Hello,
I have purchased and installed vB Connect 5.3.3 on a brand new shared website plan I purchased from LunarPages specifically for this purpose. The site basically has nothing on it yet except this brand new installation of vBulletin.
This is their "Basic Hosting" plan. The site has:
Operating System CentOS Linux release 7.3.1611 (Core)
Kernel Version 3.10.0-514.16.1.el7.x86_64
Apache Version 2.4.6
MySQL Version 5.6.35-81.0
PERL Path /bin/perl
PERL Version 5.16.3
PHP Path /bin/php
PHP Version 5.6.30
Ruby Path /usr/local/bin/ruby
Ruby Version 2.3.4
DB Server 74.50.0.88
I should mention that the mySQL database is on a different server, if that makes a difference.
I ran the vb_test.php script ahead of time and received PASS on everything.
The installation went without a hitch and is up and running in its default state, all I did was add a logo - you can see it here:
However, now that it is installed, the page loading response is extremely slow. Just loading the default VB directory (forums page) or clicking on any of the other tabs takes at about 5 to 7 seconds of "Connecting..." before the page is displayed. And this is with no users or content!
I've tried complaining about this to LunarPages and seem to be getting nothing but "this is a vBulletin issue, and you've got to think about doing all this crazy technical stuff to make it work better", such as:
=========================
LunarPages:
From analysing your forum using https://tools.pingdom.com :
https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/HFbs/ht...serveaz.com/vb
You may want to uncomment the following line :
#RewriteBase /
in your public_html/vb/.htaccess file and also change it to :
RewriteBase /vb/
=========================
I tried this, no real change.
They said:
=========================
LunarPages:
It would appear that your forum could use optimizations in the form of serving static content from a cookieless domain (more information at : https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/rules ) as well as reducing the number of redirects.
=========================
This seems like a massive technical project and I don't even know if it would work...
They said:
=========================
LunarPages:
If you find your forum is still slow to load afterwards, it's possible that you may need to set up your domain to use Cloudflare to reduce ping. Website initial response time for each request will be affected by geographical distance between the website or forum visitors and the server hosting the website or forum. This is not something that can be helped from our end. It requires that you configure your domain to use a Content Delivery Network. Of which Cloudflare is a free to use example.
=========================
Again, seems overkill....
What is your advice on all of this? Is this shared hosting plan so "crippled" that it isn't going to work with vB? Do I really need to start looking into these highly technical optimizations above? I just want to set up a small community site for 143 members max. Is there some other company I should consider for a basic shared website capable of running vBulletin 5?
Edit: using VBulletin Cloud is not an option, I need more control over the entire website and source code, hence I bought the VB 5 Connect License for $249.
Thanks,
- Stephen
I have purchased and installed vB Connect 5.3.3 on a brand new shared website plan I purchased from LunarPages specifically for this purpose. The site basically has nothing on it yet except this brand new installation of vBulletin.
This is their "Basic Hosting" plan. The site has:
Operating System CentOS Linux release 7.3.1611 (Core)
Kernel Version 3.10.0-514.16.1.el7.x86_64
Apache Version 2.4.6
MySQL Version 5.6.35-81.0
PERL Path /bin/perl
PERL Version 5.16.3
PHP Path /bin/php
PHP Version 5.6.30
Ruby Path /usr/local/bin/ruby
Ruby Version 2.3.4
DB Server 74.50.0.88
I should mention that the mySQL database is on a different server, if that makes a difference.
I ran the vb_test.php script ahead of time and received PASS on everything.
The installation went without a hitch and is up and running in its default state, all I did was add a logo - you can see it here:
However, now that it is installed, the page loading response is extremely slow. Just loading the default VB directory (forums page) or clicking on any of the other tabs takes at about 5 to 7 seconds of "Connecting..." before the page is displayed. And this is with no users or content!
I've tried complaining about this to LunarPages and seem to be getting nothing but "this is a vBulletin issue, and you've got to think about doing all this crazy technical stuff to make it work better", such as:
=========================
LunarPages:
From analysing your forum using https://tools.pingdom.com :
https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/HFbs/ht...serveaz.com/vb
You may want to uncomment the following line :
#RewriteBase /
in your public_html/vb/.htaccess file and also change it to :
RewriteBase /vb/
=========================
I tried this, no real change.
They said:
=========================
LunarPages:
It would appear that your forum could use optimizations in the form of serving static content from a cookieless domain (more information at : https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/rules ) as well as reducing the number of redirects.
=========================
This seems like a massive technical project and I don't even know if it would work...
They said:
=========================
LunarPages:
If you find your forum is still slow to load afterwards, it's possible that you may need to set up your domain to use Cloudflare to reduce ping. Website initial response time for each request will be affected by geographical distance between the website or forum visitors and the server hosting the website or forum. This is not something that can be helped from our end. It requires that you configure your domain to use a Content Delivery Network. Of which Cloudflare is a free to use example.
=========================
Again, seems overkill....
What is your advice on all of this? Is this shared hosting plan so "crippled" that it isn't going to work with vB? Do I really need to start looking into these highly technical optimizations above? I just want to set up a small community site for 143 members max. Is there some other company I should consider for a basic shared website capable of running vBulletin 5?
Edit: using VBulletin Cloud is not an option, I need more control over the entire website and source code, hence I bought the VB 5 Connect License for $249.
Thanks,
- Stephen
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