Oct 27 2009

Optimizing vBulletin for SEO and Server load will help your overall performance.

1. Store CSS StyleSheets as Files

By default, vBulletin will store the CSS of your pages as HTML within the head of the document. This, when taken over thousands of pages, can be quite a heavy burden.

Storing CSS Stylesheets as files will allow users/spiders to cache the CSS as a file, and make each page smaller, HTML wise, giving your server a bit of a breather.

To begin, ensure your forums/clientscript/vbulletin_css directory is chmod 777 so the stylesheet files can be created.
Next, in the AdminCP, select the vBulletin Options menu then vBulletin Options.
Select Style and Language Options.
Set “Store CSS Stylesheets as Files?” to Yes.
Click Submit.

2. Gzip those pesky pages!

Many hosts these days come with gzip as standard, meaning if you enable it within vBulletin you can actually slow pages down.

If your host has gzip installed, follow these instructions:

Go to the AdminCP, expand the vBulletin Options menu and select vBulletin Options.
Select Cookies and HTTP Header Options.
Set “GZIP HTML Output” to No, set “GZIP Compression Level” to 0 and click Submit.

If your host does not have gzip installed, choose Yes and 1 for the above.

3. Restrict Search Engine Crawling

Those spiders..they index your content, but there are always places that you don’t want or need them to go.
To restrict the pesky critters to only eating up your Content, do the following.

In your root (public_html) directory, upload the following robots.txt::

User-agent: *
Disallow: /forums/ajax.php
Disallow: /forums/attachment.php
Disallow: /forums/calendar.php
Disallow: /forums/cron.php
Disallow: /forums/editpost.php
Disallow: /forums/global.php
Disallow: /forums/image.php
Disallow: /forums/inlinemod.php
Disallow: /forums/joinrequests.php
Disallow: /forums/login.php
Disallow: /forums/member.php
Disallow: /forums/memberlist.php
Disallow: /forums/misc.php
Disallow: /forums/moderator.php
Disallow: /forums/newattachment.php
Disallow: /forums/newreply.php
Disallow: /forums/newthread.php
Disallow: /forums/online.php
Disallow: /forums/poll.php
Disallow: /forums/postings.php
Disallow: /forums/printthread.php
Disallow: /forums/private.php
Disallow: /forums/profile.php
Disallow: /forums/register.php
Disallow: /forums/report.php
Disallow: /forums/reputation.php
Disallow: /forums/search.php

Disallow: /forums/sendmessage.php
Disallow: /forums/showgroups.php
Disallow: /forums/subscription.php
Disallow: /forums/threadrate.php
Disallow: /forums/usercp.php
Disallow: /forums/usernote.php

Remove any lines that you WANT the spiders to see.. if you want them to crawl the Calendar, take out Disallow: /forums/calendar.php.

4. Move Attachments to the File System

Stock vBulletin Attachments are stored in the Database. Large attachments or frequent viewing of them can cause a strain.

To move them to the File System, create an attachments directory above your public_html (at the same level as it.. /root/username/public_html | root/username/attachments) and CHMod it 777.

By placing it at this level, we prevent anyone from being able to access the attachments directly (ie: not through vBulletin).

Next, go to the AdminCP and expand the Attachments menu.
Click on Attachment Storage Type.
Move your attachments out of the database and into the file system.

Attachment Path: /home/*username*/attachments

5. Move Avatars and Profile Pics to the File System

As with the Attachments above, but the Avatars are on every post, so cause a burden to the server whenever a post is viewed.

To move them to the filesystem, chmod your forums/customavatars and forums/customprofilepics directories to 777.
Go to the AdminCP and expand the Avatars menu.
Click User Picture Storage Type.
Choose to Move Avatars and Profile Pics to the File System.

Avatar Path: /home/*username*/public_html/forums/customavatars

Avatar URL: /forums/customavatars

Profile Pic Path: /home/*username*/public_html/forums/customprofilepics

Profile Pic URL: /forums/customprofilepics

6. Increase Cached Posts Lifespan

Posts can be “cached”, meaning the server doesn’t have to pull them from the database every time they are viewed.
To enable Post Caching, do the following:

Go to the AdminCP, expand the vBulletin Options menu and select vBulletin Options.
Select Server Settings and Optimization Options in the drop down menu.
Set “Cached Posts Lifespan” to 90.
Click Submit.
If you have very little spare space, drop it to 30.

7. Disable Search and Who’s Online for Guests

Why should guests (which are often mainly Spiders) see your Who’s Online and Search? Do the following to stop them and reduce the load.

Go to your AdminCP.
Expand the Usergroups menu.
Select Usergroup Manager.
Select Unregistered / Not Logged In.
Set both “Can Search Forums” and “Can View Who’s Online” to No.
Click Submit.

8. Turn on fulltext searching

Go to your AdminCP and expand the vBulletin Options menu
Select Search Type.
Set “Empty postindex and word tables?” to Yes.
Click Submit.

61 Comments on this post

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