Speed Efficiency of Forum Software

[DanielGarneau]

Are there some forum software that tend to do better or worse than the rest in terms of how efficiently they are loading as measured by performance testing tools such as Pingdom, and GT Metrix, and Web Page Test? and App Synthetic Monitor, and -- for mobile device vs desktop performance -- Google's PageSpeedInsight?

These are the tools I tested my web site against, until it performed reasonably well, even when loaded on the other side of the planet from where is is hosted (through CDN).

I did a quick test with the same tools, running once and from the closest server to my site's hosting location, and the results I got were as follows, from best to worst:

1. Vanilla 2.2 hosted within a development area of my own web site, which means, my own domain;
2. PhpBB 3.1.8;
3. FluxBB -- most recent stable version, installed through CPanel's Softaculus;
   
4. MyBB -- most recent stable version, installed through CPanel's Softaculus;
   
5. SMF -- most recent stable version, installed through CPanel's Softaculus.

These results must be interpreted in light of the fact that none of these forum software installations were fine-tuned for performance. Have you observed any difference in speed between, say PhpBB and MyBB? :weary:

And, what can be done to improve those results? I'm particularly interested in MyBB and PhpBB here.

 

[Christopher1]

Hmmm... Wish I could provide answers you're looking for. This forum uses XF and have to say, I'm in love with it. It's probably the best forum software I've ever used.. PERIOD.

 

[DanielGarneau]

No problem @Christopher,

I'm still doing my own trying-out of forum software, of which speed test is an aspect I am taking into considerations. But I tend to distrust my own raw results, because there are very specific things that can be done to optimize a site, once it is set up. I was hoping to get a discussion rolling on this subject.

The OP provides links toward tools that members of this forum might be interested in using to check their own forum against, out of curiosity.

When I went on line, three years ago, I was not aware of any of this. As I got involved in communities from various part of the world --in French, English and Spanish--, I began to get visitors from every part of the world. Then I realized that the 2 seconds of access time from my location became 8 or more seconds in Australia. That's when I began getting serious about testing my site for access speed. That's when I turned to a CDN. I was able to decrease access time locally and make them decent abroad.

Now, some of the forums I am testing rate badly out-of-the box, others are pretty good already. I'm hoping some forum owners will be able to interact on this thread to help us all optimizing our forums.

Good evening!

 

[mrester]

I like Vanilla 2.2 and MyBB is okay. I agree that speed is very important. If it the load time takes longer than a second, I pass.

 

[DanielGarneau]

Some of my test sites required rerouting. This was impacting the poor results I was getting with some of the forum software under trial. Once this problem was fixed, I got much more decent performance results with all the forum software I had been testing.

Testing from a Pingdom Server in New York, I got the following Load time results:

• 363 ms -- MyBB
• 509 ms -- FluxBB
• 513 ms -- Vanilla
• 888 ms -- PhpBB

SMF still came in last, but with less than half the time of my previous tests.

 

[Christopher1]

Some of my test sites required rerouting. This was impacting the poor results I was getting with some of the forum software under trial. Once this problem was fixed, I got much more decent performance results with all the forum software I had been testing.

Testing from a Pingdom Server in New York, I got the following Load time results:

• 363 ms -- MyBB
• 509 ms -- FluxBB
• 513 ms -- Vanilla
• 888 ms -- PhpBB

SMF still came in last, but with less than half the time of my previous tests.

Wow! I didn't realize MyBB was so fast!