MyBB Community Forums

A friend had come into ownership of a large but inactive forum. We've gotten it converted to MyBB (actually did that back in June) and now we're working on cleaning it up and addressing performance issues. I've been doing little things here and there for a bit now, but I'd like to look at it more seriously. So, does anyone have any tips for a sudden inexperienced big board owner?

Obviously, I'm not looking for things like "simplify HTML" and "use fewer images," rather more back-end things, such as what database settings I should look into and how Apache could be set up to better serve the site. We've already gotten it signed up for CloudFlare. The problem is on the server side of things where I've seen SQL times of over 2 seconds performing queries (unfortunately it's random enough that I can't get exactly which queries are taking long).

We're on either a VPS or a cheaper dedicated (possibly dedicated given that in it's heyday it was the site to compete against) so getting into the more nitty-gritty details will be easier for me (I'd hate to imagine how that 4GB (300MB SQL) beast handles on a shared host). Splitting into multiple servers is not an option until we're retaining more users. I've talked with the other guy about the ads, but the sad thing is this is a reduced number of ads. At least I think we got rid of the pop-ups (I can't tell, I have all of the ads blocked on a hosts-file level).

Eventually, content-wise, once I've gotten the performance to a more decent and consistent level, we'd like to get the site focused on iOS modding and theming as a kind of update to what it was before Apple started encrypting the iPod firmwares. Maybe I'll come up with a system to allow users to submit their own packages to our repository (after review, of course).

Well, to start, he can apply to be a Big Board Owner. There's tons of useful advice in the BBO forum.

I would look through labrocca's blog as well . I know sphinx is a something that has been discussed a number a times to help with searches at least .

(2012-09-08, 04:38 AM)Alex Smith Wrote: [ -> ]I would look through labrocca's blog as well . I know sphinx is a something that has been discussed a number a times to help with searches at least .

what's the link to labrocca's blog? I'd like to check it out.

(2012-09-08, 03:26 AM)Paul H. Wrote: [ -> ]Well, to start, he can apply to be a Big Board Owner. There's tons of useful advice in the BBO forum.

Does it have to be him? Because I think we've agreed for me to handle the more technical things while he more handles the content and user stuff.

Use nginx instead of Apache if performance is a concern. I'd also make sure APC is installed and you're using FPM (not plain FastCGI) for PHP.

Cloudflare will help a little but i think you might want to find out what server, vps your on that can play a role in performance, then again it could be your network(host network). I would look at trying to optimize the way MYBB runs like a default installation, Old admins could have played with the settings and not helped. I would also look if your running the latest PHP and MySQL and make sure your vps or dedi is up to date on software. If your using cpanel it can take upto 2gigs on a 32bit system. So if your box has 3 gigs your not leaving allot of room the forum. I would also check the error.log just to see if any errors are being thrown up which could help allot if your tables are dropping or crashing or locking.

You could convert the db over to innodb but I would try to see if you cant get it better performing first this way. I don't see much activity at the moment but that doesn't mean anything.

Rows in mybb_sessions are pretty temporary but high-access, right? I've converted it to ENGINE=MEMORY as well as converting the users table to innodb (don't know what help that'll be, but with 11,759 members and a relatively constant 30ish guests it should help a little). I'm sitting at a load of 0.18 with a page generation time of 0.179ish seconds, but back when I made the thread it was at 5.something with a page generation time of over 2 seconds and I have no idea why.