How to shorten the wait period between clicking on thread and page changing?

[asabet]

On my sites, when I click on a new thread title, there is a pause of up to a few seconds before anything happens.

Here is one of my sites: http://www.mu-43.com/

Now here is another vBulletin site (not mine) where you click on a thread and the page changes immediately: http://www.diecastmodelaircraft.com/

I understand that my pages takes a while to load because most of them are full of large photos, but I'm talking about the pause that happens before even getting to a page.

What is happening during that time after clicking on a thread title before the page switches, and how can I speed it up?

[Dave]

Many things come in factor:
- Distance between you and the server (Ping your domain name to see the distance in ms)
- Active plugins
- Server load
- Embedded media and requests to other servers
- Cached files

My waiting time when I click on threads on your forum is between 600ms and 750ms which isn't bad for a vBulletin forum.

[asabet]

Thanks, Dave. Would getting a server that is massively powerful and overkill for my needs help to shorten this wait time or is that not gonna help much?

[Dave]

You would probably not notice any difference with a more powerful server, unless you order a server which is closer to your own location. But in that case only you and people who live around your area will notice a small difference (probably maximum 50-100ms).

Like I said in my previous post my waiting time is about 600ms to 750ms which is about average for vBulletin forums. You could look into changing to MariaDB instead of MySQL and using nginx instead of Apache and configuring a cache server such as memcached which vBulletin supports.

This all might give you a little boost.

[asabet]

Thanks again, Dave.

[thetechgenius]

Your site seems to be loading fast for me. It might be because the server location is closer to me, then it is to you. But many things come into play with Web Site loading times, including your own PC that your using to browse the site.

[Zachery]

Things you can do:

Display less data per page: Show less topics/posts per page. This means less html is delivered, smaller queries, etc.

If you're using 100 posts per page, and 50 threads, and guests see 10 and 25, our pages are going to be quicker than yours.

Second is to reduce http requests, you can take a look at my style iconic, it is designed as a style to reduce the number of http request calls.