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)

[1320Nation]

Installed on 3.7.3 using memcache and it's working with no problems. The board does appear to be running faster/smoother.

[MrZeropage]

distributed APC on each of the servers, if I am not wrong ...

but I think there is currently no way to test this, as the site is productive and any problem would not be good

Maybe later we can install a distributed test-environment.



One more wish:
include active support for TMS (by Andreas), meaning everytime a template-edit is done, your cache should be flushed

[Deceptor]

Well I'm not positive about APC, but I know distributed Memcache wouldn't be an issue because Memcache handles all the distribution, hopefully APC does the same thing.

If you'd like Zeropage, I could make a modification for you which will only activate vB Optimise for your user on your forum, that way any error that does occur will only be seen by you

[MrZeropage]

Deceptor, as this site is from a customer of mine, I will ask first. I will get back on you if they are interested


I am now using your 1.1.0 on another site (one server, normal) and activated it using APC. Should the setting in vB's config.php still be

$config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_APC';

or would this "double" the caching into the APC if your AddOn is active, too ?

[Deceptor]

It would not double the cache with APC on vBulletin and vB Optimise. vBulletin will only use that for the datastore, what vB Optimise takes care of is different. I personally use Memcache for the vBulletin Datastore and vB Optimise with no issues

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Deceptor

Andreas - Thanks for the kind words, and for the suggestions. I did consider eAccelerator but unless I'm mistaken vBulletin doesn't use it for a bug that occurs, if or not that will relate to vB Optimise I'm unaware of, but I'll look into to and if not integrate the controller.

There was an issue with eAccelerator when that cache was full (eg. new items could not be inserted and those old values were loaded), but it has been fixed since 3.6.something were the logic was changed (items are now being deleted from cache when they need to be updated, so in worst case they are being loaded from db if the case is full).

[Deceptor]

Glad to hear it, I saw vBulletin has since put the eAccelerator class back in as normal so I figured it'd be safe

Thanks for the information.

[MrZeropage]

btw I am running this on 3.7.4PL1 without any problem

[KevinL]

Yeah this is mint

[veenuisthebest]

One more question deceptor,

I am using Filecache, with NO suphp.

My server undergoes a check every 24 hrs to identify any php files that are chmod 0777. If they find any, they are automatically set to 0644.

Can this cause some problem? Does vboptimise attempt to write to already created php files?

Thanks