RFF Software Upgrade?

Jamie Pillers said:
Hi Stephen,
While you all are looking at possibly changing the software, it'd be appreciated if someone there could look at this problem of mine (and others here as well I believe). Whenever I try to look at one of the REALLY LONG threads like "Let's see your Leica M" or "Cameras and Coffee", I get this message whether I'm using a Mac or PC computer:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24117 bytes) in /home/rff/public_html/forums/showthread.php on line 1232

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

That is caused by the PHP memory_limit which defaults to 32MB being exceeded. Each script only gets that much to run in. On a server with many concurrent users memory can be an issue so whilst upping the limit might solve that problem it can also cause other problems. That is something for server admin to look at. i.e. whether it can safely be raised or whether the server needs more memory for it to be safely raised. But either way 32MB is a lot for a script to be using although the max value for it is 128MB.
 
I've never seen the VBulletin code so don't know how it handles output buffering. However the delays I get are usually partial page loads and then a delay so it could be a problem with output_buffering. Upping the php.ini value output_buffering from the default of 4096 may be worth trying together with setting the memory_limit to 64MB. ( One at a time. )
 
A quick look shows 278 users online at this time. 278*32MB is nearly 9GB of memory if they were all using 32MB. Many older web server boxes don't have that much memory or that much allocation if on a shared or cloud setup.
Just sayin as its something else to look at.
 
Another thing which can happen and consumes a lot of server resources are rss feeds. Installing tapatalk could have notified various other sites about RFF which are constantly requesting RSS feeds. Server logs should show this.
Just sayin as another thing to check on the list.
 
definitely running at decent speed now.

I'm inclined to think its primarily a server resource/speed problem which can sped up with more and larger memory allocations with more tuning. Maybe a faster box.

But if you do decide to change forum software then here's a PUNBB forum with 6 million posts for speed comparison.

http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/

Searches there are taking only one tenth the time that RFF does.
 
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I just noticed that the sidebar that used to contain the Classifieds section is now missing. I'm not sure if that was causing the site to run slowly, but it is now running MUCH faster for me.
 
Woo hoo!

Not having the sidebar in threads, or in the gallery I noticed, is a great idea. So far the galley seems to be very snappy compared to what it's been like of late!

🙂 🙂 🙂
 
back to original question.

If you are still considering changing software, I notice that the gallery and the classifieds are from a third party anyway and they are only bridged to VBulletin. And they come supplied with bridges to other forums anyway. So depending on what is consuming all the server resources and if its primarily VBulletin, then it would make sense to keep the gallery and classifieds and just change forum software of which there are many to choose from.
A bridge to PUNBB should be simple to build since the classifieds and gallery already have some inbuilt processing for precisely that. Asking Photopost if its already been done for PUNBB might give a few pointers or go with one of the forums they already bridge to.
Just sayin because that means you only have to migrate forum posts and not gallery and classifieds data although there mey be an unload and load to do for those but databse structure should remain unchanged.....

But I still rekon the problem is really server resources and tuning rather than the software itself even if it isn't the fastest software.
 
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tlitody said:
back to original question.

If you are still considering changing software, I notice that the gallery and the classifieds are from a third party anyway and they are only bridged to VBulletin. And they come supplied with bridges to other forums anyway. So depending on what is consuming all the server resources and if its primarily VBulletin, then it would make sense to keep the gallery and classifieds and just change forum software of which there are many to choose from.
A bridge to PUNBB should be simple to build since the classifieds and gallery already have some inbuilt processing for precisely that. Asking Photopost if its already been done for PUNBB might give a few pointers or go with one of the forums they already bridge to.
Just sayin because that means you only have to migrate forum posts and not gallery and classifieds data although there mey be an unload and load to do for those but databse structure should remain unchanged.....

But I still rekon the problem is really server resources and tuning rather than the software itself even if it isn't the fastest software.
Click to expand...

PUNBB does not scale well, its not suitable for a site of this size.

Port the site to a fresh Vbulletin Install that has been built form the ground up for scabality, otherwise no matter what drection you go your going to be disapointed.
 
JayGannon said:
PUNBB does not scale well, its not suitable for a site of this size.

Port the site to a fresh Vbulletin Install that has been built form the ground up for scabality, otherwise no matter what drection you go your going to be disapointed.
Click to expand...

I think you are wrong. All the punbb sites I have looked at which are showing page generation times are doing it in a tenth the time that RFF is doing it. And that includes a site with 6 million posts, 4 times the size of RFF. But it is not just the page build times that count. It's also the servers ability to dish up the plate. As I've said, I think the real problem with RFF is the server speed and resources available. i.e. processor spec, available memory and possibly storage speed.
The page build time of 0.2 and up is slow in computing terms but acceptable if the server is not under load. It's on the edge.
 
to moderators. If you are looking for a way to reduce server load I would suggest a test at removing the code which provides the little down arrow link to the first new post in each thread. That's the one next to the thread title on the far left in the list of threads in a forum or in the list of todays posts. I think that one will be being recalculated every time you view the list when you are logged in and there are 25 on every page. (guess work on my part but worth a test ).
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