Slow load times...

iplayguitar81

I am playing around with Shared hosting on HTTPS, and I was wondering if some one may assist me so that I can get my forum to load at faster speeds.. The forum I put together and have online is at:

https://hangout.trailblazersfans.com/

Are there any settings I should specifically be looking at? I installed the forum approximately a year ago, so my memory is not fresh on Flarum, but I should be able to access and modify anything relatively quickly. Thanks for your help!

ExZiByte

iplayguitar81
I tried accessing your forum and it loads pretty quick for me

But if you are experiencing slow loading times it could be because you are trying to use HDD's instead of SSD's
That being said it's not a requirement of flarum to use SSD's.
Also it could be because you have a lot of users browsing the forum at the same time and the CPU can't keep up with the amount of requests being thrown at it.
It could also be the server isn't getting a fast enough network speed.
Also it could be because you don't enough RAM available

You could try to install this extension: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/5444-user-management-by-reflar/138 to see how many users are currently browsing your forum (you will need composer to install this extension)

Also is it just you experiencing the slow loading times or are a lot of your users also experiencing the slow loading times.

0E800

iplayguitar81

C:\Users\0E800>ping hangout.trailblazersfans.com

Pinging hangout.trailblazersfans.com [173.236.184.234] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 173.236.184.234: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=46
Reply from 173.236.184.234: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=46
Reply from 173.236.184.234: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=46
Reply from 173.236.184.234: bytes=32 time=73ms TTL=46

Ping statistics for 173.236.184.234:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 72ms, Maximum = 73ms, Average = 72ms

C:\Users\0E800>tracert hangout.trailblazersfans.com

Tracing route to hangout.trailblazersfans.com [173.236.184.234]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.1.101.1
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  204.8.171.1
  3     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  ge-4-2-1-4000-sur01.novato.ca.sfba.comcast.net [50.202.151.25]
  4     2 ms     2 ms     1 ms  be-17-ar01.sfsutro.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.85.86.225]
  5     5 ms     5 ms     4 ms  hu-0-18-0-0-ar01.santaclara.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.85.154.57]
  6     6 ms     6 ms     6 ms  be-33651-cr02.sunnyvale.ca.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.93]
  7     7 ms     6 ms     6 ms  be-11025-cr01.9greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.87.158]
  8     6 ms     5 ms     5 ms  hu-0-13-0-0-pe03.11greatoaks.ca.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.83.134]
  9     6 ms     6 ms     6 ms  ae-13.sayonara-todd.r02.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.66.33]
 10     6 ms     5 ms     5 ms  ae-11.sayonara-todd.r22.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.3.120]
 11   100 ms   108 ms   114 ms  ae-7.sayonara-todd.r23.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.6.238]
 12   123 ms   133 ms   128 ms  ae-20.sayonara-todd.r06.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.2.133]
 13    99 ms    90 ms    91 ms  ae-1.sayonara-todd.a03.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.5.214]
 14    73 ms    75 ms    72 ms  ae-0.dreamhost.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.196.242]
 15    74 ms    73 ms    73 ms  ip-208-113-156-8.dreamhost.com [208.113.156.8]
 16    72 ms    72 ms    72 ms  ip-208-113-156-75.dreamhost.com [208.113.156.75]
 17    80 ms    79 ms    79 ms  apache2-whippit.companion.dreamhost.com [173.236.184.234]

Trace complete.

You can see from the trace route where your site is taking long to load. Don't believe it has anything to do with your hard drive speed or memory.

I tried to Geocode as many of those IPs that I could, you see how all these hops would add latency:

Review:
https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215836488-What-about-my-slow-site-can-I-check-
https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/216349808-Common-reasons-for-poor-website-performance
https://www.howtogeek.com/134132/how-to-use-traceroute-to-identify-network-problems/
http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/how-to/read-traceroute
https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9622/10/dns-propagation--explained

Disclaimer: I am not a professional, I could be wrong.

iplayguitar81

ExZiByte I just noticed that it loads slow for myself. As it stands now the forum is only used by myself, and is also not public to anyone else so it is unlikely that traffic is causing an issue.

Why I posted mainly was because I was wondering if there are settings to check in the .htaccess or config.php files (or elsewhere) that may be causing slower load times on shared hosts specifically? I also notice that the forum loads fast tonight, but at times it seems pretty slow to load... more than a few seconds, which would be unacceptable if I were ever to make attempts to get more traffic to visit/use the forum.

duman

iplayguitar81 It's because of shared hosting. Most likely they are giving you very low resources also you may be using HDD instead of SSD.

Extra: I was using flarum on a VPS with 512MB RAM and 100% CPU access. It was still slow at times. (ping was also 20)

I've upgraded to 1GB RAM package and now everything works rocket fast.

In order to have butter smooth access to Flarum you need at least 1GB RAM and SSD drives. Also, location of server affects latency. So... make sure that server is close to you or use a CDN service if it's the problem.

You can test your ping by opening command line/terminal (CMD for Windows)

and typing:

ping www.yoursite.com

If the ping is 5 ~ 30 it's perfect.
30 ~ 65 it's alright.
65 ~ 110 is kind of frustrating.
110+ is annoying.
(Based on my experience on different servers.)

ExZiByte

iplayguitar81

If it loads quick sometimes but slow others it could be an internet problem be it on your side or the servers side

The shared hoster may be having networking problems.

And I also agree with duman

0E800

iplayguitar81
Keep in mind...

https://blog.schmichael.com/2007/06/10/tips-on-surviving-dreamhost/

http://ask.metafilter.com/168820/Whats-up-with-Dreamhost-and-some-other-international-hosting-questions

http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/10/dreamhost/neg/631/helpful

https://discussion.dreamhost.com/thread-65526.html

Maybe consider different host?

ExZiByte

I hadn't even thought about geocoding all the hops

iplayguitar81

Thanks 0E800 ExZiByte For all the help!

iplayguitar81

Cool. You folks have made me gain more confidence in my skills to install Flarum correctly on a shared host. I already use Digital Ocean for a Rails app that I have, but it must remain in place because I am going to be finishing my time at University soon and will need to showcase it while I look for a job. Once I have a good secure job I will add more hosting on Digital Ocean and switch my hosting for Flarum. Thanks all for the help!

ExZiByte

iplayguitar81 I recommend a VPS from OVH if you are looking for something on the cheap with plenty of power to run your forums and a few other things

ExZiByte

You're welcome

iplayguitar81

ExZiByte just to be clear are you referring to the services in this page?

https://www.ovh.com/us/vps/vps-ssd.xml

Would the $3.49 a month service work, and if so are there any tutorials for getting an install of flarum on OVH? Also, do you happen to know if OVH works with a rails site? That price is totally reasonable. I had not heard of them other than mentioned here or there a bit and didn't know if it was available for people in the US. Thank you for all your help!

Davis

iplayguitar81 Would the $3.49 a month service work

Can confirm it works quite well, and better than DO's equivalent package.

iplayguitar81 I had not heard of them other than mentioned here or there a bit and didn't know if it was available for people in the US.

They aren't as good at marketing as DO. Their site isn't great either, but they make up for it with the value. Their data centers are located in Europe, though I've heard they are expanding to the US. Although, when you're paying $3/month, the location of your datacenter shouldn't be your main concern.

ExZiByte

iplayguitar81
I do not know if it would work with a rails site

I do not know if there are tutorials on installing flarum on an OVH VPS, but i would be more then happy to help as
I personally use a VPS-SSD Tier 3 2015 (Model Year, I think they update there VPS's every other year or so) to host my flarum powered forums.
I have been more then happy with it.

Davis OVH has 15 (soon to be 18) datacenters in:
in Beauharnois, Canada, Gravelines, France, Roubaix , France, Strasbourg, France, Paris, France.

Davis

ExZiByte my mistake I forgot about good old canada ??

ExZiByte I do not know if it would work with a rails site

It would ?

ExZiByte tutorials on installing flarum on an OVH VPS

It should be the same as any other VPS (besides the small differences between Linux distros).