Board Speed.... how to help yourself

We understand that the board is a bit slower than normal. Most of that is related to two things, Both of which combined to almost DOUBLE our membership, and server usage, in September - membership spiked way up when the off'ish closed and the season started and we are more active (# of members accessing server at same time) than during the off season.

Upgrading the server to handle the additional load is certainly on-the-table, but that requires the intervention of Ski who is currently active duty U.S. Navy and deployed.

However, there are a couple of things that YOU can do to help yourself. The speed at which your page loads is not solely dependent on server resources. It's also a matter of how your page is configured to display. Some options you may consider if you desire:

1) Go into your profile. Click on "General Settings" under "My Account" and scroll down until you see "number of post to display per page". Lower the number of posts from whatever you currently have it set at. This is especially helpful when the forums have a lot of pictures (especially those that are hot-links to non-DBS sources), animated smileys, or any animated motion (GIFs or animated smileys). Less of them displaying each time your page loads will provide quicker page loads.

2) You may also change the option for "Visible Post Elements" to disallow signatures and avatars. Again, these are just images and the less of them that are required to load, the quicker your page gets 'er done.

I can't promise that this will increase your speed to that which you desire. But I can tell you that it WILL improve your speed over what you have now.

NOTE: If you have wireless at home, you might want to try and reboot (turn off for 5 - 10 minutes and then back on) your router AND modem every couple of days. Ensure to read the directions for your router/modem to make sure you do it correctly. Wireless connections can "degrade" over a period of time. Before I got a timer, I could get DOUBLE the speed after a reboot. I have one of those power strip timers that activates every night and I have good speed all the time now. There's a lot more involved (interference from other wireless connections in the area, microwave, placement of router, walls, etc...), but a simple reboot will do good things for you either way.

Thanks Loki. Some good suggestions here that I hadn't considered before. Much appreciated. :drinking61:

If you guys need to move the board to a new server, I could probably help you out. Not sure what this is running on now (e.g. shared, vps, dedicated)...but migrations on php / mysql based applications running of linux based servers is something I do at least once a week. Not vBulletin, but I would imagine it would be pretty straight forward. Magento (e-commerce platform) is what I work with normally and that's a monster...so I would imagine a forum would be a piece of cake. Wouldn't change the DNS records until the staging environment was 100% so not a lot of risk anyways...so let me know if you need some help. Always open to helping fellow Bears fans out...plus I dig the OP's avatar.