8
wait_timeout = 30

[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib

[mysqld_safe]
err-log=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

[isamchk]
key_buffer = 256M
sort_buffer_size = 256M
read_buffer = 4M
write_buffer = 4M

I had a board almost exactly the size of yours running quite comfortably on a 2.6 MHz Celeron with 512MB RAM, using only the output of tuning-primer.sh as a guide. Your rig should easily handle your load using that tool (but your traffic levels are higher, so I'd suggest making sure that the mysql DB is running on a second drive, not the one that runs everything else, including swapfile -- especially during routine daily/weekly maintenance jobs, where disk thrashing was a bit of an issue)

tuning-primer.sh observes your mysql in actual use for 48 hours or longer, and then makes specific recommendations based on the actual performance of *your* site under *your* real world traffic.

These days, Mysqltuner.pl is also highly regarded, but I haven't gotten around to trying it. I keep meaning to. Both are free.

I don't have source links, but this thread has links and sample output.