skin vs performance
 

How much does a skin degrade the performance of VB?

I was looking at VBstyles, but I've sent several emails to them that have went unanswered, I'm now looking at Transverstyles.

Before I get to involved, I want to know if there is a performance issue.

thanks

You can always try and uninstall if they do affect performance. I would guess some will, some wont and some will help.

I wondered if there was an automatic overhead on performance, maybe it just depends on who creates the skin.

It should not degrade the performance of anything, unless you've bought a really bulky, graphic-intensive style.

I certainly think that some skins do affect page load times, the default vBulletin skin is definately one of the faster loading styles i've encountered.

If you're using the Firefox browser you can check out the page size and compare skins by right clicking and selecting 'View page Info' from the menu options.

One other option which will definately speed up the page loading speed is to click YES on the 'Store CSS Stylesheets as Files' option (as found in the vBulletin Admin control panel), this will move all the styling clutter into a separate CSS file.

Also... Are you using any stats software on the page, or affiliate banners, because sometimes they are the cause of the delay in the page loading.

Unless they use lots of tables/nested tables and/or lots of/large graphics, you should not have a problem with performance.

Any performance issue will be at the browser's end, not your server.

Flash and large/excessive images are the main problems with commercial themes.

As a developer, you need to find a balance.