Warning: The following tutorial is for MyBB forums only. Instructions for other forum software may vary.

I’ve recently been noticing large forums coming to MyBB. One for example is http://www.talkvideogames.com/ with nearly half a million posts, taking up position #2 in place of MsgPlus. So I decided it’s time for a tutorial on how to ensure your server is running fast with MyBB:

1) Change the mybb_sessions table to a HEAP (or MEMORY) type. This will ensure that the table is stored in memory. It won’t cause problems because it’ll be truncated often (sessions 24 hours or older are trimmed at random)

2) Make sure your kernel, mysql, php, and all extensions are up-to-date.

3) Install Zend, eAccelerator, and or memcache extensions for php. MyBB 1.4 will take advantage of eAccelerator / memcache. Installing APC (Advanced PHP Cache) is usually worth it too.

4) Turn on the MySQL Query Cache if it isn’t on already.

5) Remove PHP extensions that you don’t use - you can always turn them on later if need be.

6)  Optimize your tables weekly using a cron job of some sort

Just a note; MyBB 1.4 will continue to provide continual speed improvements for you and your forum. Things like the new task system will allow you to manage your forum better and more easily.

A typical day writing code for MyBB

I’ve just finished coding (Well, Chris wrote the base of the code) a new feature in. MyBB 1.4 will now feature MySQL & PostgreSQL slave drivers. (Yes We’ve added PostrgreSQL and SQLite 2 & 3 support for MyBB 1.4). This will come for a great boost in speed on large forums that run on multiple servers (think if MyBB ever ran Gaia Online).

Using a MySQL/PgSQL slave driver allows us to separate SELECT queries from queries that modify the database (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE etc). Allowing that will let each server be tuned to select or modifying to get the maximum performance out of each server and over all have a speed increase on the servers.

Not to mention we’ll be the first free forum software (afaik) to do it. In addition to this, we’ve made many other optimizations to MyBB 1.4 and we are continuing to do so. We just hope this continues to show how dedicated we are towards making you a product that is fast, free, and efficient!