Newbie with some questions...

Hello there,

I have some questions regarding this product. I am a computer newb, so plain english would be appreciated

I have just built a forum, and my site isn't live yet, but like most webmasters we anticipate growing our community and obviously as your board grows we want to optimize performance levels for the best user experience.

I have read the description of the commercial version of the product, and I still am not sure what this product does (forgive my newbie lack of knowledge).

I would appreciate it if someone could tell me exactly what this does (in english) as I am anticipating making a purchase.

Some questions:

-So this makes your site run faster (pages load faster)?
-Are their any known conflicts with other Vbulletin mods?
-Is it still necessary to use other caching products if we have this installed?
-Will beginning boards with low traffic benefit?
-So if this product makes your board more efficient, does that mean server load is reduced (ie. because board is run more efficiently, you may not have to upgrade to larger server pre-maturely?).


I think this product is what I am looking for, but not really sure. So I just want to make sure before I purchase. Thank you again.

Best Regards,
Richard

Hey there,

To put it simply, vB Optimise removes some of the stock MySQL/Database queries vBulletin executes on every page. It does so by keeping the data in a cache through an extension like Memcache or XCache (one of these would need installing on your server), or the Filecache system (which saves to disk). By reducing these queries, each page loaded makes less of an impact on the server - and this really is exponential, the more hits you recieve the less resources are used in total. A chart showing off our website and others can show you the numbers of queries saved on a daily basis here: http://www.dragonbyte-tech.com/vboptimisesites.php

As for the questions:

1. It can make your pages run faster as a result of the optimisation yes. However you should note using the "Filecache" extension may not, while still improving server load it may not make pages load faster (depends on your servers hard drive and current I/O usage).
2. There are no known conflicts at this time, we have several users using it all of which have various other mods installed. Should a confliction appear though it will be dealt with.
3. That depends on "other caching products" and what they do, if they optimise things in a different way then it may be beneficial, but may not.
4. Starter boards might not feel anything, however that is respective to the server you're on. If you are on a lightweight/shared server, then even a small forum may notice a difference (and several have done).
5. Yes, that is the pure aim of vB Optimise, to reduce the Server Load.

If you have any further questions feel free to ask, I'm gonna move this to pre-sales

Deceptor said:

Hey there,

To put it simply, vB Optimise removes some of the stock MySQL/Database queries vBulletin executes on every page. It does so by keeping the data in a cache through an extension like Memcache or XCache (one of these would need installing on your server), or the Filecache system (which saves to disk). By reducing these queries, each page loaded makes less of an impact on the server - and this really is exponential, the more hits you recieve the less resources are used in total. A chart showing off our website and others can show you the numbers of queries saved on a daily basis here: http://www.dragonbyte-tech.com/vboptimisesites.php

Click to expand...

Hello Deceptor thank you very much for your quick response. Quoting your message above, we would need to have "Memcache" or "Xcache" installed first? So is VBOptimize an add-on to these products?

Sorry I'm a bit confused. If you could break it down for a newb I'd appreciate it.

Ok so in your expert opinion, what products should I run with VBOptimize?

Assume I have a board, and hopefully it will grow very large soon So basically I would like a set-up that would handle some heavy duty traffic well. Thank you again.

Hey Richard,

Sorry for the late reply, I went off to bed

In regards to requiring Memcache or XCache or APC (or WinCache if you're on windows), ideally yes you would need one of these extensions. Each of these are all capable of providing extensions to PHP to allow data to be cached, so they are extensins for the server itself as such. That said, vB Optimise can run with Filecache, which requires no extension (but won't provide the better results). If you're starting off, usually XCache is the best to install - if unsure you can always ask your host to set it up for you, vB Optimise can then tell you if it's working or not.

As for what products you should run, that's entirely based on your forum and needs really, with a lot of opinion. All I'd say is if you're concerned over load, keep watch of how any modification impacts your load - that way you can identify issues and rollback a modification if it's causing problems

Hello Deceptor,

Thank you for your response. So would you say for starters then probably Xcache plus VBOptimize is the way to go? Obviously thats kind of a vague question as I know it depends on a lot of factors, but that would be your default recommendation? Thanks again.

Best Regards,
Richard

Hey Richard,

Certainly yes, even without vB Optimise XCache can be used by vBulletin to cache their datastore which can cut/remove a global query, and if you use vB Optimise that can extend it to cache more. Give the Lite version a try to see if it's what you're after