Hey all,

Following the hugely successful release of vB Optimise v2.4.0, we've taken a look at our existing mods as well as the new features in vBulletin 4.2.0 to find cacheable elements.

We've been able to cache the statistics pages for Advanced Post Thanks / Like, as well as Advanced User Tagging, plus the vBulletin 4.2.0 features "Who Has Read Thread" and "Who Has Visited Forum".

We'll continue to look for new cache-able elements in our mods as well as monitor vBulletin for possible cache areas. If you have any ideas or suggestions, please do post them as Feature Requests in the vB Optimise forums

Complete changelog for the three mods below:

vB Optimise v2.5.0:
Feature [DBTech] Advanced Post Thanks / Like Statistics caching
Feature [DBTech] Advanced User Tagging Statistics caching
Feature (Pro) (vB 4.2.0+) "Who Has Read Thread" caching
Feature (Pro) (vB 4.2.0+) "Who Has Visited Forum" caching

Advanced User Tagging v3.0.2:
Feature: vB Optimise v2.5.0 integration

Advanced Post Thanks / Like v3.0.1:
Feature: vB Optimise v2.5.0 integration



Thank you for your continued support!

Read the original news thread here.

Does vboptimize have functionality for:
- automatically compiling sprites
- smush.it
- YSLOW
- attachments on CDN
- SSL support to avoid mixed content warnings.
- the rest of what Yahoo Dev Net recommends here: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html/

If not, will you add this?

Is vboptimize compatible with Varnish?
What are the benefits of using vboptimize if Varnish is already installed?

Originally Posted by Alfa1

- automatically compiling sprites

No, that requires too many template edits and changes too rapidly to be viable.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

- smush.it

???

Originally Posted by Alfa1

- YSLOW

I'm not sure what a mod could do in order to "support" a service that checks page speed but sure, it supports having its pages checked by YSlow

Originally Posted by Alfa1

- attachments on CDN

Nope.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

- SSL support to avoid mixed content warnings.

I don't believe vBO uses http:// anywhere.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

- the rest of what Yahoo Dev Net recommends here: Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

Most of this has to be created on vBulletin level, it cannot be added by vBO

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Is vboptimize compatible with Varnish?

We have had no reports of conflicts.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

What are the benefits of using vboptimize if Varnish is already installed?

All the other things that Varnish doesn't cache, AFAIK Varnish is just a guest cache.

There is an addon available on vb.org that adds sprites. It uses TMS.
Yahoo Smush.it can reduces file sizes and removes unnecessary data from images, etc. Adding this to the attachment system would decrease page load.

Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a "lossless" tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality. After Smush.it runs on a web page it reports how many bytes would be saved by optimizing the page's images and provides a downloadable zip file with the minimized image files.

Originally Posted by Belazor

I'm not sure what a mod could do in order to "support" a service that checks page speed but sure, it supports having its pages checked by YSlow

I was thinking of this: YSLOW 1.0.3 (Make Your Forum Faster) - vBulletin.org Forum
And also wondered which of the recommendations by YSLOW vboptimize caters to:

Minimize HTTP Requests
Use a Content Delivery Network
Avoid empty src or href
Add an Expires or a Cache-Control Header
Gzip Components
Put StyleSheets at the Top
Put Scripts at the Bottom
Avoid CSS Expressions
Make JavaScript and CSS External
Reduce DNS Lookups
Minify JavaScript and CSS
Avoid Redirects

Remove Duplicate Scripts
Configure ETags
Make AJAX Cacheable
Use GET for AJAX Requests
Reduce the Number of DOM Elements
Reduce Cookie Size
Use Cookie-Free Domains for Components
Avoid Filters
Do Not Scale Images in HTML
Make favicon.ico Small and Cacheable

Originally Posted by Alfa1

There is an addon available on vb.org that adds sprites. It uses TMS.

Which has many known compatibility issues with 4.2.0, if the thread you refer to is to be believed.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Yahoo Smush.it can reduces file sizes and removes unnecessary data from images, etc. Adding this to the attachment system would decrease page load.

That... sounds like something that could cause data corruption. I'm not saying it does, but it sounds to me like it could. We're very wary of adding things to vB Optimise that can permanently break peoples forums or data, as you might imagine

Originally Posted by Alfa1

I was thinking of this: YSLOW 1.0.3 (Make Your Forum Faster) - vBulletin.org Forum

That is nothing more than a .htaccess file and the mod is deceptively named. Also, we tried adding ETags to DBTech a while ago and it caused a slew of issues with images not updating properly or sometimes not loading at all. I'm not saying that's not a server issue, but we gotta try avoiding recommending things that could damage the functionality of forums.

That being said, we still have a ways to go when it comes to properly detecting whether opcache extensions can be used, but that's unrelated to this topic.

Originally Posted by Alfa1

And also wondered which of the recommendations by YSLOW vboptimize caters to:

Very little of that is possible with a mod. Things like "make favicon.ico small and cacheable" is something that has to be done by the person/s creating the .ico file. Minifying JS on the fly is counter-productive for performance for first-time visitors. Moving scripts to the bottom breaks all YUI-based scripts or scripts that need to load in a specific order (this is why we switched to jQuery for most of our mods, since vB4 SuperCharged would ever so kindly break our mods by moving the JS to the bottom).

That's just a few examples - I'll go through the full list and specify why each of them can't be included in vBO if you still believe they're feasible

Maybe you could have an advanced options section. Include a disclaimer of the risk. And include a beta tag next to any option that is not as stable.

I dont mind doing template edits if it is going to benefit my site. Just include a note next to an option that requires it.

Advanced functionality that significantly speeds up page load is very attractive. This is especially the case for smush.it, sprites and attachments on CDN.

There doesn't exist a disclaimer that would prevent people who mis-use or otherwise incorrectly use functionality to break their forums from then subsequently blame the mod for it

sweet another awesome update guys !

strange i actually never thought of adding caching to other plugins LOL

edit: Alfa no probs with vB Optimise Pro and Varnish cache they work without conflicts

and yes all yslow and google page speed optimisations i prefer to do by hand manually rather than leave up to a script to make decisions