Board Optimization - United-Forum CSS Sprites - ludicrous speed - NOW!

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.

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

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

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]

[Acido]

I'm running vb 4.1.12 and i cant upgrade this mod from 0.6.3a or uninstall it to reinstall with the latest version 0.7.2

I'm getting a mysql error as follow:

Database error in vBulletin 4.1.12:

Invalid SQL:

        SELECT templateid
        FROM template
        WHERE
            edited=1
            AND title IN ('forumhome_forumbit_level1_post', 'forumhome_forumbit_level1_post', 'forumhome_forumbit_level2_post', 'forumhome_forumbit_level2_post', 'forumbits.css', 'forumbits.css', 'forumbits.css', 'threadbit_deleted', 'search_threadbit', 'threadlist.css', 'block_blogentries', 'block_cmsarticles', 'block_newposts', 'block_sgdiscussions', 'block_threads', 'forumdisplay_sortarrow', 'forumhome_forumbit_level1_post', 'navbar', 'navbar', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'pagenav', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadbit', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'threadlist.css', 'FORUMDISPLAY', 'FORUMDISPLAY', 'FORUMDISPLAY', 'FORUMDISPLAY', 'FORUMDISPLAY', 'FORUMDISPLAY', 'forumhome_lastpostby', 'forumhome_lastpostby', 'memberaction_dropdown', 'memberaction_dropdown', 'memberaction_dropdown', 'memberaction_dropdown', 'memberaction_dropdown', 'memberaction_dropdown', 'memberaction_dropdown', 'memberaction_dropdown', 'FORUMHOME', 'FORUMHOME', 'FORUMHOME', 'FORUMHOME', 'forumhome_forumbit_level2_nopost', 'forumhome_forumbit_level2_post', 'forumhome_subforumbit_nopost', 'forumhome_subforumbit_post', 'FORUMHOME', 'FORUMHOME', 'FORUMHOME', 'FORUMHOME', 'FORUMHOME');

MySQL Error   : Unknown column 'edited' in 'where clause'
Error Number  : 1054
Request Date  : Tuesday, June 12th 2012 @ 12:50:26 AM
Error Date    : Tuesday, June 12th 2012 @ 12:50:26 AM
Script        : http://www.mysite.com/admincp/plugin.php?do=productimport
Referrer      : http://www.mysite.com/admincp/plugin.php?do=productadd
IP Address    : 186.57.155.142
Username      : myadminuser
Classname     : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.1.61-0+squeeze1-log

Any help ?

[animcentral]

im getting this error when i try to install it

Database error in vBulletin 4.2.0:

Invalid SQL:

        SELECT t1.templateeditid AS templateeditid_1, t1.varname ,
t1.templateeditid AS templateeditid_1, t1.styleid AS styleid_1 ,
t2.templateeditid AS templateeditid_2, t2.styleid AS styleid_2 
        FROM templateedit AS t1 
LEFT JOIN templateedit AS t1 ON (t1.varname=t1.varname AND t1.styleid=-2)
LEFT JOIN templateedit AS t2 ON (t1.varname=t2.varname AND t2.styleid=45)
        WHERE t1.styleid = -1;

MySQL Error   : Not unique table/alias: 't1'
Error Number  : 1066
Request Date  : Wednesday, June 13th 2012 @ 01:26:23 AM
Error Date    : Wednesday, June 13th 2012 @ 01:26:23 AM
Script        : http://www.animcentral.com/forums/admincp/apm_product.php?do=productimport
Referrer      : http://www.animcentral.com/forums/admincp/apm_product.php?do=productadd
IP Address    : 2.187.112.151
Username      : AliMH
Classname     : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.0.95-log

[imported_dfmafia]

mobile styles didn't get the stylevar imgdir_sprite

4.2.0 PL2

everything else is working though

[cuco88]

I just tried it on 4.2.0 PL2.
With:
TMS 1.2.0 b4
TMS 1.2.0 b4 Patch
CSS-Sprites 0.7.2
This template fixes

Result: The template modification works, it generates sprites and adds them to my forum, BUT:
- It is not working for the mobile style
- Memberaction_Dropdown is still not found by TMS
- on the "who is online"-page the small triangle for the sorting makes the coloumn to big, so it "destroys" the design (only a few pixel)
- the "unsubscribe a forum"-image is shown 1,5x
and the biggest problem:
- it is not working correctly if you use your own statusicons with a prefix. The generated CSS rules and the inserted CSS Tags are not matching, so no images are shown. This is disappointing.

Damn, this looked so promising! I hope, vB will add this default. Now I have to uninstall it.

[Crotan]

Originally Posted by cuco88

I just tried it on 4.2.0 PL2.
With:
TMS 1.2.0 b4
TMS 1.2.0 b4 Patch
CSS-Sprites 0.7.2
This template fixes

Result: The template modification works, it generates sprites and adds them to my forum, BUT:
- It is not working for the mobile style
- Memberaction_Dropdown is still not found by TMS
- on the "who is online"-page the small triangle for the sorting makes the coloumn to big, so it "destroys" the design (only a few pixel)
- the "unsubscribe a forum"-image is shown 1,5x
and the biggest problem:
- it is not working correctly if you use your own statusicons with a prefix. The generated CSS rules and the inserted CSS Tags are not matching, so no images are shown. This is disappointing.

Damn, this looked so promising! I hope, vB will add this default. Now I have to uninstall it.

What do you mean your own statusicons with a prefix. I have this working with my own statusicons

screen capture for the "un-subscribe a forum" screw up? Is it possible that you unsubscribe image is grayscale and your using an old version of the GD library? Which was a reoccurring issue for people.

The only outstanding bugs with this mod that I'm aware of:

1. - on the "who is online"-page the small triangle for the sorting makes the column header to big by a few pixels
2. - Forumdisplay pages would not have their threads sprite statusicons added in latest vBulletin. Users supplied fix, post 536
3. - Search pages won't have sprites, needs a template update. Both this and the one above broke because of vbulletin template changes in later versions that this mod hasn't accounted for since released.

[Pure Dope]

oh wow. there has got to be a better way than to make all those template mods manually.

i cannot install tms b/c i have vb4.2.

but i need this.

[Crotan]

Originally Posted by Pure Dope

oh wow. there has got to be a better way than to make all those template mods manually.

i cannot install tms b/c i have vb4.2.

but i need this.

what's wrong with TMS and vb4.2?

[Pure Dope]

I looked thru the thread and didnt get any confirmation that it worked in 4.2.

The description didnt say so.

[fly]

Originally Posted by Pure Dope

I looked thru the thread and didnt get any confirmation that it worked in 4.2.

The description didnt say so.

Just try it on your test forum...

[qpurser]

Originally Posted by Pure Dope

I looked thru the thread and didnt get any confirmation that it worked in 4.2.

The description didnt say so.

Installed it on a test server running 4.2.0 with a custom template and it messed up parts of my forum layout.

Not saying it doesn't work but for me using a custom template it didn't