What to do with old old threads?

[Anatoliy]

Hi,

My forum http://www.oregonfishingforum.com is 4 years old, Threads: 6,288, Posts: 64,394, Members: 2,26. I'm facing a problem of performance slowness. I did everything from How To Reduce Server Load

I would like to make an "Archive" category with forums "2006", "2007", "2008", move according threads into them, and make somehow that when a member is searching for something, the system would not search in the "Archive". However forums withing the "Archive" should be searchable... maybe with "Search this Forum"?

My questions are: would it really make a less impact on the server during the use of the "Search" feature? If so, is it possible to exclude the "Archive" folders from the "Search", and how? Is it possible to make the "Archive" folders searchable, and how? And how to find all threads from 2006 and move them into a folder?

Thanks in advance

[ENF]

Hi...

This is just an observation, but your site loads plenty fast, even from Japan.

I'd like to hear what part of your forum is slow, just so we can compare. I browsed a number of threads and the click-to-load time felt very snappy.

I did notice that you have a number of forums loading all posts... at the bottom of each forum there is 'Display threads...' option. You've got the default set to "From the Beginning". While your forum is not all that big, that will help on some load times. The server has to go poll every single thread when you load a forum with that setting, "From the beginning".

[Anatoliy]

Really? Glad to hear that. It's not like some part of the forum is slow. It's more like the whole forum slows down when something happens. And it happens often. I think maybe when the members search? But it's just a guess.

P.S. Is there a tool to measure a forum performance? Some kind of speedometer?
P.P.S. Whit's the url of your forum? I'd like to take a look.

[The_Gismo_Man]

Hi...

This is just an observation, but your site loads plenty fast, even from Japan.

And plenty fast enough for a visitor from Baku where i'm working offshore, behind a tight firewall

[ENF]

P.S. Is there a tool to measure a forum performance? Some kind of speedometer?
P.P.S. Whit's the url of your forum? I'd like to take a look.

I'll try some other things on your site to see if anything pops up... as for speed tests, it's really only relative to your line speed in that case. There are so many factors involved especially when you have many hops to get past. If just one router is overloaded or is failing, you'll notice a slow down on your site. (it happens, but not all that likely) [Clarification: I could have no problems accessing your site, but you could - if your internet path is obstructed. I'd say 80% of our server 'slow' reports are from users with connections less than ideal or problematic beyond our control at the server end.]

If you are savvy enough, you can do load testing on your server to how much heat it can take, although you should check with your host first! If you're on a shared server, that would be a very bad idea. If you are on a dedicated machine, then have at it.

You can check the website in my profile, that's one of the smaller sites I control (~90k posts). I'm part owner and administrator of two other very large sites that I don't want to publicize my connection to. I prefer anonymity, at least while I can.

[Anatoliy]

I host my forum at Host Gator (Reseller hosting plan), so it's not a shared hosting. Regarding my questions above - I didn't get the answer. What is a proper way to deal with 3-4 years old threads? Just let them be there or do something about it?

[Dave B]

Hate to break it to you, but that is still a shared hosting environment.

[THE__DRIFTER]

Our site has been around for about the same length of time. Most posts I leave available but some have been moved to an archive section within the forum available by permission to users as needed. Users can also control that by how far back they want to view posts as well. One problem with Hostgator shared is that a control panel full site backup can only be around 4GB. I like to backup on a regular basis and erase the previous one but because we offer a substantial number of download-able files we run into issues on occasion.

[Abomination]

It appears 1660 sites are on that server.

When viewing your cPanel, in the lower left of the screen it will say Gator___, might want to search for that on the hostgator forums, they have a vb forum over there, to see if there are any issues.

For the record our forum is at HG, has about as many posts as yours, and runs fine. When I clicked on your link the first time it too 45 seconds to open, after that it was fast.

We keep everything regardless of age but I do know of one general forum that pruned 10% of its database last summer, but that was a *huge* forum.

edit - you may want to click on server status in your cPanel and see what the load is, ours usually is at 4-5, today it is 9+, with 8 cpus.

[Anatoliy]

I have a VDS at GoDaddy. Would it be a better home for my forum?

[Abomination]

I would not go to godaddy, I would look into why your forum is slow. You are in Oregon they are in Texas. I would at least call and talk to them.

There are 800-1000 sites on my hostagator server, which is a different server, and it runs extremely well.


I truly wish you the very best of luck.

[Anatoliy]

I would at least call and talk to them.

Dude... I called them, and not just once. The answer is always the same: "your site is up and running just fine. I clicked on links - pages open really fast..."

[Abomination]

Dude... I called them, and not just once. The answer is always the same: "your site is up and running just fine. I clicked on links - pages open really fast..."

Keep in mind I am only trying to help.

Tell them to clear their cache and try again.

I clicked on you link in post 1 of this thread, as I previously did, and it was really fast. I cleared my cache and clicked on that link again and it was really slow (20-30 seconds).

My browser indicated that it was waiting on your server, not photobucket, adsense, or any other site where you may have information served up (if that is the correct term).

My wild guess at this point is, hang on...
I went to your site, to this thread
http://www.oregonfishingforum.com/hi...eek-reservoir/

Copied the url, put it in this post while I was typing it, cleared the cache and it was indeed slow again.

My educated wild guess would be something about that awesome graphic is causing a slow load. I really don't see how but that is what it seems like.

[ENF]

I ran a few more tests and this result set was consistent, run 10 times.

Object type Size (bytes) Download @ T1 (seconds)

HTML: 10556 0.26
HTML Images: 54532 3.29
CSS Images: 0 0.00
Total Images: 54532 3.29
Javascript: 104533 1.95
CSS: 1674 0.21
Multimedia: 0 0.00
Other: 0 0.00

For my connection, images took the longest -- but it wasn't that long of a wait. The forum itself, seems to be as responsive as it should be.

As far as moving threads, I honestly don't think it would make that much of a difference given the overall size of your site. We only move event threads that have been completed, to keep for reference in an indexed archive forum section.

If there are other clients on your same server, then it becomes an unknown variable since you don't know how much load they are actually putting on the physical server. *IF* they are busy at the same time someone tries to load your site, then you will see a delay for sure. (within reason, though I would imagine.)