BuddyPress.org

Hi

first let me thank all of the developers of WP, BP – it’s a great system and I have great use out of it. However, the performance of our site is pretty low. Here are the URLs:
-http://www.slople.com/ (this is the core of the site which is NOT wordpress or buddypress but my own code)
-http://www.slople.com/community/activity/ (this is the BP activity stream)
-http://www.slople.com/forum/ (this is the bbPress sitewide forums, we don’t use group forums)
-http://www.slople.com/community/ (this is the Blog)

First, to the numbers:
WP 3.4.2
BP 1.6.1
bbPress 2.2.2
PHP 5.3.18
DB mySql 5.5.25 on localhost via UNIX-socket
php memory-limit 128MB (shared hosting)
APC shm_size 32MB

Usage data:
-557 registered users
-10’000 unique visitors per month

Installed plugins:
-bbPress
-bbPress string swap
-BP labs
-BP Members Avatar Map
-BP Xtra signup
-Buddypress
-Buddypress Activity Plus
-Buddypress Mass Messaging
-BuddyPress Usernames Only
-GD bbPress Tools
-Invite Anyone
-Login with Ajax
-mLanguage
-qTranslate extension
-root Cookie
-Theme My Login
-Unconfirmed
-W3 Total Cache (*)
-Wanguard
-WP-Mail-SMTP
-WP Widget Cache

*Yes we use W3TC, but we were not able to active all the functions. Currently we use the following settings:
-Page cache: disabled (several problems on the BP-side with not updated activity streams, still showing you are logged in while you logged out etc.)
-Minify: disabled (Problems with layout, possibly our own CSS problem)
-Database cache: enabled (APC) (Maximum lifetime of cache objects: 60s, GC interval: 180s)
-Object cache: disabled (again several problem with BP, not refreshing statuses even after TTL for logged-out-users)
-Browser cache: enabled (enabled are: Cache control header, ETags, gZip Compression, Prevent caching of objects after settings change)
-CDN: no
-Varnish: no
-Cloudflare: no

So far, so good (or maybe not?).

As you can see when you click on any of the links above, the performance of the site is just plain horrible:

-Calling http://www.slople.com/community/activity/ gives me the following numbers, using the network tool in firebug:

URL: GET activity http://www.slople.com/community/activity/
Status: 301 moved permanently
Size: 0
Timeline: 1.48s (why is it taking so long just to tell the browser a 301???)

then

URL: GET activity http://www.slople.com/community/activity/ (again???)
Status: 200 OK
Size: 62.9kB
Timeline: 5.55s (hmmm…?)

After that, page rendering starts and while being far from perfect, the rest of the resources load fairly fast.

Another example:

URL: GET /community/forum/slople http://www.slople.com/community/forum/slople/
Status: 200 OK
Size: 63.4kB
Timeline: 5.15s

Even calling the sames links again shortly after the first rendering completed, the performance remains the same. DB caching doesn’t seem to kick in at all.

This site is growing and people are interested in using it. However, with that performance, it’s not much fun. ATM, I’m thinking of moving to a good VPS (4 cores, 1.5GB RAM).

But maybe some experts here see a major flaw in our configuration.

Thank you very much for your replys!!
Raphael