Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites

Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites is hard even by a Page Speed Specialist because not really for Cloud. Still Let us try to optimize. We wrote a Guide on how to install vBulletin on Rackspace Cloud Sites, 2 or 3 points were although there, this is fresh article for Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites.

Problems with Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites

It is unacceptable to get 51/100 on webpagetest result for such an advanced cloud computing platform. This is what you will get normally, with vBSEO it might get 44/100. vBulletin has multifaceted problems, although probably will want to run vBulletin as paid software. If your main website is forum, that is vBulletin, we will suggest to go for Rackspace Cloud Server (managed) and let Rackspace team optimize it. This guide to Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites is somewhat forced way to leverage it to 82-84 / 100 with 2-3 seconds of initial loading time on webpagetest.org. If we compare it with our other guides on WordPress Page Speed, we have shown to load within 1.6 seconds with all green A and over 95/100 score.

There are various problems for with it does not performs well. The folder needed to be CHMOD-ed to even 777, absolute paths are necessary, loading from Akamai / Cloud Files a hard work. Forget a perfect cache plugin unlike WordPress. vBulletin get confused with the Cloud Platform, its apparent from the PHP data shown.

Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites

But we have started to write on Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites. We are writing serially :

Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites by the config file

vBulletin probably has separate paid service but our target is for Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites, not traditional platforms.

The thing is that, in config file,  as we wrote in the previous Installing vBulletin Forum Software on Guide on how to install vBulletin on Rackspace Cloud Sites, create two database as master and slave. The most important is remove all commented out stuffs from this config.php file. Test and save slowly.  So the config.php file will look like this :

This will ensure at least First Byte Time come closer to our normal 280 milliseconds. Note the forcing SQL mode (true) and path is the Linux Path.

Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites by setting folder permissions

Probably if the whole made 777 it made better ! That is not possible. Two important things – if there any subfolder and a file need to set to 777, then the parent folders must have to CHMOD -ed to 777. Its very risky, proper .htaccess protection is must.

Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin for Rackspace Cloud Sites by moving files to the File System

Create a directory named  attachments, and CHMOD to 777 all these :

• The attachments folder you created
• customavaters
• customprofilepics
• And css folder its unfortunate as its sub

There is a system in vBulletin, like this :

And find all such settings and set to Linux path instead of default ./namefolder  

Enable GZip

Enable GZip and set it to 9 (maximum). You can disable Update Thread Views Immediately option. Its under “Server Settings and Optimization Options ” ; there are settings for Ajax and others, quite obviously you will use your Rackspace Cloud Files / Akamai.

Optimizing Page Speed of vBulletin by using .htaccess

Just like WordPress you can increase the php memory limit and do the tweaks, please use the search function on this website to find the guides if you are not sure.

Products / Plugins

Do not install hundreds of plugins/products it will make more slow.  There are some plugins availble to boost a bit and make the HTML output tidy. Use them. vBSEO has some very rudimentary CDN plugin like function.

But its far away to be comparable with W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache for WordPress but the whole guide will definitely give  2-3 seconds of initial loading time on webpagetest.org. As the major problem is lot of static files, use or develop own skin with CSS sprite.