Realtime Template Compressor: Reduces page sizes, loads pages faster, saves bandwidth
 

This is a port of Logican's Realtime Template Compressor hack from vBulletin 2.2.x to vBulletin 3.5.0 Beta 1. I wrote this by rewriting a version of the original hack, that I wrote for my forums when they ran 3.0.x, so that it would function as a plugin for 3.5.0.

I had originally sent this to Logican for him to release it but he replied granting me permission to release it; hence why I'm releasing this.

Installation is very simple. Just import the plugin via vBulletin's "Download / Upload Plugins" page in the Plugin System in the Admin Control Panel and you're done.

I'll try to correct any bugs that you might find. Let me know if you like this plugin and don't forget to click the install link if you install this.

Update History

Version 1.1.0: The expression was replaced with a more efficient one that increases the compression level from approximately 1-2% to approximately 4-8%.
Version 1.0.0: Initial Release

Forgetting something?

Yup, looks like the xml file might help. ;)

Mebbe he's practicing for April Fool's Day?;)

I'll be interested to see how effective this is after he gets around to giving us the xml file. ;)

It's there. It's just been Real Time Compressed so tightly that it's invisible to the naked eye as a demonstration of the awesome compression capability he's bringing us.

LOL. Anyway, the idea of removing whitespaces is good - saves 5-10% Bandwidth (even with GZip), and the pages are being rendered faster.

Did you contact the original author for permission to port his hack?

That would tend to suggest so.

wow I love this hack! its.... its.... just....... AMAZING! lol :p

so when do we get our hands on the XML? vB 10? hehe :P

Oops

/me makes a mental note to read better before replying

Maybe he's sleeping <G> (only posted it earlier today ;)).

Cheers

Andy

Sorry guys, I could have sworn I attached this. I guess I clicked the wrong submit button. ^_^;;

Anyway, it is attached now. It uses the same perl expression Logician's original hack uses and much of the code is the same. I simply made it work with vBulletin 3.5.0 Beta 1. I'm thinking of writing a new expression for more aggressive compression but my experience with expressions is limited so that'll have to wait until I have some freetime on my hands.

*Installing now*

Thanks. I didn't think you did it on purpose. ;)

I didn't think you did. :)

Guys, I'm still playing with this but if you open the xml file, find:

Replace it with:

And then upload that file instead, the compression soars from 1-2% to 8-10%. I'm still playing with the expression through so you might want to wait until I finish playing with it and release version 1.1.0.

That messed up my tables.

Did you edit the XML file and then upload it or did you edit the plugin from the Plugin Manager? There is a problem in vBulletin 3.5.0 Beta 1 when it comes to storing expressions. They seem to get parsed somewhere along the line; hence why I said to edit the xml file.

oh, ok. I'll try that.

That worked! Thanks

[Output: 36.08 Kb. compressed to 35.71 Kb. by saving 0.37 Kb. (1.03%)]

That is all I am getting. But if I edit the file, the forums get hosed.

Now I am getting:
[Output: 36.08 Kb. compressed to 29.16 Kb. by saving 6.92 Kb. (19.19%)]

I just noticed that in the "new posts" page, the topic titles are crammed against the "go to first new post" icon. There is no space in between. It's fine everywhere else though.

That alternate expression was experimental, which is why I said that I was still playing with it. Here is the new one I'm playing with:

It doesn't compress as well but it doesn't seem to remove any necessary whitespaces so it is a strong candidate for the expression I'm putting in 1.1.0 (as I'm not happy with the current level of compression).

It seems that I made writing expressions more complicated than it needed to be. ^_^;;

I wrote something entirely new that I think will be much more efficient so I've released version 1.1.0.

Your current regex kills whitespaces that are there intentionally.
And you could achieve higher compression if you remove HTML comments.
However, this might cause problems with JavaScript then.

KirbyDE, aren't all of the whitespaces there intentionally? The regex in 1.0.0 was Logician's original regex but it didn't compress things well enough and my attempts at an advanced regex compressed things so well that it killed whitespaces that are necessary for the presentation so I wrote a simpler regex that strips the whitespaces at the beginning of each line.

It doesn't have any effect on how you view the page unless you're viewing the XHTML. If you were viewing the XHTML, you would not have any level of template compression enabled on your forums.

I have this installed on my forums if you want to check it out:

http://www.pokemonfanuniverse.com/forums/

By the way, thanks for the tip regarding the comments. I was considering stripping them in a new version but I didn't realize that stripping them might affect javascript. Looking at the syntax Jelsoft used I could probably strip them either by ensuring they're on a single line or by also requring the whitespace found after "<!--" in comments but not in the javascript (from what I can see).

Edit: Also, if anyone is interested in why vBulletin strips slashes from the plugin upon submit/edit, they'll want to check out this bug report at vBulletin.com:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/bugs3...view&bugid=184

It should be fixed in vBulletin 3.5.0 Beta 2 from what I can gather.

What about that

I'm not aware of any stock code in vBulletin written like that and to be honest, that is supposed to use &nbsp; rather than standard whitespaces. Not to mention modern browsers display one whitespace instead of several consecutive whitespaces in HTML web pages even if there are several consecutive whitespaces.

This is the stock [code] Tag :)
It generates <pre>-Tags, which should preserve whitespaces - but you strip them out.

That changes things. Are you proposing a better way of doing it that won't strip those whitespaces or are you leaving it up to me?

By the way, shouldn't Logician's orignal regex also have stripped out those whitespaces?

I use
$output=preg_replace ('/(\s*)\r\n(\s*)/', "", $output);
$output=preg_replace ('/<!-- .*? -->/',"",$output);

and get about 15% compression, don't know why you still need the \r\n? :)

[Output: 38.53 Kb. compressed to 31.02 Kb. by saving 7.51 Kb. (19.50%)] is what I am getting from the code he posted later in the thread
:)

i find strange that this technique was released earlyer for 3.0, and now reproduced it, but in no way Jelsoft thought of adding any of the template compression techniques released here yet...

am i wrong, or all the tests made by Jelsoft are proving that these systems are useless ?! they tend to release modifications that work perfectly, so i suppose that all these things are not... i hope to find something better than the actual but for now, none here have it... (ok, i have something myself, but i'm not releasing any work)

Very nice hack idea - So far no odd looking tables or anything, and I'm getting about 5% compression :)

Satan

Installed using ja3's code and showing arounf 18-19% compression

I get a lot better compression with ja3's code as well.

Wow, I just had to change it back because it killed my banner.

I noticed a problem. both seem to break line breaks in posts

this

becomes

thisbecomes or this becomes

It was nice while it lasted

Martin, would you give me specific instructions on how to reproduce that because I can't seem to reproduce it on my own?

It might be interfence with another another plugin. I didn't test everything.

I just uploaded through the plugin manager. I edited the xml file to add the other compression code and uploaded it seperately.

I just reuploaded and tested again and it does the same thing.

Just in case you were wondering, PHP 4.3.11 MySQL 4.0.21