[frank tredici]

I am looking to view and navigate large BuddyPress installs that are generally accessible in the public domain. I am searching for BP sites that are large in terms of Pages, Groups, Forums, etc. so I can see how efficient the site runs from a page load speed and performance perspective. My BP install runs too slow and our members are complaining.

If you are willing to share your site’s URL for this purpose, please post as a reply to this thread.

Thank you !

[meg@info]

http://www.bpinspire.com/

https://buddypress.org/showcase/

[Austin Nichols]

For the most part you won’t be able to tell much just by looking at them. If you are on shared hosting that is your problem. Most shared hosts throttle BP installs (Blue Host, Host Monster, etc.). You need to be running a dedicated server(s). I have had good luck with Rackspace, but there are a couple other good ones out there (but not many).

[frank tredici]

We’re a large institution and I manage my own dedicated server.

[Austin Nichols]

You have a link?

[frank tredici]

Sorry, it’s behind a private firewall. Users need to authenticate through our enterprise-wide authentication system.

[frank tredici]

RE: https://buddypress.org/showcase/

I clicked around the first 5 showcase sites (excluding the german one), and they all run faster than our BP install. Guess there’s hope for BP after all.

Wonder what makes those sites run so fast? If it’s a cache plug-in, would love to know which one they use. We use “Hyper Cache” and it’s not cutting it for us.

(ref: https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/how-to-optimize-and-maximize-buddypress-performance/)

[Austin Nichols]

You can try this:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/yslow/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firebug/?src=dp-dl-dependencies

[frank tredici]

@FIQ

I am already running Firebug and I was using Google Page Speed to monitor.

I immediately get `#request` and then the monitor tool sits and waits just as long as BP waits to build the page(s). Typically between 3-8 clock seconds.

[danbpfr]

http://reussitefac.com (over 9.000 members)

[frank tredici]

Nice site @Chouf1 !

What plug-ins are you running? Especially what cache plug-in(s)?

My plug-in stack can be viewed at https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/how-to-optimize-and-maximize-buddypress-performance/

[danbpfr]

Sorry i don’t know at this time. It’s an old client and i have no more contact with the techies.
But one thing is sure, WP architecture is so that the more you get plugins, the more your site slow down.
Short said, everithing works (more or less), except the time factor. How to solve this has yet to be invented.

[Anonymous User 96400]

It’s a myth that a WP site runs slower or more poorly the more plugins you have installed. The more plugins you install, the greater the chance that one of them is written poorly, which could then cause a bottleneck of some kind and slow your site down. So it’s about the quality of the plugins and not the amount of them.

[frank tredici]

@Travel-Junkie

How do you go about evaluating the quality of a plug-in? (ie., how would you personally do that if you had a slow running WP site?)

I appreciate your comments and insight.

[danbpfr]

@travel-junkie It’s a myth yeah, but it’s not a myth that at each page load, the page is recontructed with all the plugins, filters, filters of filters, and all the rest. The amount count or better said the server settings of many details such as php memory, max_exec etc

You’re right, good coding practice is the primar condition, but who knows that when installing a plugin ? A quality plugin coded under the 4.x area isn’t really quality satisfying today. Awfull plugins writen with the feet, but doing the job (even if penibly) are(where) legion.

Most of the plugin’s user are not php guru’s to see what changed, what is good or not in the code.
Even pro developper’s are not all qualified to be quality dev’s. Go, go, go, allways faster und hektische arbeit zum schluss. You’ll probably know that.

And what is “quality” in the wpsphere ? 5 minutes install, download a theme, a plugin by one click and bum, done ? In the best case, user will shout “it work’s !”
It’s not quality, it’s just an easy craftwork.
Aber sonst alles klar. Tchuss

EDIT: a funny conclusion to this just posted here few minutes ago in this tread:
https://buddypress.org/community/groups/creating-extending/forum/topic/bp-better-directories-abandoned/
that mentionned this (very explicit in my mind)
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-bp-better-directories-ready-or-not

[Anonymous User 96400]

The time spent on running all the filters and actions is negligible, really. And if you need the extra functionality a plugin provides, then it doesn’t matter if you include the code as a plugin or include it via your theme’s functions.php file. It’s got to get loaded anyways. The only difference is the time when it gets loaded.

Personally, I have a look at the code before I install a plugin for the first time. Nicely formatted code and proper in-code documentation give you a good first impression of the code you’re about to run. Of course, to most end-users this will only be goobldygook, but there are tools out there. YSlow, Debug Bar Console, etc. Then there’s plugins that monitor the load time and can give you detailed information about the load times (had a quick look for one I sometimes use, but couldn’t find it).

[frank tredici]

@Travel-Junkie

Is that plug-in a WordPress plug-in or a Firefox plug-in?