What needs to handle 2500 users online at once

[final kaoss]

The final thing I can suggest to you now is to try to losslessly compress your images and use css sprites. Sometimes the lossless compression can make a huge difference.



This covers the following PageSpeed Rules:

Optimize Images

If you have access to Visual Studio 2010 (grab the trial edition here which should be compatible with the addon), you can complete this step in just a few clicks using this addon
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.micr...77c3?SRC=VSIDE

You can also use pnggauntlet which will compress images as well.

This is great to use on new skins/themes and also non animated gifs for Smileys, Signatures, Photo Album & Group Images and Avatars that your forum stores on your server!

Please note that both of these methods produce lossless images, meaning that even though it uses various methods to decrease file size there is absolutely no visual loss in quality of the image.

For non-windows users, I suggest Imageoptim & Trimage



Step 4: Add CSS Sprites.
Not compatible with VB3

This covers the following PageSpeed Rules:

Combine images using CSS sprites

Install the addon United-Forum CSS Sprites and follow all of the instructions.  Can be found in the sprite_0.6.3a.zip file.

2 more things from the top of my head to consider (which I haven't had a chance to try yet) are mod_spdy & mod_pagespeed from google.