Need Help Optimizing for SQL and Server Performance

[Angel Knight Phil]

Hi all! I was hoping to get some advice about optimizing my site, as it has been bogged down with SQL problems for a while now, and the site is running almost constantly at maximum server load (which for our shared-hosting setup is a 4.5, according to the ACP). Topics can sometimes take nearly 10 seconds to load, while the board index usually loads fairly quickly. Worst of all, the PM system is nearly unusable; most conversations over 5 messages long will simply fail to load, returning a MySQL error instead. SQL logs in the ACP have countless occurrences of 'The MySQL has gone away'. I love IPB, but if I can't resolve these issues, I may be forced to switch.

Various statistics:

• Rough average 50 to 100 regular (daily) posters
• Rough average 200-300 posts per day
• Hosted with Bihira shared hosting, so Sphinx is not an option (as far as I know?)
• Running MySQL version 5.5.34 and PHP version 5.3.28

I can provide any other statistics or information anyone needs. Thanks in advance for any help!

[RevengeFNF]

Go to your Admin CP -> System Settings -> Advanced -> CPU Saving & Optimization

The option "Mark topics a user has posted when displaying a forum" is turned on?

If yes, turn it off and check if that solved your problem.

When i was on a sharing host, that was my salvation.

[GreenLinks]

Switch host =, clearly you are using a host that is overselling their servers. Daily 50-100 regular poster is nothing.

Also what is your online user - guest count with 15 min cookie time out

[Grumpy]

"which for our shared-hosting setup is a 4.5, according to the ACP"

The load info on ACP isn't really relevant on shared hosting server.
Like if that was a quad core or less, that server is seriously over sold.
If that server was a beast of a 24core or something, that's breeze load.

As this information isn't available to you, the number doesn't really mean much. It also seem to be often in err of reading the actual value.

But generally, the only advice I can give you is the same one as GreenLinks above. Change hosts. Whatever they're providing now, is unstable. Which is a sign that it's sometimes badly overloaded.