Topic: Shoutbox Suggested Requirements

[mpcHardcore]

Hello, I am an Admin on a site that is currently using Simple Portal (2.3.3) and SMF (2.0 RC4) We love SP and do not have any direct problems with it, however when we attempt to use the shoutbox (on our forum page) we have major resource drainage at the moment its so much that we can not use it, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggested server requirements so we could ether upgrade to use this feature, or if it is something going wrong search more for a reason.

Thank you.

[130860]

every chat/shoutbox will consume resources,   without knowing oyur forum stats its very difficult to say somthing,   you can disable the auto refresh or set it on to a higher number, other than that, theres no much you can do I'm afraid.

[Jedikiller]

Hi, I'm the other co-admin!

Currently, our stats are 35797 posts, 3211 topics, 684 members.

Average of about 5-10 users online at once- there are more guests browsing usually but we don't count them since they can't see the SB. The site is currently running on an Amazon EC2 Micro instance (613 MB RAM, single-core 1.2 GHz CPU (bursts to dual-core), Red Hat Enterprise). I'm guessing that the bottleneck we're encountering here is CPU, since the server load jumps from its normal position of about 0 to 6.5*. It drops immediately after we disable the shoutbox.

Now, we've had this working fine previously on a shared plan, but we got forced by our hosting company to remove it after a month or two of using the shoutbox included with SimplePortal.

I guess we'd just like to know- we seem to have more than enough power to run whatever we want. However, this is the one thing we haven't been able to get working, and it's pretty critical to our site. Aside from disabling auto-refresh (which sort of defeats the purpose, IMO), are there any other optimizations we can make? Would it be more advantageous to simply move to a VPS which allows us to use all of the host machine's cores?

Thanks much!

[130860]

Ideally it is recommended to move to a vps  since as far as I know no hosting company would allow a chat/shoutbox on a share plan.

apart from disable the auto refresh, theres little to nothing about what you can do really, theres a difference between a shoutbox and a chat, perhaps you're looking for a chat instead of a shoutbox.

[Jedikiller]

We are already on a VPS. The shoutbox isn't working on it. We're interested in finding out what resource allocation we need to give it to have the shoutbox work properly without crashing the server every time someone loads a page.

We use it as a shoutbox because our members like to chat while on the index of the board, and preferably on all topics as well. They have not responded well to chat solutions that require you to leave the forum or be on a dedicated page.

[130860]

there are some chat mods that doesnt require to leave smf,  ajaxChat for example:

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1319

or nneonneo's Shoutbox

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=585

[Jedikiller]

We have investigated both of those options. However, they both cause significant load on the server, the same as the one included with the portal.

What we would like to know is what resource does the shoutbox require the most of? Does it need CPU or RAM more?

[130860]

well,  I' not particularity good with server techie things, but I would say  RAM,  based on your stats only and the size of your db.


theres a board in SMF forums where you can ask about technical stuff: 

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=86.0

you will get far better answers there

[Sir Kaos]

what if there was an option where a user becomes Idle if they dont use or click in the shoutbox. This way you can save yourself from the automatic refresh and valuable resources.

The user should click on "Idle" to become active again.

[[SiNaN]]

What type of caching do you use?

See if this helps:

Sources/Subs-Portal.php

Code: (Find) [Select]

'text' => parse_bbc($row['body'], true, '', $bbc),

Code: (Repace) [Select]

'text' => $row['body'],