community.centminmod.com journey for speed

Folks may know I have an addiction to speed = server speed, forum speed and page load speed So here's my journey to optimising page load speed for this forum, http://community.centminmod.com.

Server Information

• 2 Core Intel Xeon E5-2680v2 2.80Ghz Linode SSD VPS
• 2GB Memory
• 48GB SSD Disk space
• Region: Freemont, California

Web stack

• Centmin Mod .07 released LEMP web stack
• Nginx 1.7.0 with ngx_pagespeed 1.8.31.2 beta enabled
• PHP 5.5.12 PHP-FPM with Zend OpCache 7.0.4-dev
• MariaDB MySQL 5.5.37 with InnoDB default
• Memcached 1.4.20 server with Memcache 3.0.8/Memcached 2.2.0 + Libmemcached 1.18 (igbinary supported)
• CSF Firewall

Current List of Xenforo Addons

• Avatar Flags by Waindigo 1.0.1
• Defer JS 2.1.0
• Daily Statistics 1.2.1
  
• Digital Point Better Analytics 1.0.4
  
• Digital Point Syntax Highlighter 1.3.0
• Forum Jump Menu by Waindigo 1.0.10 disabled
• Forum List Tabs by Waindigo 1.0.3 disabled
  
• Install and Upgrade by Waindigo 1.1.2a
• Mark Threads as Solved by Waindigo 1.0.2
  
• Member's Local Time by Waindigo 1.0.3
  
• News 1.9
  
• PayPal Sandbox by Waindigo 1.0.1
  
• Quick Reply Preview 1.4.3
• Register Timezone 1.0
• Sidebar (Collapse/expand) 1.0.0
  
• Similar Threads 3.0
  
• Thread Starter 1.3 disabled
  
• TPU: Detect Spam Registrations 1.0.1
• TPU: Disable Captcha for registration only 1.0.0
• Unread Post Count 1.1.3
• User Upgrades by Waindigo 1.3.1c
  
• XenForo Resource Manager 1.1.3 disabled
  
• [bd] Cache 1.0.5
• [rellect] Nodes Grid 1.0.4
• [Tinhte] XenTag 2.1

---

 

Centmin Mod 1.2.3-eva2000.07 beta #20 install time stats

Code:

--------------------------------------------------------
Centmin Mod 1.2.3-eva2000.07 - http://centminmod.com
--------------------------------------------------------
                   Centmin Mod Menu                  
--------------------------------------------------------
1).  Centmin Install
2).  Add Nginx vhost domain
3).  NSD setup domain name DNS
4).  Nginx Upgrade / Downgrade
5).  PHP Upgrade / Downgrade
6).  XCache Re-install
7).  APC Cache Re-install
8).  XCache Install
9).  APC Cache Install
10). Memcached Server Re-install
11). MariaDB 5.2, 5.5, 10 Upgrade Sub-Menu
12). Zend OpCache Install/Re-install
13). Install ioping.sh vbtechsupport.com/1239/
14). SELinux disable
15). Install/Re-install ImageMagick PHP Extension
16). Change SSHD Port Number
17). Multi-thread compression: pigz,pbzip2,lbzip2,p7zip etc
18). Suhosin PHP Extension install
19). Install FFMPEG and FFMPEG PHP Extension
20). NSD Re-install
21). Update - Nginx + PHP-FPM + Siege
22). Exit
--------------------------------------------------------
Enter option [ 1 - 22 ]
--------------------------------------------------------

Code:

Total YUM Time: 219.504090154 seconds
Total Centmin Mod Install Time: 1109.147935431 seconds

Code:

curl -I http://community.centminmod.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx centminmod
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Set-Cookie: xf_session=xxxxx; path=/; httponly
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
Date: Sat, 24 May 2014 03:09:25 GMT
X-Page-Speed: 1.8.31.2-3973
Cache-Control: max-age=0, no-cache

Code:

nginx -V
nginx version: nginx/1.7.0
built by gcc 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-4) (GCC)
TLS SNI support enabled
configure arguments: --with-cc-opt='-I/svr-setup/staticlibssl/include -I/usr/include' --with-ld-opt='-L/svr-setup/staticlibssl/lib -Wl,-rpath -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lz' --sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin/nginx --conf-path=/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_addition_module --with-http_image_filter_module --with-http_secure_link_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_geoip_module --with-openssl-opt=enable-tlsext --add-module=../ngx-fancyindex-ngx-fancyindex --add-module=../ngx_cache_purge-2.1 --add-module=../headers-more-nginx-module-0.25 --add-module=../nginx-accesskey-2.0.3 --add-module=../nginx-http-concat-master --with-openssl=../openssl-1.0.1g --with-libatomic --with-pcre=../pcre-8.35 --with-pcre-jit --with-http_spdy_module --add-module=../ngx_pagespeed-release-1.8.31.2-beta

Code:

php -v
PHP 5.5.12 (cli) (built: May 24 2014 03:15:01)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.0.4-dev, Copyright (c) 1999-2014, by Zend Technologies

Code:

mysqladmin ver
mysqladmin  Ver 9.0 Distrib 5.5.37-MariaDB, for Linux on x86_64
Copyright (c) 2000, 2014, Oracle, Monty Program Ab and others.

Server version          5.5.37-MariaDB
Protocol version        10
Connection              Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket             /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
Uptime:                 5 hours 17 min 49 sec

 

gtmetrix.com results - attempt #1

connection speed: unlimited
region test server: Dallas, USA

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/community.centminmod.com/YlzUjrPS



connection speed: Cable 5Mbps
region test server: Dallas, USA

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/community.centminmod.com/GTRlRk1Z

 

webpagetest.org results - attempt #1

connection speed: Cable 5Mbps
region test server: Dulles, VA


http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140524_QM_ba1395f33f6563921f446ba795fb7ae4/

 

A few more addons including collapse and expand sidebar added a 2 more http requests one js and png image.

gtmetrix.com result

connection speed: unlimited
region test server: Dallas, USA

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/community.centminmod.com/URmEZE9A



webpagetest.org result

connection speed: Cable 5Mbps
region test server: Los Angeles different test location

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140525_ZH_780541a923fa89056b35cbe449a3f5bf/

 

Installed DigitalPoint Better Analytics and enabled Google Analytics tracking code both of which add more http requests (ngx_pagespeed reduces it slightly) and increase page size.

gtmetrix result

connection speed: unlimited
region test server: Dallas, USA

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/community.centminmod.com/G4R2SRbz



webpagetest.org result

connection speed: Cable 5Mbps
region test server: Los Angeles different test location

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140525_72_e401a9292dbf3ae390060ce608b51266/

 

Heaps of add ons and optimisations done since last benchmark.

Latest addon listing at http://community.centminmod.com/threads/xenforo-addon-suggestions-list.17/#post-24 with following addons installed

• Avatar Flags by Waindigo 1.0.1
• Daily Statistics 1.2.2
• Defer JS 2.1.0 [disabled]
• Digital Point Better Analytics 1.0.4
• Digital Point Search 1.1.1
• Digital Point Syntax Highlighter 1.3.0
• Digital Point User Map 1.3.2
• Disable Debug Mode by Waindigo 1.0.1
• Double Post Merge 1.0.9
• Find Unanswered Threads 1.0.5
• First Post 1.0
• Forum Jump Menu by Waindigo 1.0.10 [disabled]
• Forum List Tabs by Waindigo 1.0.3 [disabled]
• Install and Upgrade by Waindigo 1.1.2a
• Mark Threads as Solved by Waindigo 1.0.2
• Member's Local Time by Waindigo 1.0.3
• News 1.9
• Nodes As Tabs 1.2.2
• PayPal Sandbox by Waindigo 1.0.1 [disabled]
• Quick Reply Preview 1.4.3
• Register Timezone 1.0
• Restore Strikethrough In Editor 1.0.0 [disabled]
• Sidebar (Collapse/expand) 1.0.0
• Similar Threads 3.0
• Sitemap for XenForo 1.5.2
• Smiley Manager 2.0.1
• Statistics 1.1 [disabled]
• Thread Navigation by Waindigo 1.0.0a
• Thread Starter 1.3 [disabled]
• TPU: Detect Spam Registrations 1.0.1
• TPU: Disable Captcha for registration only 1.0.0
• Unread Post Count 1.1.3
• User Upgrades by Waindigo 1.3.1c
• Who Has Visited Today 1.0.0
• Xen Cache 1.0.1
• XenForo Enhanced Search 1.0.3
• XenForo Resource Manager 1.1.3 [disabled]
• [bd] Cache 1.0.5
• [bd] Keyword Alert 1.0.4d
• [bd] Widget Framework 2.5.0d
• [Nobita] XenForo Alert Plus 1.0.6
• [rellect] Desktop Version For Mobiles 1.0.2
• [rellect] Nodes Grid 1.0.4
• [Tinhte] XenTag 2.1.0
• [WMTech] - Social Share Privacy 1.0.3 [disabled]

webpagetest.org result

connection speed: Cable 5Mbps
region test server: Los Angeles different test location



http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140528_H8_9c263b3f0a37e8cb144d97106218908f/

Video http://www.webpagetest.org/video/view.php?id=140528_H8_9c263b3f0a37e8cb144d97106218908f.1.0

notice DOM elements almost doubled

with Nginx 1.7.1

 

Adding Digitalpoint's Social bar addon - added 1-2 more http requests and bumped up page size by up to 6kb

webpagetest.org result

connection speed: Cable 5Mbps
region test server: Los Angeles different test location

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140529_4Z_b20d64fc124cf4f4534e79fe67a1a397/

 

Now that password protection for forums is removed, I can do more pagespeed tests like Google PageSpeed Insights

Desktop
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http://community.centminmod.com&tab=desktop

Mobile
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http://community.centminmod.com&tab=mobile

 

More adds added and enabling Twitter and Google logins added to the page size with 3rd party js/images https://community.centminmod.com/threads/enabled-twitter-google-login-support.284/. Adding Fontawesome icons also added 82+ KB to page size too https://community.centminmod.com/threads/font-awesome-is-awesome.180/ as does Featured threads https://community.centminmod.com/threads/featured-threads-added.293/

Current List of Xenforo Addons Installed

• Add Poll to Existing Threads 1.1.4
  
• Avatar Flags by Waindigo 1.0.1
• Calender 3.0
  
• CTA Featured Threads & Portal 2.6.1
  
• CTA Login 1.0.1
• Daily Statistics 1.2.2
• Defer JS 2.1.0 [disabled]
• Digital Point Ad Positioning 1.3.0
  
• Digital Point Better Analytics 1.0.4
• Digital Point Image Proxy 1.0.2
  
• Digital Point Search 1.1.1
• Digital Point Social Bar 1.0.0
  
• Digital Point Syntax Highlighter 1.3.0
• Digital Point User Map 1.3.2
• Disable Debug Mode by Waindigo 1.0.1
• Double Post Merge 1.0.9
• Find Unanswered Threads 1.0.5
• First Post 1.0
• Forum Jump Menu by Waindigo 1.0.10 [disabled]
• Forum List Tabs by Waindigo 1.0.3 [disabled]
• Install and Upgrade by Waindigo 1.1.2a
• Live Update 3.0
  
• Mark Threads as Solved by Waindigo 1.0.2
• Member's Local Time by Waindigo 1.0.3
• News 1.9
• Nodes As Tabs 1.2.2
  
• PayPal Sandbox by Waindigo 1.0.1 [disabled]
• Quick Navigation in Menu 1.1.0
  
• Quick Reply Preview 1.4.3
• Register Timezone 1.0
• Remove Date Of Birth 1.1
  
• Restore Strikethrough In Editor 1.0.0 [disabled]
• Search All Forums 1.0.0
  
• Sidebar (Collapse/expand) 1.0.0
• Similar Threads 3.0
• Sitemap for XenForo 1.5.2
• Slide Out Poll 1.0.0
  
• Smiley Manager 2.0.1 [disabled]
• Statistics 1.1 [disabled]
• Thread Navigation by Waindigo 1.0.0a
• Thread Starter 1.3 [disabled]
• TPU: Detect Spam Registrations 1.0.1
• TPU: Disable Captcha for registration only 1.0.0
• Unread Post Count 1.1.3
• User Upgrades by Waindigo 1.3.1c
• Who Has Visited Today 1.0.0
  
• Xen Cache 1.0.1
• XenForo Enhanced Search 1.1.0 Beta 1
• XenForo Resource Manager 1.1.3 [disabled]
• [bd] Attachment Store 1.1.3
  
• [bd] Cache 1.0.5
• [bd] Keyword Alert 1.0.4d
• [bd] Mails 0.9.3b
  
• [bd] Widget Framework 2.5.0d
• [FreddysHouse] Signature Once 1.2.1 [disabled] not working
  
• [Iversia] FAQ Manager 3.1.0
  
• [Nobita] XenForo Alert Plus 1.0.6
• [rellect] Desktop Version For Mobiles 1.0.2
• [rellect] Nodes Grid 1.0.4
• [TAZ] Profile Control 1.0.0
  
• [Tinhte] XenTag 2.1.0
• [WMTech] - Social Share Privacy 1.0.3 [disabled]

Google PageSpeed Insights

Desktop http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https://community.centminmod.com&tab=desktop
Mobile http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https://community.centminmod.com&tab=mobile

 

Latest GTMetrix result for https://community.centminmod.com after fine tuning my ngx_pagespeed filters.

Using Centmin Mod based Nginx 1.7.2, PHP 5.5.14, MariaDB 5.5.38 + CSF Firewall + Google SPDY SSL + ngx_pagespeed

primed ngx_pagespeed gtmetrix result (meaning after a few page loads and ngx_pagespeed has optimised resources on the page)

note: both twitter and google login integration also enabled

Dallas, Cable 5Mbps test

 

Webpagetest Cable 5Mbps, Dallas Chrome

 

Synthetic tests are nice, but it's more accurate to look at Google Analytic's Page Speed numbers as they have a geographically relative context to them. Particularly for average page load time and more important the average DOMinteractive time (time for visitor to visually see and interact with the page that is loading).

Numbers for my forums https://community.centminmod.com/ most recently

 

New forum style set https://community.centminmod.com/threads/flat-pixels-style-added.816/#post-3668 so re-testing pagespeed scores

 

Latest state of the forums

GTmetrix



Webpagetest

LA location Cable
4x runs

 

Some Xenforo page generation times for various forum areas. I have approximately 100+ addons installled where ~30 of them are currently disabled.

Linode SSD VPS hosted forums using Nginx with SPDY SSL with OpenSSL 1.0.2 beta3 with chacha20-poly1305 SSL cipher support enabled.

Server Information

• 4 Core Intel Xeon E5-2680v2 2.80Ghz Linode SSD VPS
• 4GB Memory
• 96GB SSD Disk space (70GB allocated, rest for snapshot backup restore space)
• Region: Freemont, California

Web stack

• Centmin Mod .07 released LEMP web stack
• Nginx 1.7.4 with ngx_pagespeed 1.8.31.4 beta enabled
• PHP 5.5.16 PHP-FPM with Zend OpCache 7.0.4-dev
• MariaDB MySQL 5.5.39 with InnoDB default
• Memcached 1.4.20 server with Memcache 3.0.8/Memcached 2.2.0 + Libmemcached 1.18 (igbinary supported)
• CSF Firewall
• Added: Elasticsearch 1.3.2

Index page

• Timing: 0.0688 seconds Memory: 8.686 MB DB Queries: 8
• Timing: 0.0713 seconds Memory: 8.686 MB DB Queries: 8
• Timing: 0.0689 seconds Memory: 8.685 MB DB Queries: 8

Announcement Category page

• Timing: 0.0354 seconds Memory: 7.136 MB DB Queries: 8
• Timing: 0.0324 seconds Memory: 7.136 MB DB Queries: 8
• Timing: 0.0336 seconds Memory: 7.136 MB DB Queries: 8

Forum News Forum page

• Timing: 0.0566 seconds Memory: 8.818 MB DB Queries: 9
• Timing: 0.0614 seconds Memory: 8.818 MB DB Queries: 9
• Timing: 0.0593 seconds Memory: 8.818 MB DB Queries: 9

Thread page 22 posts Greetings from a Debian user | Centmin Mod Community

• Timing: 0.1478 seconds Memory: 10.142 MB DB Queries: 15
• Timing: 0.1474 seconds Memory: 10.142 MB DB Queries: 15
• Timing: 0.1409 seconds Memory: 10.142 MB DB Queries: 15

Member profile page https://community.centminmod.com/members/eva2000.1/

• Timing: 0.0547 seconds Memory: 8.269 MB DB Queries: 15
• Timing: 0.0538 seconds Memory: 8.268 MB DB Queries: 15
• Timing: 0.0534 seconds Memory: 8.269 MB DB Queries: 15

 

Latest stats with updated Nginx and PHP-FPM versions as well as a few updated addons

Server Information

• 4 Core Intel Xeon E5-2680v2 2.80Ghz Linode SSD VPS
• 4GB Memory
• 96GB SSD Disk space (70GB allocated, rest for snapshot backup restore space)
• Region: Freemont, California

Web stack

• Centmin Mod .07 released LEMP web stack
• Nginx 1.7.5 with ngx_pagespeed 1.9.32.1 beta enabled
• PHP 5.6.0 PHP-FPM with Zend OpCache 7.0.4-dev
• MariaDB MySQL 5.5.39 with InnoDB default
• Memcached 1.4.20 server with Memcache 3.0.8/Memcached 2.2.0 + Libmemcached 1.18 (igbinary supported)
• CSF Firewall
• Added: Elasticsearch 1.3.2

Index page

• Timing: 0.0702 seconds Memory: 8.500 MB DB Queries: 8
• Timing: 0.0691 seconds Memory: 8.500 MB DB Queries: 8
• Timing: 0.0677 seconds Memory: 8.500 MB DB Queries: 8

Announcement Category page

• Timing: 0.0304 seconds Memory: 6.954 MB DB Queries: 8
• Timing: 0.0334 seconds Memory: 6.954 MB DB Queries: 8
• Timing: 0.0296 seconds Memory: 6.954 MB DB Queries: 8

Forum News Forum page

• Timing: 0.0604 seconds Memory: 8.572 MB DB Queries: 9
• Timing: 0.0580 seconds Memory: 8.573 MB DB Queries: 9
• Timing: 0.0607 seconds Memory: 8.573 MB DB Queries: 9

Thread page 22 posts Greetings from a Debian user | Centmin Mod Community

• Timing: 0.1407 seconds Memory: 9.858 MB DB Queries: 11
• Timing: 0.1405 seconds Memory: 9.858 MB DB Queries: 11
• Timing: 0.1381 seconds Memory: 9.859 MB DB Queries: 11

Member profile page https://community.centminmod.com/members/eva2000.1/

• Timing: 0.0516 seconds Memory: 8.044 MB DB Queries: 15
• Timing: 0.0492 seconds Memory: 8.043 MB DB Queries: 15
• Timing: 0.0490 seconds Memory: 8.043 MB DB Queries: 15

 

Latest updates








Webpagetest

 

Enabled Share This Page social media features for Twitter, Facebook and Google+ so retesting forums for gtmetrix and webpagetest pagespeed numbers



webpagetest compare across several regions including Dulles, New York, San Jose, Chicago, Denver and Montreal (tested twice)

SpeedIndex is what you need to look at for best performance in terms of initial perceived page loading as you can see from filmstrip, San Jose is fastest give this forum's server is located in Freemont, California

 

Just enabled Facebook login integration, so check to see how that affects page speed.

• Looks like increase in javascript js requests as expected and seems that fully loaded page time increased dramatically - being twice as slow. If you look closely, you can see for Facebook first view, the Facebook login button on right sidebar doesn't begin to show until around 1.6 seconds into the 2nd listed screenshot
• While initial visual render time slightly improved for first paint (probably just normal variation between runs). However, for seeing the more of the forum page rendered, Facebook first view was slower at 1.2s vs 1.1s for non-facebook page.
• Repeat view on the other hand was faster for Facebook repeat view run.

First and repeat view compared for each - listed order from top to bottom is

• facebook first view
• non-facebook first view
• facebook repeat view
• non-facebook repeat view