Board Optimization - [DBTech] vB Optimise 2.0.1 (Lite)

vB Optimise Lite

The newly revamped vB Optimise was created for vBulletin 4, but has now been made compatible for vBulletin 3.8. In this release I have re-coded vB Optimise from the gound and focused stability over features, you'll notice Phrase Caching and vBAdvanced Integration have bit the dust, this is to maintain a sync state between this version and the vBulletin 4 release.

Professional version & feature list available @ www.DragonByte-Tech.com/forum
Priority support for Lite version is handled at the Developers Website.


What does it do?

vB Optimise is intended to optimise vBulletin software by integrating several PHP "cachers" and handling data before vBulletin. This works by encountering and handling data prior to vBulletin in order to skip the arbitary execution that would be more server intensive.

Real-Life Statistics

We've teamed up with some Big Forums to show you the impact of vB Optimise, you can view this public chart which shows both our statistics and theirs:

View Public vB Optimise Resource Statistics

Features

• Supported Extensions
  • APC
  • eAccelerator
  • Memcache
  • XCache
  • WinCache
  • Filecache
• Style Cacher
  Caches style data to globally reduce a query within all vBulletin forum-based pages.
• Template Cacher
  Caches template data to globally reduce a query within all vBulletin forum-based pages.
• Datastore Cacher
  Forces custom datastore items from modifications (including those from vB's blogs) to use your configured Datastore Cache method instead of being forced into the database. This reduces page queries by where affected.
• vB CMS Template Caching
  (Automatic) Corrects many uncached templates within vB CMS to reduce upto 20+ queries on CMS pages (number varies based on content).
• Optimal Settings Check
  Provides a quick interface to identify possible settings which can be changed on your forum for further optimisation.
• Self-System Tester
  Provides a relatively straight-forward system check to ensure your vB Optimise installation works fully.
• Automatic Cache Flusher
  Automatically flushes cache within the Admin CP based on specific triggers to make sure content does not remain stale on your forum.
• XCache Authentification
  Supports XCache Admin Authentification by allowing you specify the username/password in a configuration if needs be.

Features - Pro

• Notices Cacher
  Caches users dismissed notices to reduce a near-global query within all vBulletin forum-based pages.
• Showgroups Cacher
  Caches the showgroups query which becomes more intensive as your user-base grows.
• Forum Display Query Enhancement
  Enhances a stock vBulletin query within Forum Display to speed up the page.
• Forum Home WOL Cache
  Caches Forum Home "Who's Online" to remove an intensive query and allow larger sites to display this data without impact.
• vB Cache Override (Feature not available on vBulletin 3)
  Ability to override vBulletins new built-in database cacher for the CMS / Forum Sidebar Blocks to remove anything from 1 to 20+ queries based on your content.
• Full Guest Caching
  Ability to cache entire pages and serve them saving not only hundreds of queries but upto 90% of CPU processing towards Guests.
• Statistical Resource Savings
  Ability to see just exactly how many queries per day vB Optimise has saved your database. You'll be surprised at the numbers.
• Forum Resource Statistic
  Shows off vB Optimise resource saving statistics directly within forumhome statistics.
• ....and more!

Release Notes

If you've used vB Optimise before you'll be aware the previous version had phrase caching, however this caused complications with the way phrases are used within vBulletin so it has not been ported over at this time.


Available Translations
v1.6.0 French - Thanks to finereader

Change Log

[>>] Version 2.0.1
New launch for vB 3.8

[>>] Version 1.6.1
Automatic Cache Flusher has additional parameters to make sure no data is stale
Resolved Bug: Potential PHP error when using eAccelerator which cannot flush within Admin CP on certain actions

[>>] Version 1.6.0
New OpCode Cacher Support: WinCache

[>>] Version 1.5.0
Resolved Bug: Style cache may have fetched ID 0 instead of correct file
Resolved Bug: Filecache permissions may not have worked
Optimisation: Re-wrote some base code to enhance operations.

[>>] Version 1.0.1
Added XCache Authentification Support
Added Filecache Support

Support

Priority support will be handled at DBTech.

FAQ

Q: I have WinCache installed, but vB Optimise tells me it's not?
A: WinCache only introduced OpCode support in version 1.1, if you're using version 1.0.x you will need to upgrade.

Q: I'm using the XCache method, flushing doesn't work?
A: If you have XCache authentification, turn the admin option on within vB Optimise Settings, then edit ./vboptimise/config.php and specify your XCache username/password. Alternatively you can disable XCache authentification within php.ini:

xcache.admin.enable_auth = Off

Q: I have eAccelerator installed, but vB Optimise tells me it's not?
A: eAccelerator does not provide the caching extension by default, you will need to recompile PHP with additional flags. For more information read eAccelerator documentation located here: http://eaccelerator.net/wiki/CompileConfiguration (Specifically look at: with-eaccelerator-shared-memory)

[thcf]

very sad to see the author of this script has vanished

i was the biggest donator for this mod, and i wont ever be making a donationa again!

[yeshoward]

We are using APC method with PHP5.2.9
We also find that template is NOT updated after changes

DID click "flush cache" on Vbadmin
DID go to apc.php to flush APC cache
DID re-install module

none of this is working....

[btks1995]

Everytime I add new user infraction levels, they go blank?? Any ideas.. thanks

[Deceptor]

It'll be to-do with phrases. Ideally the phrase cache here is unfortunately not solid so I'd recommend disabling it if you come across errors/issues/etc. The other caches available should be no problem though

[Sephirot]

I recently got the following error

[Thu Jul 23 17:45:00 2009] [error] [client XXXX] PHP Fatal error:  Maximum execution time of 240 seconds exceeded in /srv/www/htdocs/vbulletin/includes/class_activecache_methods.php on line 355, referer: XXXX

PHP Code:

    function set($title, $item)
    {
        if (!$this->connect())
        {
            return false;
        }

        $this->set_title($title);

        if (trim($item) == '')
        {
            $item = '{_______VB_ACTIVE_CACHE_BLANK_______}';
        }

        eaccelerator_rm($title); // this is the line from the error log
        eaccelerator_put($title, $item);
    } 


Any ideas about the cause?

[Deceptor]

eaccelerator_rm() attempts to remove the item from the shared memory, I've never seen it fail before. Is the error still occuring? I can't seem to find any where else this has happened with eAccelerator.

[Artes_Marciales]

Thanks for the mod!!

[kmike]

There is no need for calling eaccelerator_rm() there, eaccelerator_set() takes care of replacing the older value with a new one. That being sad, it's extremely strange that PHP timed out on that call, it simply shouldn't happen.

The only possible cause I could think of is that maybe eAccelerator is set to cache everything on disk, and the disk I/O was blocked for some reason, and thus eAccelerator couldn't remove the old value.

[Deceptor]

Originally Posted by kmike

There is no need for calling eaccelerator_rm() there, eaccelerator_set() takes care of replacing the older value with a new one. That being sad, it's extremely strange that PHP timed out on that call, it simply shouldn't happen.

The only possible cause I could think of is that maybe eAccelerator is set to cache everything on disk, and the disk I/O was blocked for some reason, and thus eAccelerator couldn't remove the old value.

It seemed like a best practice at the time really, and with the API on eAccelerator being fairly vague and the function appearing to do no harm (until this odd situation) I figured better to be safe than sorry. If it keeps happening for the user they can comment the line out, but honestly that may just be ignoring the problem as it seems to be a lot deeper.

[Sephirot]

Originally Posted by Deceptor

eaccelerator_rm() attempts to remove the item from the shared memory, I've never seen it fail before. Is the error still occuring? I can't seem to find any where else this has happened with eAccelerator.

No it did not happend again after that day. It seems to be a very rare case.
I reduced the shm_prune_period and shm_ttl from 3600s to 1800s.

Originally Posted by kmike

There is no need for calling eaccelerator_rm() there, eaccelerator_set() takes care of replacing the older value with a new one. That being sad, it's extremely strange that PHP timed out on that call, it simply shouldn't happen.

The only possible cause I could think of is that maybe eAccelerator is set to cache everything on disk, and the disk I/O was blocked for some reason, and thus eAccelerator couldn't remove the old value.

eAccelerator is set to use both, shared memory and disk (default). Maybe I should set it to "shm", which causes eAccelerator to use the disk only if the shared mem is full?