How to Optimize phpBB for a Large User Base?

[ArdithGregory]

What are the best practices for optimizing a phpBB installation that serves a large community, in terms of server performance and database handling?

[Anișor]

Vanilla phpBB is quite fast on its own.

What do you consider large?

My forum is currently at: 761739 posts, 105471 topics, 152207 members.
It works like a charm with a few extensions installed.

[ArdithGregory]

.. with a few extensions installed.

WOW.. Like what?

[Anișor]

.. with a few extensions installed.

WOW.. Like what?

Pages, mChat, TopFive (modified), Thanks for posts, Similar topics, some custom extensions made by me which are not loading the forum too heavily with a lot of queries.
You should be good as long as you don't install abandoned extensions or if you do, you should know how to handle them.
Since 3.1 phpBB's performance increased.
Of course, depends on what host you have as well.

[thecoalman]

If it's larger forum presumably it's VPS or better with root access. phpBB supports both OPcache and Memcached.

When I say support for OPcache you can use optimized OPcache configuration opcache.validate_timestamps=0 Once loaded into RAM scripts are never loaded from disk. phpBB will invalidate individual files as required, e.g. cache files. Purging the cache from ACP will also completely purge OPcache. The caveat is if you upgrade or any uploaded php script with same name you need to purge old one(s) from OPcache.

If you have memcached installed open config.php and find:

Code: Select all

 $acm_type = 'phpbb\\cache\\driver\\file';

Replace with:

Code: Select all

 $acm_type = 'phpbb\\cache\\driver\\memcached';

[Mick]

Are you expecting a lot of users to sign up to the board or you think you might get a lot? In my view it’s far better to get the board up and running first and see what happens, you can always tweak things later if things change. So long as your server meets phpBBs requirements you should be good to go.

[exemplary1]

Vanilla phpBB is quite fast on its own.

What is Vanilla phpBB ?

[thecoalman]

It's an English expression when describing something plain, unaltered, nothing extra etc.

[exemplary1]

Never knew that , lol.

[Whiskerfish]

My Board has been running since 04. I have 811,000 posts, 70,200 topics, almost 18,000 members and DB is over a Gig, never a hiccup on a VPS. Only issue I had was Bots slamming the bandwidth. They require constant management

[NeoDev]

For older forums you might consider running optimize table (defragments) and analyze table (improves indexing)