[Sigma]

Hi,

My forum runs on the latest version of IPB. The site has a simple home page with a link taking you to the forums. Most of the time, the forums load extremely slowly, sometimes failing to load at all, while loading of the home page is always pretty much instant. The site has been up for about 5 years and this problem started happening a few months ago.

I've contacted my web host (Bluehost) a couple of times about this and they insist that there is no issue at their end and that it must be related to scripts we have running on the site or the amount of traffic the site receives, except to my knowledge, there are no special scripts running and the site only has 5-20 active users at any one time, so I highly doubt that traffic is the issue.

Could this possibly be a problem with the way the forum is installed or configured? Is the web host just passing the buck? Is there any way that I can diagnose what is the cause? The site is so slow these days, that we're losing some of the few active members we have and I'm really not that knowledgeable about these things, so I don't know where to start.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help.

Steve.

[Riker]

Hello, and welcome to IPB helpers. Would you please provide a link to the site so we may see what the issue may be? Thanks

[Sigma]

Sure. Here's the home page, which at the time of writing this loads instantly: -

http://www.digitalvertigo.co.uk/

And the forum index which is timing out for me at the moment: -

http://www.digitalvertigo.co.uk/forum/index.php

[Martin]

I have opened both links and they open instantly for me. One of the hardest things for persons using Shared Hosting services to understand is that while their sites/forums may run sluggish at times is due to overall server load and specifically your account only. To you it is very slow, depending on the server's peak time, but to the hosting company the server is fine and handling the allotted load as it should.

The primary concern you need to address, regarding the issue you are having, is to determine from your hosting company what their server load policy is. Do they permit overselling of accounts to the server they are running. If so, you may want to ask your host to move your account to a less loaded server. This would relieve the overall stress to the server load and your forum as a result.

If your host is not able or willing to do this for you, then you may very well need to seek out another host better suited to your needs. In some cases, if finances permit, it may may be necessary to move to a VPS or dedicated server, depending on your needs and what you are willing/able to do to assure the smooth operation to your forum.

You may also wish to do some cleanup of your forum with respect to re-caching, recounting & rebuilding of your forum overall in order to relieve some of the load as well. I hope I have been able to shed some light on this issue for you.

[Sigma]

Thanks a lot for the reply, Martin! One thing I forgot to mention is that the site seems slow/inaccessible during UK office hours, although sometimes by mid-afternoon it's OK. It's fine for me now (11 PM at night) for instance. This is definitely something that affects all users of the site, because there's been several topics of discussion about it on there. Does that sound like symptoms of being on an overloaded server?

You may also wish to do some cleanup of your forum with respect to re-caching, recounting & rebuilding of your forum overall in order to relieve some of the load as well.

By this, do you mean using the tools in the Recount & Rebuild section of the Admin CP? If so, which of those tools would you suggest I run?

Many thanks for the help!

[jucky68]

I using bluehost, It's not bad

[davidit2]

i seriously doubt this will help and i assume you are on a linux server but i had the same problem with godaddy.com aka my host and all i did was switch to a linux server my problem was that i was using php and iss7 not sure why this is a problem(probably because i had to make a php5.ini file to override the other one and manually redirect my site with a custom 301 php redirect lol but ever since i switched my board is running smooth as a whistle well if your on windows server hosting switch out and see what happens :)

[Fmslick]

look in to this http://gtmetrix.com/....co.uk/Of6ZDeoY


http://www.digitalvertigo.co.uk/
Page Speed Grade:
(56%)
77%

CYSlow Grade:
(76%)
75%

Page load time: 1.64s
Total page size: 296KB
Total number of requests: 39
-----------------------------------------
Analyze Performance
http://gtmetrix.com/