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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)

Supporters / CoAuthors

Show Your Support

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

Comments
  #342  
Old 09-12-2011, 03:13 PM
Seductor Seductor is offline
 
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By the way, I have seen the problems are related to libgd<2.0.36 . I have checked my PHPInfo and it shows:
Quote:
gd
GD Support enabled
GD Version bundled (2.0.34 compatible)
Does 2.0.34 compatible mean that is lower than 2.0.36?

I'm using FreeBSD and PHP 5.2.14 . Did I see something about this is fixed in 5.2.3?

Would you suggest me to update my PHP and GD? I'm in a paid hosting.

EDIT: Thanks for all, Moos. I nominated this, it is probably the best plugin for vBulletin. vBulletin should use sprites by default :\
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  #343  
Old 09-14-2011, 12:51 PM
Seductor Seductor is offline
 
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Hi Moof. There is not GD 2.0.36 in FreeBSD (the last port is 2.0.35).
to fix
Is there any way to fix this without updating the GD?


I have tried to edit the CSS, but it doesn't seem to work. They are even restored every time that the sprites are updated.

Thanks.
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  #344  
Old 09-14-2011, 01:05 PM
ZeroHour's Avatar
ZeroHour ZeroHour is offline
 
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BTW to add I have 2.0.34 as well (Centos)
Tbh if we had an option to use imagik that would help.
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  #345  
Old 09-18-2011, 09:20 AM
derrene derrene is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Seductor View Post
Hi Moof. There is not GD 2.0.36 in FreeBSD (the last port is 2.0.35).
to fix
Is there any way to fix this without updating the GD?


I have tried to edit the CSS, but it doesn't seem to work. They are even restored every time that the sprites are updated.

Thanks.
Hi,

i have the same problems, how can i fix this?

my phpinfo
GD Support enabled
GD Version bundled (2.0.34 compatible)
FreeType Support enabled
FreeType Linkage with freetype
FreeType Version 2.4.2
T1Lib Support enabled
GIF Read Support enabled
GIF Create Support enabled
JPEG Support enabled
libJPEG Version 6b
PNG Support enabled
libPNG Version 1.2.44
WBMP Support enabled
XPM Support enabled
XBM Support enabled
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  #346  
Old 09-18-2011, 10:19 AM
Seductor Seductor is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by derrene View Post
Hi,

i have the same problems, how can i fix this?

my phpinfo
GD Support enabled
GD Version bundled (2.0.34 compatible)
FreeType Support enabled
FreeType Linkage with freetype
FreeType Version 2.4.2
T1Lib Support enabled
GIF Read Support enabled
GIF Create Support enabled
JPEG Support enabled
libJPEG Version 6b
PNG Support enabled
libPNG Version 1.2.44
WBMP Support enabled
XPM Support enabled
XBM Support enabled
We can't, we need GD 2.0.36.
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  #347  
Old 09-18-2011, 10:29 AM
Mooff Mooff is offline
 
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You could try to change this stylevar:
forumicon_size

That should make the forumicon smaller. Though i still do not know why it is strechted in such a weird way.

@ZeroHour
GD and Imagemagix are two independed graphic packages. Supporting the other one would mean recoding a huge part of the addon.
Since way more sites use GD (afaik) the choice was made to code it for that package.
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  #348  
Old 09-18-2011, 12:43 PM
Seductor Seductor is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mooff View Post
You could try to change this stylevar:
forumicon_size

That should make the forumicon smaller. Though i still do not know why it is strechted in such a weird way.
It doesn't solve the problem: I have tried to make it bigger:


Making it tight doesn't fix it.
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  #349  
Old 09-18-2011, 05:43 PM
Mickie D Mickie D is offline
 
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Will this hack support ImageMagick ?

I have GD installed aswell but I was getting errors when I tried to run the generator.

How does it look for GD?, does it look at your vbulletin settings?

Looks like a wonderful MOD.

Regards
Mick
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  #350  
Old 09-18-2011, 07:05 PM
Mooff Mooff is offline
 
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Support for ImageMagick isn't planned.
It does not use vbulletin settings for the GD check. It does use the php function extension_loaded.
Please post your error messages.
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  #351  
Old 09-18-2011, 09:08 PM
Mickie D Mickie D is offline
 
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I get this error and it's not spriting anything.

I have removed the hack for now until I can get further with it.

I have both GD support and imagemagick...

Code:
0 custom icons added.
0 imageprefixes for forums found.
Processing post icons.
14 post icons found.
Adding sidebar icons.
120 icon candidates added.
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Starting with images/sprites/sprite-49-main.png.
18 icons added.
Creating sprite (width:313px height:18px).
Sprite saved, updating css-rules.
Starting with images/sprites/sprite-49-main_rtl.png.
18 icons added.
Creating sprite (width:313px height:18px).
Sprite saved, updating css-rules.
CSS template successfully updated.
Starting with images/sprites/sprite-49-forumdisplay.png.
0 icons added.
Sprite was not created.
Starting with images/sprites/sprite-49-forumdisplay_rtl.png.
0 icons added.
Sprite was not created.
CSS template successfully updated.
Starting with images/sprites/sprite-49-forumhome.png.
0 icons added.
Sprite was not created.
Starting with images/sprites/sprite-49-forumhome_rtl.png.
0 icons added.
Sprite was not created.
CSS template successfully updated.
Starting with images/sprites/sprite-49-showthread.png.
0 icons added.
Sprite was not created.
Starting with images/sprites/sprite-49-showthread_rtl.png.
0 icons added.
Sprite was not created.
CSS template successfully updated.
Processing Complete - Proceed

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Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.12 by vBS
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
X vBulletin 3.8.12 by vBS Debug Information
  • Page Generation 0.05220 seconds
  • Memory Usage 2,397KB
  • Queries Executed 27 (?)
More Information
Template Usage:
  • (1)SHOWTHREAD
  • (1)ad_footer_end
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Phrase Groups Available:
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Hooks Called:
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