Working too slow, maybe some hint

[Ivan Minic]

My forum works very very slow these days so I'm going to ask here for some assistance

Lets compare:
Here:
186 Guests, 74 Users
Users active in past 30 minutes:
When I open stats.
Page created in 0.882 seconds with 23 queries.
When i open any other page still have generation time under 1 sec.
I even tried opening [unknown]'s stats
Page created in 3.464 seconds with 14 queries.
This is with other pages on celeron 1700 with 512 ram.

Mine forum has 23k users, has double visits, topics, posts daily and is alone on dedicated celeron 1700 with 1gb ram.
212 Guests, 0 Buddies, 51 Users (1 Hidden)
Users active in past 15 minutes:
When i open More stats:
Page created in 45.143 seconds with 23 queries.
When i open any page time is from 5 to 30 seconds.
When i try to open my personal stats [73k posts for the last 3.5 years] it takes over 80 seconds to generate.

Do you have any idea what to do? and where can I be wrong in setting?
I'm working on getting better machine for forum to run, but if this is this fast here, maybe there is some solution that could help me.

What can be also important...
I have set 50 topics per page (was 80) cause some forums have that much topic daily
I have set 10 posts per page, 10 members per page in memberlist...

[Ben_S]

More stats is very slow in 1.0x, it works a lot better in 1.1 (currently in charter member beta).

Things to check, are you using MySQL 4x, SMF is slow on MySQL 3x as it is optimized for MySQL 4.

Do you have any image size restrictions enabled in Admin > Edit Features and Options, if so set them to 0 (disabled).

Also try removing any mods you have installed temporarilly to check they aren't causing queries to take a while.

Add

Code Select Expand

$db_show_debug = true; to your Settings.php to track down any slow queries.

[Ivan Minic]

Working on mysql 4 and dont have image size restrictions (figured out while testing).
So. 1.1 is much faster than 1.0 in general or just when we speak about stats?
I do know i have a big community, and on celeron it is normal for it to work slower than here .. but not that much slower.

[Ben_S]

Added a couple of things to my post after you replied.

This site is on a celeron. You may need to optimize your mysql conf a bit if you havent and install an optimizer such as mmcache or eaccelerator.

[Ben_S]

Also take a look at this topic http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=30542.0, there are some good tips in there for large boards.

[Ivan Minic]

Huh... have problems with some mods.. will have to remove them manually (they don't work anyway) topic rating and buddy ... after i remove that i will see more for setting mysql and if no result i will reply here.
Anyway.. good luck in champions league finals 

[Ivan Minic]

mods removed
now no error present
worked the same (maybe even worse)
needed mods returned
-------------------------------
Will try fixind database issues and will inform you after.

[[Unknown]]

You're certain you don't have the "check avatar size every time it's disaplyed option" on, right?

-[Unknown]

[Ivan Minic]

Avatar size isn't limited since there are only avatars from gallery and remote linked avatars are not limited in size also so no need for me to select that option, since only admin can set them.

[[Unknown]]

Did you convert from another software?

At this point, I'm going to guess you're missing indexes.  How many indexes does the log_online table have?

-[Unknown]

[Ivan Minic]

Yes.. 20 days ago from heavily moded phpbb2...
smf_log_online   102     MyISAM        91.6 KB       49,968 Bytes

[ProjectXIII]

I'm also having a similar problem. (just converted from phpBB) but my board is nowhere near that big...and the load time is quite long, especially after posting a reply. (takes 30 seconds to load the page after replying.)

My log_online has two entries..that's it.  Should there be more?

I love SMF, and would hate to go back....but my phpBB board was nowhere near as slow!

[Ben_S]

What version of MySQL is your server running, you can check from Admin > Support and Credits.

[ProjectXIII]

cPanel:
Apache version - 1.3.33 (Unix)   
MySQL version - 4.0.22-standard   
PHP version - 4.3.11
PERL version - 5.8.6   
Operating system - Linux   
Machine Type - i686

Admin > Support and Credits:
Version Information:
Forum version: SMF 1.0.5 (more detailed)
Current SMF version: SMF 1.0.5
PHP version: 4.3.11
MySQL version: 4.0.22-standard
Server version: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_perl/1.26 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2634a mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7a PHP-CGI/0.1b
GD version: bundled (2.0.28 compatible)

As a note, I have installed MKPortal...but because I thought that may have been the problem, I uninstalled it and gave it another go.  It didn't help any, so I reinstalled the portal.

I don't have any mods installed.  It's a straight 1.05 install.  I had once installed the Ignore Forums mod and the Buddy mod, but uninstalled them just minutes later. (I was just testing the Package system)

I've optimized the database...no go.

I didn't try InnoDB because I didn't think it would help in my case.

I don't have the Check Avatar Size enabled.

I tried the info.php file that [Unknown] had mentioned in another thread, but after uploading it to my server and navigating to the file, I got nothing at all...just a blank screen. (though I think this may be my fault...dunno)

Guess I just don't know where to go next.  Most of the forum will  run relatively smooth (but still slow) but it's just painful to wait so long after posting.

If you want, I have a test account set up also.  After this post I'll send you the login via PM.  There is a board right at the top for testing/troubleshooting.  You can make a post in there to check it out if you want.

I really appreciate your help.  I desperately want to stick with SMF, but the speeds I'm getting are tough to deal with.

***EDIT***
Ok, I've narrowed it down a bit more.  I was using MSN Explorer and Internet Explorer (yes, junk, I know...but that's what most people that visit my site use, and that's all I have available to me at work)  I opened up Firefox, went to the testing thread mentioned, and now it posts in 3-5 seconds instead of roughtly 30.

So, I think I've found the problem.  Other than not using IE, how do I fix it?!

[Ben_S]

Disable any image size restrictions you may have on, ie max width of post images and check avatar size every time they are displayed.

[ProjectXIII]

I had already done the check avatar size thing...but disabling image size restrictions didn't help at all.

Did you see that I noted that while usig Firefox, everything works great...but with IE it takes forever?  What/why could that be?

[Ivan Minic]

but with IE it takes forever?  What/why could that be?

Spyware?
Is page generation time the same with both browsers, or close to each other?

[ProjectXIII]

The page generation time shown at the bottom of the site is the same with IE and Firefox...it just takes IE forever to load after making the post.

Sometimes IE takes longer to browse, but not often.

[Ivan Minic]

Sometimes IE takes longer to browse, but not often.

When IE parses HTML, he waits for the whole table to be loaded and then shows the result. As for the Opera, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, they load page row by row and usually are much more efficient with forums and similar content.
For example, when page has a lot of posts it hase approx 100+ kb of material to load, IE waits for the whole table with messages to be loaded while FireFox loads them cell by cell.
So, if you take a brief look, you will see for yourself that when opening with firefox you will see, post by post the whole page loaded, and with IE it just shows all at once.

[ProjectXIII]

Yes, I do realize that, but it really shouldn't take IE 30 seconds, consistantly, to open the page.  It takes this long whether the page has one or twenty one posts on it.

Have you corrected the problem you had with speed?  If so, what did you do?  I need to try something, because if it takes this long with IE, I'll lose my members.  It's not worth losing members to keep SMF.