lau wrote:
As a curious thought.... reducing the number of threads displayed per page in each forum's index, and/or dropping the number of posts displayed per page within a thread would have a very large impact on performance. E.g. dropping the posts per page from 15 to 7 might double the performance. (Well... not double, but at least improve it by quite a percentage.) Bear in mind that a lot of us look at a thread's new posts, which quite often will be just one post. On average, to see that one post, we will look at a page with seven other posts on it, all of which we've already seen.
If posts were the only content displayed on pages then reducing the number of posts per page would reduce traffic, provided that fewer posts were viewed.
But posts are not the only content displayed on each page.
The amount of data transmitted to display an entire topic could be determined similar to this:
(non-post data per page(including ads, other images, non-post layout data, and data involved in packaging and transfer of data) * posts in topic / posts per page) + average data per post * posts in topic
On a site where non-post data is a significant part of pages, increasing the number of posts per page can decrease the amount of traffic that's required to view an entire topic.
Another factor to take into account is whether users tend to read every post in a topic every time they view said topic. If users usually load just the last page of previously-viewed topics, then reducing the number of posts per page could decrease the amount of data being sent.
But on a popular site like this, where some topics can get dozens of posts within a day, a user clicking the "first unread post" link may have to click through several pages to view a whole topic. If this is often necessary, then increasing the number of posts per page would decrease the amount of data being sent.
Although having previously run a phpbb2-based board, I would first check whether the database's search tables are empty. When they contain a lot of data, phpbb2 tends to become very slow, and since this site doesn't use phpbb search anyway(I don't know if they're already empty), then clearing them wouldn't cause any negative affect. Clearing phpbb2's search tables can make a very slow board drastically faster.
31 Mar 2009, 2:50 am
