examples of HUGE nuke sites

Nuke Soldier Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 10

I'm looking for examples of people running HUGE nuke sites (traffic size).

I'm running a nuke network. The primary site usually has between 1500 and 3000 visitors online at any given time during the day.

My server is large enough to handle any load and is somewhat underutilized, however, the initial index page load time is sometimes very slow.

The index can take up to 15 seconds to load, then the site screams. It seems like the mainfile auth is still dragging despite the hacks. I've also disabled all of the blocks except for a who's online default block and old news. I converted my modules block and navigation block to HTML to eliminate any extra strain on the DB. I've also disabled the surveys / poll block.

If there is someone else out there running a large network, I would like to trade notes on server and db config.

thanks.

Posted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 8:27 pm

Man, I am having the same problem with my site too and it's on it's own dedicated server with 512MB RAM on it. The forums are just dragging like mofo... Can't figure out what it is that I can do to make it work.

Support Mod Joined: Mar 19, 2003 Posts: 308

I am running my website on a dual AMD 2.8 GH 2 gig RAM without a problem, admitting that I was on a semi-dedicated server before but due to high serverloads (from time to time) the provider asked me to change to dedicated.

I am afraid that the PHPBB-forum integrated into phpnuke is just using too much resources for a slower server to handle... Confused

The former nukecops-owner once told that to have good speed on your phpnuke-website the only thing that helps is a dedicated server with quite some RAM behind it...

Sergeant Joined: Aug 26, 2004 Posts: 75

After doing some benchmarks i noticed phpnuke uses around 1.5 to 2.5 MB for the PHP.
But including the SQL system around 30 to 50 MB.

The problem is query handling in MySQL.
any query made without freeresult() or not unbuffered_query() stays in memory.

Goodluck fixing your CMS Wink

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 2:44 pm

Watch me posting it RIGTH here in this forum on how to fix a heavly busy site. Nothing is impossible, if you or anyone else has done it so can others. It is just a matter of time young Jedi.

Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 3:12 pm

Oh and by the way MY CMS is what YOUR CMS based on... Actually your's is just a CMS, mine is a portal system Very Happy

Nuke Soldier Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 10

I had a recent surge in my traffic and saw up to about 5600 online. Page load times went up to about 45-60 seconds and then the servers started crashing.

I made some changes to the theme and went with an extra-lite version. this fixed most of my problems, but I know the site could be doing much better.

has anyone seen a good caching system where the content is static on the site and only updated via cron jobs twice per day or something? I think some modified form of HTML is the only way I'll get my site up to 10,000 viewers online without crashing servers.

Lieutenant Joined: Jan 10, 2004 Posts: 188 Location: UK

I run a site that handles approx 7000-8000 hits and hour. I'm running a dedicated server for each site with 200gb bandwidth and 100gb server space.
Never had a problem with load speed although I generally disable most of the PHPHuke modules in favour of HTML pages where possoble.
I never use coppermine or gallery, webmail, content, Encyclopedia, FAQ, banners, topics or chat modules and always tend to nuke wrap with htmltonuke.php

Average page loads are approx 0.014 secs when I view it with 1mb ADSL.

Posted: Thu Dec 16, 2004 2:40 pm

Ok got one reason that slows PHPbb ports down.
Attachment mod - Disable it if you are using it and watch your forums flying.
Another ported mods that has been reported to slow down site is User Custom Color mod, please watch out for that one too.

Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2005 3:39 pm

Another problem I found is point system in 7.x, even if you don't have it unabled, it still slows down a busy site.

Nuke Soldier Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 10

some updates on things that worked, and problems that still exist.

My primary site is still getting a lot of traffic (over 6000-7000 online in the afternoon at any given moment and up to 200K pages viewed per hour during peak times). Over 2.5Mpages on some days.

The site was crashing at around 2500-3000 until I made some big changes.

1- I removed every block that was dynamic (all who's online, module blocks, shout box, top articles, most viewed articles, etc). Everything was converted to a static site.

2- upgraded server to 3gb of ram (from 2gb) server has dual 2.8xeon processors with redhat. (also has 100Mb connection, so BW isn't the issue)

3- added a php accelerator to the server: http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/

4- modifed keep alive settings on server and changed max sessions limit on server (you need root access to do this stuff).

((( big change )))

5- Changed the index.php page to static HTML. (I renamed the standard dynamic index.php page to index2.php, and set up a wget script to fetch the html from index2.php. Every hour, a cron job runs and replaces the static html on index.php with the fresh content from index2.php). I've found that no matter how optimized the site is, the main index page takes the site down when it's dynamic and hitting the database... the article pages do ok with the dynamic content and can handle most traffic.

6- almost forgot. I changed the theme to nukelite / very simple slim 1 file theme.

7- disabled coppermine

8- forums are on another server

9- disabled backend rss feed

My problems:::::

The server still crashes when I get very very busy or have heavy linking from fark or slashdot, etc. It seems that the mysql sessions aren't taking up huge server capacity, but there are just so many of them, that it takes the server down. Does anyone know how to optimize the number of mysql sessions on the server? What Can I do to eliminate additional mysql hits? (ideally, I would love to convert all pages to html, but it's not reasonable given the size of the site and the volume of comments posted hourly)

Site Admin Joined: Aug 17, 2003 Posts: 12482

Well if you've tried the Speed Freaks mainfile.php tweaks, those should help reduce some SQL statements. Really, phpNuke is database intensive... it always will be.

I see you've removed all the dynamic stuff you could. Really, there's not much you can do besides caching the entire page.

Captain Joined: Oct 10, 2004 Posts: 563

Im a hardware man rather than coder....
I build/repair/troubleshoot custom machines as part of my business amonst a few other things.
The ram...is it compatable with the MB, are all the sticks same brand etc.]
What MB are u running? Model and brand
What u are describing is similar to high end video editing/gaming/game server problems.
If AMD, when the machine was loaded, did u load the mb/chipset drivers in the right order (some AMDs can be rather sensitive to this) or are they loaded and are they correct drivers.
If Intel, try updating or reloading the mb/chipset drivers

Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:16 pm

The Speed tweks from DJ Maze and others do not help at all in some cases and in some case, lags your site even more if it's really busy.
If I was you, I would start cacheing your pages and blocks with JPCache or CacheLite.
Are you using the PHP-Nuke point system? if not, let's work something out to disable that system for good. What version you are using and let's try to fix it.
I am more interested into your site because I was part of a huge community too and site was lagging the hell out and I need a site when I can see how long a PHP-Nuke site can handle big traffic sites.
Please to PM me your messenger services and link to your website if you don't mind.
I also have few other ideas which I am sure will help you a lot with your site and also there are few other coders who are willing to help me but asked me to not release their names.
If everything works out (which I think have so far... 17 queries on the main page when logged in as an admin and a user) we'll post either here or a script download for others who are running huge sites.

Nuke Soldier Joined: Sep 16, 2004 Posts: 10

thanks for the responses.

mesum, I'll send you a pm.

hardware info:
Intel \ P4 Xeon \ 2.8Ghz
Fujitsu \ 73GB:SCSI:Ultra320 X's -3
Hynix \ DDR 266 ECC \ 2GB (upgraded and added 1gb more)

today I got creative with the mysql session problem. I disabled the following table in my mysql db: nuke_session (I went from having 100's of nuke sessions in my top processes to '2'!!!!!! not sure if something else will break as a result, however, the box is much much faster right now.

load avg right now: load average: 2.51, 2.95, 2.90
(time = 4:00 est... this is a peak hour for the site. Load avg at this time will sometimes reach 30-45).

Yes, I did do the mainfile hacks, and it was effective, but not enough.

one more thing tested today: In mainfile page, I eliminated all of the 'mainfile =1' items that weren't being used -- seems like it helped but not certain.