Members complain SMF forum goes slow. Why?

[megamoose]

I manage a forum for a client and their members have been complaining that the site sometimes goes extremly slow.

It is quite an active site and can have up to 30 users online at the same time.

The problem is it only uses about 10/15gb's of bandwidth a month, but it goes so slow. I don't think it is a server problem as all of my other websites work really fast and really well and are on the same server.

Also I have never found that the website goes slow for me. It is always pretty fast. It is just the members who complain about it. But then gain they are on it more than me.


So two questions I'm hoping you could help me with are is it expected that an SMF forum (spotlight-forum.com) with 30 users online would make teh server goes quite slow at times, and would it help if I got them a dedicated server?

Thanks for the advice guys?

Mark

[jumpenjuhosaphat]

Well, I don't think the issue lies in the forum script so much as the server or the connection. If your forum is busy enough, then yes, it would be beneficial to have a dedicated server. If you don't have enough money for that, you could also consider dual server hosts that dedicate one of the 2 servers to Sql services.

[SoftDux]

Take the look @ the following options:

1. See if some caching is installed on the server, like Zend, Trucker MMC, APC, eAccelerator, etc, and enable caching in the forum.
2. Run the DB optimization script from time to time.
3. Dissallow some guest connections, say above 200 or so (this would also encourage ppl to register
4. Don't place too many adds on the page
5. If you can't afford a dedi, look for a VPS

[damien_ls]

Originally Posted by megamoose

The problem is it only uses about 10/15gb's of bandwidth a month, but it goes so slow. I don't think it is a server problem as all of my other websites work really fast and really well and are on the same server.

Are your other sites also database driven?

Don't forget that forums tend to have quite a high query count, so its possible that the delay is with the database perhaps? Either caused by server hardware / over-crowding, or the queries themselves.

Saying that, SMF is quite popular so I'd expect the queries to be ok... (i.e. not too badly written) - but we all know that popular doesn't have to = good...

[ninjashoes]

Sounds like your settings need to be adjusted somewhere. Look on the SMF coomunity forums and look for optimization advice.

If nothing works you might wanna try gettting shopping around for a better host.

[bin_asc]

Optimize Mysql...the only way. I`ve been running several forums for some time now, and there are many factors that can influence server load, but the two most important ones are : caching and mysql optimizations. Try to optimize mysql if you have root access.