Need help getting CycleChat up to speed

[Clickfinity]

Another point of note - my prior to IPB observations were of a load average of 0.x - it's currently running between 1 and 3 and can peak at double figures if I disable any hooks in the ACP!!!! <--- not sure if that's a bug or not?

Granted, I've made changes since the install of IPB but it just seems, overall, to more resource hungry.

Keep the advice coming please ... it is appreciated.

Thanks,
Shaun :D

[stoo2000]

sessions table can benefit from being changed to memory(HEAP) since it doesn't matter if the content is lost (it's not saved if there is a reboot etc)

[Clickfinity]

sessions table can benefit from being changed to memory(HEAP) since it doesn't matter if the content is lost (it's not saved if there is a reboot etc)

Oppss, sorry, my mistake - it was changed to HEAP. Got mixed up ...

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[Jinkler]

Subscribing for updates - I'm having the same kind of problems.

[stoo2000]

Server Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny4 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8g

X-Powered-By PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny4

You may benefit from updating to the latest Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.2.14.

I have just noticed one thing though in Firebug, Something is loading the same page again after it's been loaded once.

[Clickfinity]

I modified robots.txt to add a crawl delay of 10 this morning to see if it helps with load averages ... I'll check on it later.

I've also tweaked my.cnf to increase key_buffer to 1000M and reduce a couple of cache values (which I think were possibly excessive anyway) - which seems to have reduced the overall footprint of MySQL without adversely affecting page load times. I'll report back later.

I'm also interested in the comments on another thread here about images being loaded via URLs instead of being locally referenced - is there a way to modify this behaviour - either in the templates, or in the PHP that parses them?

I'm also wondering about the merits of replacing some of the key elements of the forums pages with TABLE tags. I know they're "old hat" but I spent over an hour last night working out that I cannot get rid of the white-space under the userInfoPanel because the closing DIV tag cuts off the background colour, and the only way to change the colour is to change the entire post_body BG - throwing out the who "look" of the TopicView. With a TABLE I could simply give the column a BG colour and have done with it ...

I appreciate some of my furstration is because of the learning curve in moving to a new platform, but it seems there are template bits for virtually every little bit of the screen in IPB - and whilst that offers skinners a great deal of flexibility - it means simple, page-wide changes, are more difficult to accomplish for people like me with a basic level of understanding.

I've got a poll going on my site at the moment, and it does seem to be swinging more towards the new layout being a key issue - with a general feeling of being "overwhelmed" by the theme - "a lot more cluttered than the old site" and "feeling like we've gone from a village to a town" and "it's all a bit clunky and unweildy".

Comparing the old and new sites it is a pretty strong and "busy" change of theme, so I think I'll start working more towards designing a clear and simple theme that matches the "old" site so that people feel more at home.

Any further tips and advice greatly appreciated though.

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[Clickfinity]

I have just noticed one thing though in Firebug, Something is loading the same page again after it's been loaded once.

Really? Does that happen every time?

Anyone got any idea how/why that's happening?

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[stoo2000]

<snip>

I'm also interested in the comments on another thread here about images being loaded via URLs instead of being locally referenced - is there a way to modify this behaviour - either in the templates, or in the PHP that parses them?

It's a load of crap, Apache processes external requests. That's what a web server does...

I'm also wondering about the merits of replacing some of the key elements of the forums pages with TABLE tags. I know they're "old hat" but I spent over an hour last night working out that I cannot get rid of the white-space under the userInfoPanel because the closing DIV tag cuts off the background colour, and the only way to change the colour is to change the entire post_body BG - throwing out the who "look" of the TopicView. With a TABLE I could simply give the column a BG colour and have done with it ...

CSS renders faster than table based layouts, using tables you also get alot more code in your page, which increases your bandwidth usage, and slows your site.

[Clickfinity]

It's a load of crap, Apache processes external requests. That's what a web server does...

True, but using URLs for image files that are on-disk is an unnecessary overhead?

"/images/image.png" - data is acquired locally from disk
[url=" - Apache goes "out" via DNS to resolve the URL and then comes "back" on itself to get the self same data that is right there in front of it on the disk.

Granted, the overhead may be minimal, but surely it has to be considered as part of optimising templates / code?

Unless, of course, Apache is "aware" of local domains and/or the server resolves them locally - in which case it doesn't matter at all.

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[stoo2000]

Apache doesn't go 'out' anywhere, it's your browser that's making the request. Seperatley to the request for the page.

[Clickfinity]

CSS renders faster than table based layouts

Well that's a good reason for using it ... good ... but ...

... using tables you also get alot more code in your page, which increases your bandwidth usage, and slows your site.

... surely <table class=".... isn't that much more code than <div class="... ?

You need TR and TD's for your data but you also need additional DIV's to draw the data elements of a DIV based table layout surely?

I suppose I just need to update my knowledge and get stuck in to CSS and start learning the finer points of it so I can do things without getting frustrated ... :blush:

Thanks,
Shaun :D

[Clickfinity]

Apache doesn't go 'out' anywhere, it's your browser that's making the request. Seperatley to the request for the page.

So when the end-user visits your forum home page and the requests for various bits of the page are made to Apache:

"/images/this.png" is exactly the same as [url=" in terms of Apache finding that content and delivering it to the user?

There's no "cost" in using the full URL to reference that bit of the page content?

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[stoo2000]

No, it's just like loading a page up

Browser -> url -> dns lookup -> request file from webserver (index.php etc)

The browser then sees that there is external content in that page, images, Javascript etc. then for each item.

Browser -> url -> dns lookup -> request file from webserver (image.jpg etc)

It's not always that since browsers will cache DNS, images and other files.

But the bottom line is, it doesn't make a difference if you have a full url to a file or a relevant path (apart from a full path will always load the image on any page), a relevant path may be wrong if the page is then in a folder (i.e /forum, /topic, /members)

[Clickfinity]

No, it's just like loading a page up

Browser -> url -> dns lookup -> request file from webserver (index.php etc)

The browser then sees that there is external content in that page, images, Javascript etc. then for each item.

Browser -> url -> dns lookup -> request file from webserver (image.jpg etc)

It's not always that since browsers will cache DNS, images and other files.

But the bottom line is, it doesn't make a difference if you have a full url to a file or a relevant path (apart from a full path will always load the image on any page), a relevant path may be wrong if the page is then in a folder (i.e /forum, /topic, /members)

Okay, I can see that process going on at the end-user side of things ... the browser requesting things from Apache, Apache serving them up to the end user.

But what about how Apache "sees" the local / external references?

If Apache is asked by the end user for [url=" does it see it as a "local" file and serve it directly, or does it try to resolve the request via DNS?

Or does the browser request end up being "/images/image.png" by the time it hits Apache?

That's what I was trying to get at.

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[stoo2000]

All Apache does in respects to images etc is looks at the requested path (/path/to/image.jpg), then it looks for that on the hard disk /home/user/public_html/path/to/image.jpg and returns it if it is found.

[Clickfinity]

All Apache does in respects to images etc is looks at the requested path (/path/to/image.jpg), then it looks for that on the hard disk /home/user/public_html/path/to/image.jpg and returns it if it is found.

So in terms of Apache's view of things, /path/image.png is exactly the same as [url=" "] ?

So it doesn't make a difference if the HTML of the parsed template page has a full URL or not?

Cheers,
Shaun :D

PS. I'm not nit-picking, just trying to broaden my understanding of things ... :thumbsup:

[stoo2000]

So in terms of Apache's view of things, /path/image.png is exactly the same as

?

So it doesn't make a difference if the HTML of the parsed template page has a full URL or not?

Cheers,

Shaun :D

PS. I'm not nit-picking, just trying to broaden my understanding of things ... :thumbsup:

Apache doesn't know the difference between them, the only downside (if you can call it that) is the HTML contains more characters from having the full url in the HTML.

[Clickfinity]

Okay, thanks for going through that with me.

Cheers,
Shaun :D

PS. So it would help reduce the overhead of page loading if my domain was "cyclingenthusiastschatforumandonlinemeetingplacefordisucssingcyclingandanythingsrelatedtocycling.com" ? ... :thumbsup:

[stoo2000]

Haha, yeah.

It's not an issue that would slow your site down though, You need to rectify the issue you have with two requests for every page load.

[Clickfinity]

I just tried Firebug myself and couldn't get the duplicate page load to show itself ... was it happening for every request?

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[MageUK]

Haha, yeah.

It's not an issue that would slow your site down though, You need to rectify the issue you have with two requests for every page load.

I just tried Firebug myself and couldn't get the duplicate page load to show itself ... was it happening for every request?

Cheers,

Shaun :D

It *only* seems to happen when loading a forum view, ie. http://www.cyclechat.net/forum/39-the-welcome-mat/

As such it's probably barely even contributing to any load issues you have. The load issues sound like a badly configured SQL server to me.

When the server load is high, you need to be logged into the box, with top running, and checking what's eating the CPU time, whether it's Apache or MySQLd.

[.Ian]

So in terms of Apache's view of things, /path/image.png is exactly the same as [url="http://www.site.com/path/image.png"][/url][url="

[/url] ?

So it doesn't make a difference if the HTML of the parsed template page has a full URL or not?

Cheers,

Shaun :D

PS. I'm not nit-picking, just trying to broaden my understanding of things ... :thumbsup:

Just bear in mind that should you ever change your domain name (unlikely, but you never know) the full url would cease to work but the / would still show the image.

That is the only reason I can think of to only use /path/image.png

[Clickfinity]

That is the only reason I can think of to only use /path/image.png

I have another one ... relative paths offer you the ability to run the site from several domains (like I could with vB3) ... :D

When I converted to IPB I was running CycleChat from 3 different domains, but as soon as I moved that stopped because everything was designed to use the full URL for the domain in the config file - so even if people arrived at the home page via www.cycle-cafe.net or www.cyclechat.co.uk, as soon as they clicked on anything they were moved to www.cyclechat.net

Because cyclechat has the word "chat" in it, a good few of my members cannot access it from work so I bought the cycle-cafe domain which solved the problem. Unfortunately that has been undone now by the move to IPB.

NOTE: If anyone knows how to modify IPB to operate from the same server but under multiple domains, please let me know.

Cheers,
Shaun :D

[Gaffney]

Not that big of a difference between them, I'm using chrome 6 which is very fast. Maybe it's just the skin your using, maybe you should make a lightweight skin ?

[Clickfinity]

Not that big of a difference between them, I'm using chrome 6 which is very fast. Maybe it's just the skin your using, maybe you should make a lightweight skin ?

Yes, I'm going down that route ... after polling my membership it seems a lot of them are not liking the new skin and want something plainer, simpler ... "like we had it before" ... lol

I've bought a simple skin to shortcut some of the work and will add the images / colouring over the coming weeks and see how that works out for people.

I'm still interesting in optimising my server though, so keep the advice coming along those lines ... especially APACHE ... it's using a lot of CPU% and I wonder if I would benefit from some Apache tweaks (unload some modules? modify config settings?), or maybe some form of PHP accelleration (although I don't know if that's what memcached does? or is memcached just a general web content cache sitting between Apache and the browser?).

Cheers,
Shaun :D