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United-Forum CSS Sprites - ludicrous speed - NOW! Details »»
United-Forum CSS Sprites - ludicrous speed - NOW!
Version: 0.7.2, by Osbes Osbes is offline
Developer Last Online: Feb 2013 Show Printable Version Email this Page

Category: Board Optimization - Version: 4.x.x Rating:
Released: 07-11-2011 Last Update: 08-05-2011 Installs: 267
Uses Plugins Auto-Templates
Additional Files Is in Beta Stage  
No support by the author.

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.
Quote:
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
Quote:
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
Quote:
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]

Download Now

File Type: xml product-sprite-0.7.2.xml (51.9 KB, 1699 views)
File Type: zip sprite_0.7.2.zip (22.0 KB, 2769 views)

Screenshots

File Type: jpg forumdisplay_default.jpg (151.3 KB, 0 views)
File Type: png forumdisplay_sprites_070.png (70.8 KB, 0 views)
File Type: jpg forumhome_default.jpg (145.6 KB, 0 views)
File Type: png forumhome_sprites_070.png (66.6 KB, 0 views)
File Type: jpg nachher_forumdisplay.jpg (96.6 KB, 0 views)
File Type: jpg nachher_forumhome.jpg (94.1 KB, 0 views)

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  • This modification may not be copied, reproduced or published elsewhere without author's permission.

Comments
  #602  
Old 01-10-2013, 07:49 PM
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dorans dorans is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fly View Post
See my posts 541 and 543. I'm interested to know if this actually fixes it for others.
4.2.0 pl3
Thanks, :up:
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  #603  
Old 01-10-2013, 09:20 PM
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tpearl5 tpearl5 is offline
 
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I'll seriously pay someone to get this working with showthread and postbit
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  #604  
Old 01-10-2013, 09:33 PM
Nirjonadda Nirjonadda is offline
 
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Here is my Request. You don't have to help?

United-Forum CSS Sprites for 4.1.10

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nirjonadda View Post
Bug on option Title ! How to fix option title ?
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  #605  
Old 01-10-2013, 09:44 PM
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tpearl5 tpearl5 is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nirjonadda View Post
Here is my Request. You don't have to help?

United-Forum CSS Sprites for 4.1.10
I'll gladly go in on this. Keep me posted.
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  #606  
Old 02-25-2013, 05:29 AM
fxdigi-cash fxdigi-cash is offline
 
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It is a great mod, and the idea is brilliant. This is the best way to speed up the forum and reduce the load on pages. However, the main issue starts when using a customized style and there is no way to shrink down the style blocks size, but only by using colors instead of images. images that use shadow and high quality resolution have big impact on the server load and then the page load.

I think there must be a way how to gather up all customized images for a style in Sprites and then use that Sprites to render all custom style as one piece.

sorry for my English if it is not clear.

Cheers
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  #607  
Old 03-05-2013, 03:35 PM
iask iask is offline
 
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<a href="http://www.xxxxxxxx.xx/search.php?do=getnew&contenttype=vBForum_Post" target="_blank">http://www.xxxxxxxx.xx/search.php?do...e=vBForum_Post</a>

Icon not show good
Attached Images
File Type: png icon.png (15.0 KB, 0 views)
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  #608  
Old 03-05-2013, 05:06 PM
iask iask is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by iask View Post

Now instal https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=152931 Template Modification System icon forumdisplay not show ?
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  #609  
Old 03-11-2013, 06:24 PM
liamwli liamwli is offline
 
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Is there any way to fix this error?

Attached Images
File Type: png error_sprite.PNG (21.0 KB, 0 views)
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  #610  
Old 03-12-2013, 02:55 AM
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Krusty1231 Krusty1231 is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by liamwli View Post
Is there any way to fix this error?

Do a refresh of the CSS-sprites from the admin panel - clear browser cache - reload your site.
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  #611  
Old 03-12-2013, 08:47 PM
liamwli liamwli is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Krusty1231 View Post
Do a refresh of the CSS-sprites from the admin panel - clear browser cache - reload your site.
I did that multiple times...
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