Plan to do a forum super fast - (what we need to know)

[ASTRAPI]

Hello IPB community

I hope with this topic to explain the basics on how we can plan everything related to end up with a super fast forum !

After telling you something very common that you must not use many addons and try to not use resources from other pages as that will cause delay on loading we can go forward

 

Lets start with VPS servers:

We must know what kind of hardware the provider is using and what kind of network connection and the limits that they may have....

Users look for example:

typical vps setup company 1:  1vcore, 1gb ram, 20GB disk, 1000Mbit connection shared  10$

typical vps setup company 2: 1vcore, 1gb ram, 20GB disk, 1000Mbit connection shared   10$

Looks exactly the same ?

Do you think that you will get the same performance using company 1 or company 2 ?

NO WAY ! WHY?

 

Because you don't know and none ask from what kind of cpu i will get 1 core?

It is not the same to get 1 core with 2,4Ghz and not the same to get 1 core with 3,0Ghz

 

What about the ram is it DDR 3 or DDR 4 ?

The same with hard disk is it an ssd on both and which ssd as not all ssd's perform the same !

That's the first step

 

Then we must try to get a server vps or dedicated as closer as possible to where most of our users GEO located or use a CDN that will help with the static content of the forum or do both...

Now if you can get a dedicated server things are clear according to the specifications of the server.Just ask for the network of what they offer and do not get confused with the network port that it says 1.000Mbit as you may use only the half of it.Not bad but you should know that

Then try to learn how a hard disk perform better using the correct partition scheme ....(if you have a very fast ssd then you may bypass this)

Choose a server OS without many things inside and the purpose of it should be for web servers and not for social chat....(I prefer Centos)

You must think twice for this as you may end up with an OS that not many admins use it and there are not many tutorials and instructions that may help you and even some web server software will not work on it !

 

After installing it is time to install a web server php and mysql to start with your forums.

Read about them and view some benchmarks You will see huge differences. (i prefer Nginx)

Then look for Mysql or Percona or MariaDB as they are the most common databases....

Read about them and view some benchmarks. Chose then one that you want (i prefer MariaDB)

Then do the same for php (i prefer phpfpm)

After that you know what web server you want to use and what database and what php type.

If you plan to use a control panel check if they supported them and do some related research or use some plugins that offers what you want to use.

After installing them you must know how to optimize them with some settings that are unique (can't post details on it) for each forum and that will help the speed of your forum.

Then you must optimize the network file settings that controls your network card and you can gain some performance from there also and avoid some limits.

You can do some kernel optimizations also.

Then you should use some caching like zend opcache and memcached....

In general pushing stuff in ram is always faster than the hard disk ...

 

After all the above forums should work fast but it is good to get a monthly administration for many reasons !

From my experience i have seen forums to work very fast but after an a year to not work fast at all and the admin has nothing change.

That's the issue "nothing change"

When i check  i notice most of the times huge log files (you should rotate them) with many GB of size,  /tmp full, max connections at mysql reach or zend opcache full and no new performance technologies or adjustments made on the server for an year.

 

So a good monthly administration is something that you must thing to do as it affects your forums performance and security and stability.

Monthly administration can help you with:

1)Update your system OS

2)Update your Web server, Mysql, Phpfpm, and all software that you use.

3)Apply any new performance adjustments on system, kernel, Web server, Mysql, Phpfpm, and all software that you use.

4)Patch your server for any security issues

and a lot more....

 

All the above are related to how fast your forums work and as you can see is not an easy task.

Enjoy !

[IPSIntNewb]

This is great advice @ASTRAPI. Its great to see people like you share your knowledge for the good!