Test it out. Disable your shoutbox for 24 hours and see if you and anyone else can notice a difference. On my site (of approx 1,000 users), there was a significant difference. It started "lagging" when I installed it, but didn't think much of it. It increased as the shoutbox grew to be more popular. I remove it, and now it runs much smoother.

What about reducing the refresh rate? Make it only update every couple mins or simply on page load or after a shout was made. That (im my mind) would eliminate the constant polling of multiple members and take the pressure off the server.

i thinnk there should be an automatic dump of the shoutbox archive after x peroid of time.

In examining the stats of the bandwidth usage, even reducing the refresh to 20 seconds didn't help that much. Any less than 20 seconds and the delay is causing it to not be utilized, so it just refreshes for nothing.

I've disabled it for now until this one gets tweaked or until someone else comes out with a shoutbox that's functional and without so much downside.

Oh I never noticed about making the server like to go down or slow. But are you guys pretty sure the shoutbox is causing it?

I've gotten this database error twice since installing vbshout...
Database error in vBulletin :

My shoutbox hasn't slowed down my server too much (I have an avg of 30-40 registered members on at any given minute, and guests cannot see the shoutbox). However, I increased the refresh to 15000 I think, and that will be the first thing I go to change again if when/if I need to. At worst, I'm sure the shoutbox can be slightly altered to show up on it's own page, with no refresh (basically, the archive view but with the ability to shout).

If anyone is saying their shoutbox is slowing down their server, and what you really mean to say is it's taking longer for your *page* to finish loading, I assume you either have all "extras" (smileys and formatting) disabled, OR have taken this out of your template, to kill the smiley pre-loading?

I did this, and my vbshout area loads almost twice as fast now:

and

?

edit - oh, and of course you would take out the smilie sql query near the top of the plugin "vBShout [Template Alteration]"

Those code changes make a definate improvement. Thank you.

(I prefer users not have smilies in the shoutbox anyway :-) )

I'm just making sure that I will be removing all of this??Thanks!!

is there a way to have this shoutbox on a seperate page? like if i added a link that said shoutbox, and it went to its own page? cuz i dont want my forumhome too too cluttered....thnx

hey guys ever since I installed this shoutbox I keep getting this error

Database error in vBulletin :

mysql_connect(): Unknown MySQL Server Host 'db31.oneandone.co.uk' (2) /xxxxxxxx/xx/xxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxx/harddanceaddict/forum/includes/class_core.php on line 273

MySQL Error :
Error Number :
Date : Wednesday, December 7th 2005 @ 04:31:15 PM
Script : http://www.harddanceaddict.net/forum/vbshout.php
Referrer : http://www.harddanceaddict.net/forum/index.php
IP Address :
Username :
Classname : vb_database


Any ideas

I was having the same problem. The line it references in the class_core.php file deals with your database access. I found that if I changed the auto refresh of the shoutbox to anything higher than 40 seconds I stopped getting the error.

thanks I will give that a go :D

I cant seem to find the auto refresh option mate where is it

A nice plugin - very easy to install.

I have it running on a medium size forum (usually around 80 members and 200 guests online), which sits on a dual-xeon server with loads of ram. My load averages have increased from about 0.50 to 2.50

I'll give it a day or two, but I don't think it will be staying. I might try removing it from display for guests first..

The shoutbox is slowing down your sever? This is funny. How kind of host & server are you on?

How can you make it so admins can use /me only?

I dont want every user being able to use this.

Its pity, as this is the main problem of this hack, and havent fixed till now:(

Ps

I mean the "loading" issue, test it both on Firefox 1.5 or in the latest Ie Browser

It's not really funny, but it's logical, though.

10 seconds refresh for everyone. That makes one (or more, didn't have a look at the code) request to the DB, and some php data parsing.

If you have 100 users online at the same time, that will be 10 requests a second.

And I don't even talk about people who thought it would be a great idea to put the shoutbox on every page of the forum.

I uninstalled this hack as my little server couldn't handle the load.

I think a warning should be posted in the hack description, as I never thought it would be such a ressource hog.

Well then why don't you just increase the refresh load like to 300 seconds? There ya go.

well i look at it is that no one is forcing you to install this if you find it causes that then uninstall it.. that simple... i havent seen no difference in load increase at all...

Increasing the refresh is a solution, for sure, not mine, though. (I want a "live" chat.)

True, noone forced me to install this, but I think that a warning message could stop all these "server load high, why ?" messages, and there are many people who don't know why their server load went higher than usual without reading every page of this thread.
If you havent seen any difference, then I see three possible explanations :
1. You are blind
2. You have a server so big that your load is at 0.00 all the time
3. You have 1 or less people on the same time on your forum

Well, joke apart , you must see an increase in the load, as the shoutbox makes queries...
It may be a little difference, but there is a difference.

i do have a big server... this dont lag mine nor does it increase the load... no matter what you do everything makes queries just some not as much as others... if you run the server like i do you could see everything going on... its not that bad... so you think auto refresh shouldnt be in there? what about whos online that has auto refresh should vbulletin take that out too?

You don't seem to understand me.
I'm not insulting you, nor the hack creator !

I know that almost everything in vbulletin run queries, I'm not a complete idiot, you know. I was saying that it ups the load, that's for sure.
This hack is not intended for forums with many members online, or only for "overpowered" servers.

I'm not saying (some in this thread are, by the way) that mods should remove this hack, but a little (almost invisible, if you prefer) "This hack can be server-intensive if you have many members online, check auto-refresh rate and keep an eye on server load" would not hurt anyone.

This very script was the one using the most cpu cycles on my server (little server,yes, 4-5 sites hosted, 2 vbulletin).
I was using the mini-hack allowing you to display the shoutbox on every page of the forum, and I think my members like to open many pages of the forum ;)

Where can i find the text Shoutbox i want to translate it to swedish

Great extension!

How do i add a background picture into my VBSHOUT like this picture???????????????? anyone???

i would like this also

I've seen this hack on multiple forums and it's a great addition to any forum.

Zero

Think theres a chance you can make a shoutbox above it with only the permission for staff to see it?

That would be pointless and instead make a forum rather than having a shoutbox.

I do have a forum but for quick discussions its a great idea.

Check out www.milfu.net I would like the shout box to show on there but I can't for the life of me fig. out how to get it in there. Any one got any clues? Right now its only showing up on the forms page. Great hack by the way... liking it alot!

Does this thing archive into infinity... or does it clear out some of the posts after a pre-determined number?

nah it just keeps going from what i seen... would be nice if it cleared but its not hard to clear out though

i dont know what i did, but its all messed up now and it wont let me upload the plugin again

i have to agree

i have 48000 members and always at least 500 online at any one time - i kep geetting internal server errors every hour or so - so did all the members

removed and its fine

and yes my server is a beast

ok i think i solved my problem i stated above.. but now i have another one, that archive thing.. when i click it.. its only a blank page.. and nothing shows up.. can some1 please help

Actually.. now experiencing such a problem with my hosting co .. here is their explanation to it all ..

every X seconds another process (shout) starts up and uses 4-8 % which is why you get the CPU exceeded error and must wait for the process to stop before continuing anywhere on the site..


then i send them a ticket and here is what they responded..

Due to recent upgrades in PHP and MySQL, we've noticed issues with vBulletion. You may need to install the latest version of vBulletin and implement any fixes found in their forum.

We are on the latest vbull

So there is some truth to this.. or is there? any ideas? any suggestions?

Is this host giving me a story? Do i need a new host?

Thanks in advance..!

Lenny :)

How do you clear it out? Haven't been able to figure that out.

I'm getting like 1000 shouts a day, I can't delete them one at a time.... and if I can't delet them they're really going to build up fast.

Or, perhaps a better question here might be is if there is a shoutbox hack that's like this that is better for forums with a LOT of users and that allows you to clear out all the posts easily since neither of these seems possible with this hack?

It seems like a great hack, and I'm currently using it, but I'm not sure it's going to continue to work well for us if we can't clear out posts and if it causes the server problems outlined above for high load forums (which ours sometimes is).