Board Optimization - United-Forum CSS Sprites - ludicrous speed - NOW!

tl;dr Makes your forum faster.

Want an easy one-click installation for this addon? . Vote for this jira-entry

Add on currently is in beta stage

When visiting a website, speed is a very important factor not only for users but crawlers as well. Long loading times are a nuisance since your time is basically wasted during the waiting period. Hence, we are trying everything we can in order to speed up our site. One great way to improve loading times is by the use of css sprites. Unfortunately these are not implemented by vBulletin.

We therefore decided to develop our own css-sprite add on for vBulletin boards and want to share this code with the worldwide vBulletin community.

Live demo

The add on is permanently running in our vBulletin board ( > 2.000.000 posts), take a look:
http://www.united-forum.de

The add on will be supported via this thread. If you have any questions, issues, improvements or feedback regarding this add on, please feel free to post a comment or write us a pm at any time. We are happy to discuss

vBulletin performance using css sprites

Our tests are based on version 0.7.0. We used the analytic tools firebug network utility and the googlelabs.com page speed site

on the client side the following parameter were used:
download speed: 5.7 MBit/s
ping: 31ms

css sprites - what are they?

The intention behind css sprites is the bundling of many small graphics into one large graphic in order to decrease the number of required http requests. This shortens the loading times of the given website. In addition, the the accumulated size of all small graphics is higher than the size of the sprite due to reasons of compression.
You can find further information in a great article by Chris Coyier.

What is the gain in using css sprites?

Aside from the technical implementation, the question on how much one actually does gain by using css sprites is of the most interest. Obviously they decrease loading times - but how important are small loading times and what is the impact on vBulletin overall loading times?

A short time ago, Jasper Aguila pointed out that speed is one crucial stickiness factor in his blog on vBulletin.com.

Originally Posted by Jasper Aguila vBulletin Support

The internet has unfortunately contributed to the exponential decrease in attention span for many individuals. That's why this decade is seeing a trend in emerging technologies emphasizing the importance of speed request. It's crucial for your content to be promptly distributed in a timely manner, else bounce rate will increase - making you lose returning visitors. It's also important to note that slow sites may be penalized by search engines.

With better browsers, more powerful processors, and improved technologies constantly releasing each year, it's becoming quite difficult to provide excuses for slow loading pages. Therefore, try optimizing your server for speed. Read up and learn optimization techniques at vBulletin.com's Server Configuration forum.

In addition, the google ranking is influenced by the site speed as well.

Google Webmaster Central Blog

Originally Posted by 09.04.2010 - Google Webmaster Central Blog

You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.

vBseo Webmaster Mert G?k?eimam

CSS sprites is a huge bonus for big boards , any big board owner definately should use it.

Last but not least, not only the user's loading time is reduced, but also does the server load decrease as the server will have to handle a lot less of http requests. This clears available connections and cpu time.

Add on features

In the current released beta version 0.7.2, sprites are available for FORUMHOME and FORUMDISPLAY. Coming up next SHOWTHREAD.

Sprites are created style based for all forum styles and saved in a folder which you can set via the imgdir_sprite stylevar. You have one additional button in the ACP (CSS-Sprites -> Refresh) which automatically creates all sprites, the according css definitions and includes those css definitions in the vBulletin css rollup files.

Installation

First of all, if you didnt want to change the templates manually, install the Template Modification System (TMS). Now proceed with the installation:

• upload the contents of the upload folder into your forum home directory.
• import the add on in the ACP
• upon installation a new stylevar imgdir_sprite will be created. Update this stylevar based on your file structure - default value is the vbulletin sprite directory. Make sure the folder is writable, else the sprites can't be saved!
• create the sprites via the ACP at CSS-Sprite using the Refresh option.
• If you have installed TMS, you are done now. This was an easy gained speed up, not? If you didnt installed TMS and didnt want to do it, proceed with the next point:
• in order to use the sprites, you then will have to edit some templates. The diffs (xou will find it in the do_not_upload folder show which parts you have to delete '<' and which parts to add '>' In addition, on top find the lines in which you will find the respective code.[/b]

[RustyF]

I read this but not it would apply as I don't have a custom icon manager installed.

Question
I am using an Add-On for changing the forum icons (like www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=244351). When using CSS Sprites, my forum icons are reverted to the original state.

Answer
The feature to use forums custom icons is builtin in vBulletin 4. You can add to every forum an own imageprefix, so it will use forums custom icons. If you use the vBulletin imageprefix for your your forums, these icons will instantly added to the sprite.

An explanaition to this can be found in the vBulletin Manual (under Prefix for Forum Status Images):
https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/...orum_add_forum

I don't think the link to the manual is going to the correct place any more.

Is that my issue or is it something else?

Also on this pages instructions you mentioned there will be a new variable and I need to configure to my file structure. Sorry, but I have no idea how to do that.

My default them is broken at the moment as i need to upgrade. But I also looked at the default thing and it is doing the same thing. I checked my write permission on the sprite folder and it is 755 which is writable on my server.

link to site if you need it http://cebuforum.org

Thanks for the help.

Rusty

[skol]

upon installation a new stylevar imgdir_sprite will be created. Update this stylevar based on your file structure - default value is the vbulletin sprite directory.

It means to create the path to the sprite folder..eg: /sprite..Your images are missing from FORUMHOME and FORUMDISPLAY which means the mods working,just the path is wrong to your sprite folder..

Edit: This works for me vb4.2.1 https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=541

[elfenny]

then this does not work?

[fxdigi-cash]

well, I can't say it is working or not working...

when I upgraded to vb4.2.1 the mess started showing up. I have no issue with TMS being installed alone on my vb as well as this mod alone. when I try to install United-Forum CSS Sprites mod, an error caused by TMS database table occurs. That means it is almost there...

I could see some templates for sprites are made, but not complete...

I believe there is still some issue with this mod, and if fixed I guess it will be the most useful mod on vb.org

Good luck

[fxdigi-cash]

by the way, why do I get this message: does not exist or is not readable.

the image is there and the chmod is 755.... so does it have to be 777!!! it always works with 755 ....

Update: no need to change the chmod from 755 for some servers. it works anyways.

[fxdigi-cash]

I installed both mods now TMS and United css sprites, but no changes....

I successfully installed both mods without any issues on my vb 4.2.1, but no changes happened even after testing my entire site...!!!

any idea from those who use vb.4.2 and above

[Delfi_r]

I have it installed and running partially on 4.2pl3. My problem is on the GD library, althoug I have GD on PHP, the plugin states that my GD library is outdated, and the minimum version is 2.0.36.

[final kaoss]

Delfi, if you have a dedicated or vps you should be able to update it.
Try this.
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/forum/su...all-gd-library

[datoneer]

It works in 4.2.1

[Delfi_r]

Originally Posted by final kaoss

Delfi, if you have a dedicated or vps you should be able to update it.
Try this.
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/forum/su...all-gd-library

The problem is that the GD library is updated, tested indpendently so perhaps te problem is on the script.

I have reinstalled all files and I get some Template modifications 'incompatible' with 4,21, and the images/sprites/ is populated with some files so perhaps the error is on the condition that dispalys the message.