Forum Speed Tips

[Ravage™]

Im not sure where this would go but here are some tips to keep your forum speed quick for your members.

1) Require all images to be thumnails or links (For usage of dial up members)

2) Remove avatars (For usage of dial up members)

3) Dont have headers or footers overloaded

4) On some servers the arcade slows down preformance.

5) Take out all unneeded codes or features.

If theres ne more just tell me

[simply sibyl]

Just some thoughts to add.

Avatars.  You can set the width/height and filesize limits.
Signatures.   You can also set the width/height and filesize limits

That helps a LOT to stop large images being used in those two areas by members.
Small images wont slow it "that" much.

Do not use large banners.   Im talking large as in filesize.   
Do not use background images that are 2 megs in size...  try to use small ones, or ones that repeat a small image so  it loads quickly.

If you have 50 codes,  a large chat box, a music player, a large file sized banner and umpteen other things that a person has to wait to load up when they go to your site it is a HUGE turnoff.

A forum is afterall a place to share information,  to leave messages, communicate with others.
It should not be a struggle to get through it to do so.

[Ravage™]

nice tips i also forgot to add, if you have a lot of codes in you headers or footers that are java script you could compress them using this tutorial i made

http://www.smfsupport.com/support/javascript/how_to_make_javascript_codes_harder_to_edit-t12442.0.html

Speeding up your forum

[-Sя.Sharp]

What about spam...
What if someone spamed like 3 pages that would slow it prob.

[Ravage™]

well thats an if-y. Sometimes it can depending on what they post

[simply sibyl]

What about spam...
What if someone spamed like 3 pages that would slow it prob.

as Ravage said.. that is iffy.   If they came in and posted post after post after post in a thread of nothing but full screen images then yes that would slow things down  IN that thread, when it is viewed.     

But you have control over that.   YOU can delete those posts.
You can also set the forum to limit attachment sizes and to resize them if they are larger then a certain size.

[Ravage™]

most of the time images are a big problem in speed because of loading

[guest3567]

You can also set the forum to limit attachment sizes and to resize them if they are larger then a certain size.

As has already been mentioned, but i get everyone to use 'photobucket' or similar site for hosting pictures and have switched of the option to upload attachments to the site, same with avatars.

[Ravage™]

yeah thats another good one but i have seen forums do that and forget to limit it and crash the forum

[GamesGalore™]

Mines already fast for me 

[Ravage™]

but it doesnt mean its fast for other users