Board Optimization - vB Accelerator

ported & significantly improved vb 3.8 branch.

This mod is suited for medium and big boards. It reduces server load, caused by thumnails and big attachments. Includes significant recommendations for server tuning, to speedup pages loading.

what's the problem with?

1. In original vB all thumbnails a downloaded via php. So, if you page contains 10-20 attached images, then each page php request will be followed by 10-20 thumbnails php requests. That's very bad.
2. When attachments body transfered via php, that's much more waisteful, than direct transfer of static file. Especially for big files.
3. Browser does lots of additional requests to static file, to check if modified
4. JS/CSS not compressed

what this mod does:

1. All thumbnails will have DIRECT links (served as static files). Much lower reply latency and server load.
2. If you have nginx webserver, you php-fcgi will not participate in file transfer any more. It will reply with X-Accel-Redirect header. Then nginx will proceed attachment as static file.
   • No more problems with multiple downloads of 10-mb files.
   • No needs to restrict attachments and full-size images for guests and search bots.
3. Static files are properly cached/compressed after tuning

how to install:

1. Make sure, attachments are stored on disk, NOT in database.
2. Make sure, that thumbnails are in web-accessible area. If not - reconfigure your web-server first.
3. Check manually, that you can download any .thumb file via browser.
4. !!! Tune cache/compression settings for static files (see example from next post)
5. Import product XML & tune settings.
6. Enjoy

This mod is developped here: http://github.com/rcdesign/vb-accelerator . Patches are welcome.

history:

0.9
- fixed path for duplicated attachments

0.8
- fixed back timestamp parameter & substitutions for XML output
- added conversion for assets.php thumbnails (in attachments manager)

0.7
- ported to vb4
- added basic CDN support for thumbnails

[CMSTemplateZ]

Good work ive got a board that is slowly growing bigger, this is good to know something like this is available.

[Vitaly]

Originally Posted by punchbowl

Do attachments have to be in a publicly available area for this to work e.g.
?

thumbnails should be available via www

[punchbowl]

Sorry for being stupid Vitaly but I see no separate setting for storing attachment thumbnails in one place and attachments in another? Will I have to move the attachment directory into www or am I missing something?

Am I right in saying that having attachment in www means that private attachments will be public?

Thanks

[Vitaly]

See example from second post https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....04&postcount=2 , how to tune nginx. I don't understand your problem.

[punchbowl]

Sorry I'm new to nginx. I didn't understand the "internal" directive. Wow nginx just gets better and better. Cheers and thank you for your patience!

[punchbowl]

nope - can't get it working, when I enable I get no images loading. Disabling makes it ok.

I have attachments @ /srv/www/domain.com/public_html/attach

I have domain.com thus:

server {
    listen   80;
	  client_max_body_size 2M;
    server_name www.domain.com domain.com;
    access_log /srv/www/domain.com/logs/access.log;
    error_log /srv/www/domain.com/logs/error.log;

    location / {
        root   /srv/www/domain.com/public_html;
        index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    }
		
		# globally disable external access to attachments, but enable for X-Accel-Redirect
location /attach {
    internal;
}
# enable thumbnails direct access, but nothing else!
location ~* /attach/(.*)\.thumb$ {
    expires 24h;
}


location ~ \.php$ {
        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass  127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /srv/www/domain.com/public_html$fastcgi_script_name;
				fastcgi_connect_timeout 60;
fastcgi_send_timeout 180;
fastcgi_read_timeout 180;
fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
fastcgi_buffers 4 256k;
fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k;
fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k;
fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    }
		}

in admincp I have path to attachements: /attach

cdn: blank

and

Enable large downloads acceleration: ticked yes

edit: I get a 404 for http://www.domain.com/attach/9/226.thumb

[acha3ir.net]

Thank you for the excellent work

[ImmortalForums]

This breaks images inside quote boxes with just the cdn enabled.

[Vitaly]

Please, provide more details.

[ImmortalForums]

When using only the cdn feature and having accel off and someone quotes an image instead of showing the image it just has a link.