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Big clients using IPB


Mat Young

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Hello,

We want to move our current community forum to IPB.

Our objective is to create a huge community portal and I am looking for IPB's references

It is a very big project and we would like to see what is possible to do with IPB as well as its best practices.

Can someone provide me examples of big sites using IPB forums ?

Many thanks !

Matthieu

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I warn you now, IPB isn't scalable. We have 2 million members and cannot reference our members table ever, otherwise the site goes super slow.

IPB is an awesome software with some incredible features, but larger websites have not been accommodated for, this has been the case forever and despite years of mentioning it, it's never been addressed, unfortunately.

We run 2 servers with dual quad core and 28GB ram each and as long as we don't reference the members table, we're ok. We have to hide our member search and disable the members tab.

Nearly all of the big sites above, you'll notice they don't allow their members list to be viewed by guests. Nvidia and Talkaudio aren't that big. Under 1 million members we were fine but once we got near and beyond that, we had nothing but problems with the members table.

So it all depends on how many members you think you'll have. If its a massive amount, then VB runs a lot better. All of the big VB websites member lists are lightening fast.

I've had several support tickets open, but unfortunately the issue has never been resolved. Though they have tried.

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And you also have the norwegian Diskusjon.no. Been around since 2001 and on IPB platform since late 2003.




We have some mixed feelings about IPB, mostly in terms of performance. We've been able to deal with the problems ourselves but the forum software doesn't seem to be very scalable, atleast not the 3.X-series. We don't experience any performance issues now, but we had to quite a lot of changes in setup and some code changes in IPB in order to deal with the performance problems that suddenly arised after our 3.0 upgrade.
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We recently upgraded to 3.2 and all was ok for a few day. However out of nowhere the site was going offline every 5 minutes. Took 48 hours to trouble shoot, working around the clock with the host and devs and it was finally pin pointed to IPB's reputation system.

It was actually taking the site from 1.5 server load, with 20GB free ram, to 90+ and eating all the ram within minutes. So we've had to disable that feature, I'm guessing it's having to reference the members table in a way it cannot handle for larger databases.

If IPS can sort the problem with larger member bases, and once the SEO enhancements are released in Q2 2012, it will be perfect.

There's a lot of good things about IPB, the scalability is just one of the bad.

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If IPS can sort the problem with larger member bases, and once the SEO enhancements are released in Q2 2012, it will be perfect.



There's a lot of good things about IPB, the scalability is just one of the bad.



I agree. We especially like the archive feature coming, with over 18.5 million posts it will be really good to be able to put down the load on that area some.

We didn't experience any problems with the member tables though, there were other reasons for our failures, and we still allow guests to view profiles. Then again,we don't have the same amount of registered members on our site. We only have 200k+ members. How many visitors do you use to have active on your board?

Where is your board?
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I warn you now, IPB isn't scalable. We have 2 million members and cannot reference our members table ever, otherwise the site goes super slow.



IPB is an awesome software with some incredible features, but larger websites have not been accommodated for, this has been the case forever and despite years of mentioning it, it's never been addressed, unfortunately.



We run 2 servers with dual quad core and 28GB ram each and as long as we don't reference the members table, we're ok. We have to hide our member search and disable the members tab.



Nearly all of the big sites above, you'll notice they don't allow their members list to be viewed by guests. Nvidia and Talkaudio aren't that big. Under 1 million members we were fine but once we got near and beyond that, we had nothing but problems with the members table.



So it all depends on how many members you think you'll have. If its a massive amount, then VB runs a lot better. All of the big VB websites member lists are lightening fast.



I've had several support tickets open, but unfortunately the issue has never been resolved. Though they have tried.




x million members..... and only xx that have posted today..... I'm very curious how you got to x million members and only have xx a day posting? You only have xxxk post as well?


If your running two servers with 24gb of ram... it's not really needed looking at your traffic... I have sites with twice your traffic on one box with a server load of about 13% . So while you may have some issues that need to be addressed, please do not dismiss IPS for issues that you are having specific to your site.
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We have 2 million members





You only have 136k post




Me thinks you need to start culling the old inactive non-posters. Not cleaning your tables out is like never cleaning your house... it's just going to keep getting clogged up till it takes ages to wade through the garbage to get to the fridge. Well, that's what you are experiencing now.

Either you have 136,000 single time posters, or around 30,000 actual posters that have done more than 5 posts... leaving you with a minimum 1,844,000 users who do squat.
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x million members..... and only xx that have posted today..... I'm very curious how you got to x million members and only have xx a day posting? You only have xxxk post as well?



Do you want to see my analytics?

We're not a forum. We have a forum which isn't used much. But we receive 25,000 - 30,000 visitors a day.

Other sites in our niche are very similar, even Zedge.net who have about 20 million members and 65,000 people online at any one time, has a pretty inactive forum.

Nearly all of the activity goes on elsewhere in the website and most of the people using the website are there just to download stuff.

What exactly you were trying to get at, with your post, is beyond me. It doesn't change the fact that IPB with large member tables struggle.

My first point was valid and IPB isn't as scalable as it should be. We've had IPB engineers try to make the members table run faster. But I guarantee viewing the members index slows it down, as Brandon found out. Don't pass the buck back to me and say it's my particular website, as all of the bigger sites with member tables over 1 million, are slow to browse the members table.

If your running two servers with 24gb of ram... it's not really needed looking at your traffic... I have sites with twice your traffic on one box with a server load of about 13%



Not if, we are. You have websites getting 60,000 visitors a day? We use 6TB of traffic per month. Between traffic and downloads, that's what we go through.

You shouldn't be trying to score points against your customers. I was just making the OP aware of the possible issues he'll face.

and we still allow guests to view profiles.



We allow guests to view profiles, the problem is browsing the members list. Or accessing the members table in various ways causes big load spikes.
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You shouldn't be trying to score points against your customers.




I disagree, I think it was a legitimate question ("How do you get such a bad member to post ratio?") that got me wondering also. For the sake of curiosity, why does your forum have 2m members if it has so little activity? Is your website members system connected to the forum?
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Our forum doesn't have 2 million members. Our website has 2 million members, most of which are there to download and share their artwork.

Our website is 100% IPB. But the forum part, is only a tiny part of it and as I say, is in a sub menu and something we've even considered not having.

In the past, to download, you had to be a member. Now, guests can also download.

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Our forum doesn't have 2 million members. Our website has 2 million members, most of which are there to download and share their artwork.



Our website is 100% IPB. But the forum part, is only a tiny part of it and as I say, is in a sub menu and something we've even considered not having.



In the past, to download, you had to be a member. Now, guests can also download.




Ok, now that is more understandable.
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Either you have 136,000 single time posters, or around 30,000 actual posters that have done more than 5 posts... leaving you with a minimum 1,844,000 users who do squat.



Again, it's not a forum.

These guys mobile9.com get 500,000 daily visitors. Look at their members list: http://www.mobile9.com/invboard/index.php?&act=Members you'll need to login, completely inaccessible! Actually, they don't publicise that URL and I am guessing I just made their server load treble.

The OP asked, is IPB scalable. It's not. Large member tables cause massive issues.

Also note their forum, despite being in the main menu, still isn't nearly what you'd expect for a site with 500,000 visitors per day.
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Do you want to see my analytics?



We're not a forum. We have a forum which isn't used much. But we receive 25,000 - 30,000 visitors a day.



Other sites in our niche are very similar, even Zedge.net who have about 20 million members and 65,000 people online at any one time, has a pretty inactive forum.



Nearly all of the activity goes on elsewhere in the website and most of the people using the website are there just to download stuff.



What exactly you were trying to get at, with your post, is beyond me. It doesn't change the fact that IPB with large member tables struggle.



My first point was valid and IPB isn't as scalable as it should be. We've had IPB engineers try to make the members table run faster. But I guarantee viewing the members index slows it down, as Brandon found out. Don't pass the buck back to me and say it's my particular website, as all of the bigger sites with member tables over 1 million, are slow to browse the members table.





Not if, we are. You have websites getting 60,000 visitors a day? We use 6TB of traffic per month. Between traffic and downloads, that's what we go through.



You shouldn't be trying to score points against your customers. I was just making the OP aware of the possible issues he'll face.





We allow guests to view profiles, the problem is browsing the members list. Or accessing the members table in various ways causes big load spikes.




Throw Varnish on your server then and scalability will not be an issue.. We've had 16,000 visitors on over a 15 minute period and the server didn't break a sweat for guests since they were all served through the varnish cache.
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Our server runs just fine and we've also used varnish and nginx.

The issue is only with viewing and accessing the members table. Login to mobile9 and look at how inaccessible their members list is. That's with about 10 million members.

Our main website, runs perfectly and is optimised. Our server load is always low and the website is fast.

Again the issue is with the members list and table.

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My point was your site is non typical.... and posting what you have in a "sales" topic was my only concern... this topic is better suited for the members lounge etc...as you have mentioned, your forum/site is unique.

To answer your question however... here are the stats on one for you.

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Rhett, the site might be unique. But if you look at Mobile9s members list, you'll see the problem exists regardless.

The larger member lists really are inaccessible. Brandon was able to make it a little faster, but it's still problematic.

If you're going to be honest with your customers, then there's no point debating an issue you know exists. I just wanted to make the OP aware of the issue he'll face, which he definitely will, unless something is done about it.

I did also say, that IPB has some brilliant features. It's just not perfect, but I know you guys are working on improving it all the time. If you can ever make the members table more optimised, that'd be brilliant for websites with larger member tables.

Quite importantly, we did require sign up for downloads, but we had to completely remove this and open it up to guests, because we didn't want our members table growing any larger. That isn't a decision a website should have to make. This in turn, greatly reduced activity, such as commenting and other member only functions.

When I view the massive VB websites, their member lists are instant, so I know it's possible.

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If a massive members table ever became an issue, could the same solution be used to separate the actives from the inactives as will appear in the upcoming version to split up the posts table? Would something like this work?

This way active users (who you could set to be those who have posted within the last 12 or 24 mths) would be kept in a separate table, whereas long-time inactives would be sent to the "freezer", a separate table to store dormant users.

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If a massive members table ever became an issue, could the same solution be used to separate the actives from the inactives as will appear in the upcoming version to split up the posts table? Would something like this work?



This is something I also suggested a long time ago. Or index members in to 36 tables A-Z and 0-9. If the username starts with A, it jumps to the members table starting with A and then finds the user inside there. I'm not a programmer, so I don't even know if either are technically impossible, but logically it seems sound.

With the members list, I'm not sure what the issue is, as theoretically it should simply take 20 users, then when next is clicked, it displays the next 20 in the table. But I don't believe that's what it does, it seems to do some kind of calculations based on the entire table each time next is clicked.

Look at Nexopia for example, it's a massive VB site and their member list works just fine.
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just an opinion here, but if IP engineers were looking at it trying to correct it there never should have been a rebuttal here to your info.


can members table be run on distinct sql server? not sure that would help, just curious.




The developers are always looking to improve our products, this goes without question... however these comments are best suited for the feedback forum if you have suggestions, or the technical support forums if you need help.
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