Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

[Steve]

Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Oh hai,

Just to get the boring techy stuff aside: We're now using Amazon's sexy S3 and CloudFront Beta web services in tandem to help boost forum speed and performance by delivering content (images, CSS, JavaScript, etc) quickly from strategically placed, super high performance servers, and also by taking some of the extra work away from our server.

Hopefully some of you will already noticed the difference in speed. Maybe you wouldn't if I hadn't have mentioned it... and there'll be a few of you who still won't notice a difference even after me mentioning it. :blink:

Anyway, I've never used Amazon S3 or CloudFront Beta services before and I need you lovely bunch to let me know if you happen to notice the added speed and performance gained from this. Also, if you come across any bugs like missing images or graphics then it'd be cool if you'd let me know.

At the moment, this website is the one I'm using to test S3 and CloudFront but should everything work as it should then I'd love to update devilmaycry.org and residentevilnews.com next.

For those of you whom might be interested about which 'items' are now being delivered super fast: Pretty much everything you see on projectego.net (aside from the sliding Featured Images). The projectego.net forum is currently using CloudFront to deliver some of the bulkier JavaScript files and two images: the header graphic and the forest background.

If you're using the 'april2010 (with less junk) theme then it won't really make any difference as that it not using Amazon S3 or CloudFront to deliver content.

Anyway, yeah, I'm not expecting tons of replies to this but it would be cool if you could leave any input at all, really. I'd love to hear it if you find any errors, although, I can't imagine there being all that many, if at all.

Cheers!

 

[Steve]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

JD,

Thanks for pointing out those errors. It turns out I had uploaded and referenced the wrong JavaScript file. vBulletin was calling for a file called connection-min.js and I went and incorrectly uploaded the non-minified version called connection.js. I've double checked and both of the problems you reported were down to that JavaScript file not being called correctly, and appear to be working correctly now.

 

[Gikoku]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

The main theme is noticeably smoother when I scroll up & down, but not as smooth and fast as the Lite theme.

Haven't found any other issues.

 

[Tsuyu]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

The only problem I tend to encounter are short, but rather frequent, periods where the site appears to be "down" i.e I get the standard error message about not being able to connect to the server and whatnots.

 

[Steve]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

We talkin' daily here, Tsuyu? If so, might be time to move hosts. It took support 11+ hours to answer one my support tickets yesterday.

 

[Steve]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

I'm currently having a bit of a mingle with a chap from ThePlanet.com - I've heard great things about 'em even from years and years back when I was quite active on webhostingtalk.com and before I forked out for a dedicated server from TotalChoiceHosting. I'm liking what I'm hearing so far and might cough up today.

How long would you say the site is down for when these errors occur? I see nothing in the logs. I sometimes, rarely encounter, say, a few seconds downtime every other day but if it's worse than I thought then I'd like to pack up and migrate over to a better host ASAP. Even today, if need be.

 

[Tsuyu]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

As John said a few frantic strokes to the F5 key usually brings it up again. However at times it might take several minutes before I am able to "get through" to the website. At most it might take up to half an hour but that is really rare.

 

[Steve]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

UNACCEPTABLE.

 

[Daemon300]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

The main theme is noticeably smoother when I scroll up & down, but not as smooth and fast as the Lite theme.

This.

The only problem I tend to encounter are short, but rather frequent, periods where the site appears to be "down" i.e I get the standard error message about not being able to connect to the server and whatnots.

And this. If it happens, I just refresh the page and everything is fine.

EDIT: Double ninja'd -.-

 

[Firis]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Same thing as John and Tsuyu, other than that works like a Midsummer Dream.

 

[Steve]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Right, I'm off out. The sales rep from ThePlanet offered me the following for those of you whom might be curious:

Intel Xeon 5130 2.0 GHz Dual Core Processors x2

4 GB RAM (should have asked what kind of RAM...)

500 GB IDE/SATA HDD x2

CentOS Enterprise Linux 5 64 bit (might go for Red Hat...)

cPanel/WHM with Fantastico (might go for Plesk)

13 IPs

2000 GB Bandwidth

The sales rep was a lovely bloke as well. I reckon I might order the new server this evening, maybe.

 

[Noctus]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

The website is noticeably faster for me in every respect. I never really had issues with speed, a lot of the websites I go to are a lot slower than this one used to be.

That offer seems really good, however.

 

[Purple Nurple]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

As John said a few frantic strokes to the F5 key usually brings it up again. However at times it might take several minutes before I am able to "get through" to the website. At most it might take up to half an hour but that is really rare.

I had this as well - sometimes it just said 'Problem loading page.' but a quick F5 fixed that. Can't comment on whether it still happens as I haven't had enough time to test.

Other than that, the background comes up noticeably faster, and generally I haven't encountered any lag or slowness, so I'd say it probably has worked.

 

[Noctus]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Same thing as John and Tsuyu, other than that works like a Midsummer Dream.

I'm not getting this. I'll see if it happens over the next few hours.

EDIT: Yeah, I got it too.

 

[Dark Drakan]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Another problem I've seen is that clicking Mark Forums Read will not work, takes me to an error page: "Your submission could not be processed because a security token was invalid."

Still saying that for me as of 5mins ago.

 

[Gikoku]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Still saying that for me as of 5mins ago.

Ditto.

 

[Steve]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Does it still occur for you even after you've cleared your cache, mate? If so, could you sign in using another browser (i.e. Internet Explorer) and see if using the Mark Forum Read button works fine there?

 

[Noctus]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Works fine for me, still.

 

[Gikoku]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Does it still occur for you even after you've cleared your cache, mate? If so, could you sign in using another browser (i.e. Internet Explorer) and see if using the Mark Forum Read button works fine there?

Cleared my cache, and it's still the same.

 

[Steve]

Re: Need your input regarding forum speed and performance

Very odd... You see, I was able to reproduce the error, then I performed what I believed to be the fix and it appeared to do the trick for me and a number of people. Still, it seems to be affecting a fair few people even now... hmm. Sharon is also having the problem too.

The only other possible thing I can imagine it being at this point is when I upgraded from 3.8.4 to 3.8.5 early yesterday. The customer forums on vBulletin are rife with users who are complaining left and right about how much vBulletin has gone down the crapper since the acquisition last year.

Can you guys copy/paste the exact message you receive? I'll see what the vBulletin support team makes of it.

Edit: Ahhh, okay. I think I might know what the probem is. In fact, I'm certain of it. Please let me know if you guys are still experiencing the error (another cache flush wouldn't hurt before responding).