Board Optimization - vB Accelerator

ported & significantly improved vb 3.8 branch.

This mod is suited for medium and big boards. It reduces server load, caused by thumnails and big attachments. Includes significant recommendations for server tuning, to speedup pages loading.

what's the problem with?

1. In original vB all thumbnails a downloaded via php. So, if you page contains 10-20 attached images, then each page php request will be followed by 10-20 thumbnails php requests. That's very bad.
2. When attachments body transfered via php, that's much more waisteful, than direct transfer of static file. Especially for big files.
3. Browser does lots of additional requests to static file, to check if modified
4. JS/CSS not compressed

what this mod does:

1. All thumbnails will have DIRECT links (served as static files). Much lower reply latency and server load.
2. If you have nginx webserver, you php-fcgi will not participate in file transfer any more. It will reply with X-Accel-Redirect header. Then nginx will proceed attachment as static file.
   • No more problems with multiple downloads of 10-mb files.
   • No needs to restrict attachments and full-size images for guests and search bots.
3. Static files are properly cached/compressed after tuning

how to install:

1. Make sure, attachments are stored on disk, NOT in database.
2. Make sure, that thumbnails are in web-accessible area. If not - reconfigure your web-server first.
3. Check manually, that you can download any .thumb file via browser.
4. !!! Tune cache/compression settings for static files (see example from next post)
5. Import product XML & tune settings.
6. Enjoy

This mod is developped here: http://github.com/rcdesign/vb-accelerator . Patches are welcome.

history:

0.9
- fixed path for duplicated attachments

0.8
- fixed back timestamp parameter & substitutions for XML output
- added conversion for assets.php thumbnails (in attachments manager)

0.7
- ported to vb4
- added basic CDN support for thumbnails

[kawe]

This is .htaccess on Nginx ?

PHP Code:

# Modified gzip settings: added CSS/JS,
# but completely disabled for broken browsers.
gzip_types       text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml text/javascript;
gzip_disable     "MSIE [1-6].(?!.*SV1)";


# globally disable external access to attachments, but enable for X-Accel-Redirect
location /uploads {
    internal;
}
# enable thumbnails direct access, but nothing else!
location ~* /uploads/(.*)\.thumb$ {
    expires 24h;
}


# Expires for static files.
location /images/ {
    expires 24h;
}
location /clientscript/ {
    expires 24h;
}
location /custom { # All at once: profile pics, avatars, group images
    expires 24h;
} 


And about " path to attachments "
is full path like : /home/www/html/sites.com/attachment
or
just /attachment/

[Vitaly]

Originally Posted by kawe

This is .htaccess on Nginx ?

Nginx doesn't support .htaccess. That's pаrt of config file. Please, read nginx documentation for details.

[kawe]

Originally Posted by Vitaly

Nginx doesn't support .htaccess. That's pаrt of config file. Please, read nginx documentation for details.

yeah i add this code to /etc/nginx/sites-enable/mydomain.com
under my vBseo config its right ?

[Vitaly]

Originally Posted by TeknoSounds

Will this work along side vbOptimize and vB4: Supercharged? Are there conflicts? Duplicated features?

vbOptimize do different things. It can make sence, if you have DB on separate server. Or if you setup many dirty-written mods . No conflicts. If you have local DB, then built-in query cache do most things for you.

Supercharged have some interesting ideas, but not balanced, IMHO. The same result can be acheived with much less efforts & server load

vb Accelerator - if you dont use attachments, skip it . But set "not expire" headers for static content. It really worth to do.

[Vitaly]

Originally Posted by kawe

yeah i add this code to /etc/nginx/sites-enable/mydomain.com
under my vBseo config its right ?

Gzip options can be in other place. Look there they are in your config, compare difference and fix.

Other rewrites should be BEFORE vbseo.

[Fenriz]

Can I use Mod Version: 0.8 with vbulletin 3.8.5?

[Vitaly]

NO. You should use version from this topic: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=207566

[tupique]

Installed, but downloaded from other forum by accident. However, I don't see that the URL is changing. I still see attachment.php as part of the URL. Am I missing something here?

[Vitaly]

You should check thumbnails path, but not full-size attachments links.

If you have problems, please provide more detailed information. For example - incorrect thumbnails URLs

[tupique]

ahh I see.. so this mod is used to change the thumbnails URL only, not the full image? I did simple checking (disabling and enabling this mod), and I saw what you meant. Thanks a lot!

Another question, the URL in my forum is like this:

http://<domain hidden>/img/1/1.thumb?d=1276962745

Could you remove the query string parameter? It ruins the purpose of image caching, since the parameter value always changing while the image stays the same.