[vedman]

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:

PHP Code:

//make it load quicker, take smileys out of vbshout without giving up the formatting extras or ability to use :smiley codes:
//remove this from forumhome_vbshout:

<div id='shout_emo' style='display:none'>
        <table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" width="100%" align="center">
        <tr>
            <td class="tcat" align="center">
                Emoticons
            </td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td class='alt2' width='100%' height='100%' align='center' valign='top'>
                $ Smilie_Build
            </td>
        </tr>
        </table>
    <br />
</div> 


and

PHP Code:

//remove this from forumhome_vbshout.. might occur twice in the page, I forget:
<input type='button' class='button' value='Smilies' onclick='sb_Smilies(this)' /> 


?

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