[Logician]

Originally posted by snyx
I installed it, its very cool, but a downside it creates FAR too many calls to show.php in my opinion. This hack is great for the site that is 100% its fourms, you can't really build an entire site around this hack, but easily create a bunch of great little pages. Good hack man! 5 Stars!

Ok it seems that many people got the pros so lets discuss the cons, shall we?

When you create a page (ie webtemplate) with this hack, it will reside in your MYSQL database. This means that everytime this page is called by your users your site have to relate with MYSQL which will create a overhead (CPU usage) compared to static HTML pages.

If you want to have dynamic (ie changing for every user) pages then you have to bear this overhead because server has to interrelate with something to get and process data to create a dynamic page. This can be SQL DB, another file on the server etc. and in our hack that is mySQL.

If you have a informative static page, there is no need to convert it to a webtemplate. It will be safe and reduce the load in your server if you leave it as a HTML page. However if you need to create dynamic pages which derive their strength from your forum db, then this hack gives you the tools you need.

Well, lets see how much overhead it requires:

First go check your forum's main page's overhead:
call this link (YOUR FORUM URL)/index.php?explain=1

Go at the end of the page and see how many queries did your forum's main page requires while loading.In my forum it's 20 which is a quite reasonable number (at least for vb). (FYI for showthread.php this number is much higher)

Now do the same thing for my hack: (after installation of course!)
Call this link (YOUR FORUM URL)/show.php?pg=whoareyou&explain=1

You'll see that while loading the page, server will connect the database only for 10-14 times which is 1/2 of your forum's main page overhead. I think this is quite reasonable. Moreover if you disable page visit ($count variable), reduce the webqueries in your webtemplate you'll lower this number. So on the average a web template with one Webquery in it will only connect to your MYSQL 10-12 times and that is bearable considering the fact that you get a powerful and nice dynamic (fully integrated with your vb) page in return.

I hope this clarifys this hack's performance issues..

Regards,
Logician