[Question] Ways to make a heavily modded phpBB forum faster

[Hyperion]

Hi. I have a heavily modded forum and I was wondering what options do I have to speed up my forum (besides getting rid of MODs)?

[Hunter Lupe]

Move to a better server. Rewrite the mods yourself so that they work better with your system.

[Alex]

There's only a small number of MODs installed at the forum that I host, so I don't really know how much difference it makes.

Maybe reconsider the ones installed, and see if they're all really necessary?

[Hyperion]

Hunter Lupe, the host I have offers unlimited hdd and bandwith. I know no other free forum host that provides that along with FTP, support, and etc. I plan on getting paid hosting in the future, but this act, or getting a better host, will not really affect the speed of my forum, as the cause is the MODs. Also, about "rewriting them", I'm no phpbb coding expert, nor am I at all versed at phpbb coding, but I do know that there is a way to speed up your forum by optimizing the SQL queries. I do not know how to do that, though.

Thanks for your input.

Alex, Velorum is a member of a forum called phpBB ER. He made his own forum, and he has more MODs than my forum, yet it runs faster than some forums without any MODs at all, lol. There are methods that exist. I want to be able to keep my forum heavily modded yet optimize it as much as possible. Many of the MODs are not necessary, but this is a goal that I want. I want to make the forum feature rich yet maintain good speed. This can be done, as Velorum proved.

Thanks for your input.

[Hunter Lupe]

Hunter Lupe, the host I have offers unlimited hdd and bandwith. I know no other free forum host that provides that along with FTP, support, and etc. I plan on getting paid hosting in the future, but this act, or getting a better host, will not really affect the speed of my forum, as the cause is the MODs.

Dead wrong. Upgrading the processor/adding RAM/reducing amount of other sites hosted on the server that hosts your site will speed up the forum without touching your code at all.

Also, about "rewriting them", I'm no phpbb coding expert, nor am I at all versed at phpbb coding, but I do know that there is a way to speed up your forum by optimizing the SQL queries. I do not know how to do that, though.

There's no magic solution here -- learn how MySQL handles queries, and modify your code in order to improve their performance. Or get someone to do it for you.
Actually, very little of the actual "page generation" time is consumed by MySQL queries, especially on small forums. The whole of phpBB provides a much larger overhead.

This can be done, as Velorum proved.

But not actually on a free shared hosting account?

[Hyperion]

Dead wrong. Upgrading the processor/adding RAM/reducing amount of other sites hosted on the server that hosts your site will speed up the forum without touching your code at all.

My apologies. I obviously did not know of that. I'm very novice at this.

There's no magic solution here -- learn how MySQL handles queries, and modify your code in order to improve their performance. Or get someone to do it for you.
Actually, very little of the actual "page generation" time is consumed by MySQL queries, especially on small forums. The whole of phpBB provides a much larger overhead.

I see now. I'm going to see if I can get Velorum to help me out with that.

But not actually on a free shared hosting account?

Not entirely sure, but I'm thinking no.